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Tired of uploading the same profile image?
Gravatar makes it easy to display your avatar and commenter avatars on your site. In this post, we’ll cover how to integrate with Gravatar so your profile image is used across the site, and how to ensure commenters get to use their Gravatars too.
Signup for Gravatar
If you don’t already have an account, signup for Gravatar now. Creating an account is free and only takes a couple minutes.
You’ll be asked to upload an image (avatar) to associate with your email account, and you can add multiple email accounts at once with different avatars if you’d like.
Connect to your site
Gravatar works by associating an image with an email address. In your profile settings (Users > Your Profile), make sure the email address used for your profile is the same as the email address you just added to Gravatar.
You’ll now see your Gravatar used in certain places within the dashboard. For instance, the “Howdy” message on the right-side of the admin toolbar will now show your avatar.
The other place WordPress shows Gravatar images is in the comments.
Display Gravatars in the comments
Visit the discussion settings (Settings > Discussion), and enable avatars. If you enable avatars, Gravatar will automatically be used for any commenters who have an account.
The Default Avatar option below is only used if a commenter does not have a Gravatar account. You don’t need to set it to Gravatar Logo, but that will let your users know you support Gravatar.
Where else is Gravatar used?
Those are the only places Gravatar is used by default on a WordPress site. However, many themes and plugins will make use of them. For instance, the Author theme will use your Gravatar image in the sidebar if available.
In addition, many sites around the web use Gravatar for profile images. By setting up your Gravatar once, you’ll use the same profile image automatically across tons of different sites. And, you can update it everywhere any time via your Gravatar account.
WordPress + Gravatar
I love Gravatar. It’s nice logging into a new site and already having a profile image setup, or commenting on someone else’s site with my picture instead of a faceless avatar.
To use it on your site, simply use the same email address for Gravatar and your profile on your site. If you want commenters to use Gravatar too, check off the Show Avatars box in the Discussion settings.
If you have any questions about Gravatar and using it with WordPress, post a comment below.
