What is Gravatar?

~ Posted on Wednesday, July 7, 2010 at 6:23 PM ~

Ladies and gentlemen, I feel I really should share out this with you guys. It's definitely not a professional lesson, more like a mini tutorial from me, a knowledge transfer I'd say. I think from now on, if I learned any new things that I can think can benefits you guys who are passionate about blogging, I'd like to share it out through my own blog meme, which is:

So, what is a Gravatar? No, no, not Avatar. I meant, GRAVATAR. With the letter "GR" in front. According to the website,

"Gravatar is an image that follows you from site to site appearing beside your name when you do things like comment or post on a blog. Avatars help identify your posts on blogs and web forums, so why not on any site?"

Errmm... does any of that make sense to you? Put it to simple lay-man words, Gravatar is an icon that represents you, an image in this sense that whenever you go to other people site or when you leave your comments, your icon/image will appear right where your identity is. If you are using Blogger, then your profile picture will be the one showing. But you see, nowadays, Blogger is not the only thing available for people to use on their blog or website. There are Wordpress and other blog host as well. So this is where Gravatar comes in handy.

If you noticed my blog, some of the people who left their comments have this funny looking images next to their profile:

Now it's definitely not my blog visitor / reader's choice to have that funny looking image as their profile picture. It's just that I like to imagine the people who left me a comment really looks funny like that hahaha... kidding kidding...

Back to being serious, now this is because on my blog template, it is defaulted that comments are to use Gravatar images to show the user's profile. If the person's email address is not found in the Gravatar's database, then this funny looking images will be shown - cos this is from the Wavatar settings in my blog template.

Meaning, when you leave me a comment, my blog template will search the Gravatar database using your email address. If they finds it, they will show your image next to your comment in my post. Else, the funny Wavatar icons will be shown. There are many other websites and blogs out there and a lot of them are using the same method, only that most of them choose Monster ID or Identicon instead of mine, which is Wavatar.

Monster ID icons looks like these:

Identicon icons looks like these:

As I'm no longer using Blogger, I cannot use the user's Google profile picture to show on their comments, hence Gravatar is the best choice. When you leave a comment on my blog post, you will notice a short description right next to the email entry which says " (Will show your Gravatar icon) " - this is because Gravatar extracts your image using your email address. I can of course select MonsterID or Identicon to show as your profile image but I prefer to use Wavatar instead. 

Simply put, to create your profile on Gravatar, you just need to enter your email address and upload your image into their site. Easy peasy! Of course, just a note of advise, if you are serious about blogging and establishing your own identity and also your blog identity, you'd want to design your profile image as close to your blog template. This is to make people associate the image with your blog whenever they see it!

You can click at this link to start creating your own Gravatar now! That's all the mini tutorial I have for now. Will post more when I came across any new stuff! Or feel free to drop me a comment or email and if I know how to do it, I'll be glad to share it in the next post, else I'll try my best to find out if I don't know about it. Cheers!

Comments (10) -

Mark

Hi Jenny,

Long time no see! Smile Your site looks so canggih-fied already!

I think I made a Gravatar once, not sure if it's still there or if it ever worked. Smile My picture appears, is that what it is?

Regards
Mark
http://earlychildcare.wordpress.com

I'm a full-time mummy

Harlowwwwww Mark!

Super long time no see!! As you can see, I migrated from Blogger already and being not pro Wordpress, I'm using own customised web template hehehe.. all images you see here are DIY by my ownself,.. cheapskate SAHM what to do..? Tong

And yes, your Gravatar works! Smile Looking forward to reading your updates ya!

Polly (aka 5th Sister)

well thank you for the lesson! I will see what I can do to change from a silly random character to using my blog image.

Polly (aka 5th Sister)

okay...I tried it...let's see if it works, okay?

Mark

Haha, I didn't notice you were not on Blogger. Wah, all done by yourself, so expert!

I haven't updated for so long, can't even remember how to do anything. =-P

Regards
Mark
http://earlychildcare.wordpress.com

I'm a full-time mummy

Hey Polly!
It works! Looks awesome though it took me few seconds to figure out its your eye! Smile

Hey Mark!
So better update my blog link now! No more blogspot already and I even do my own watermark to match my new blog look! Heheheh...

Rosebelle

Yes, I do notice some blogs have gravatars which I think is cool. I just don't like having to sign up for one. So as for now, I'm happy with whatever the computer generates for me.

Pluszaki

Great blog, exactly what I was looking for.
Thanks for sharing!

- Maskotki Pluszaki

Jenny @ I'm a full-time mummy

Hi Maskotki Pluszaki!
Thanks for your compliments! Have a nice day! Laughing

Jake Ruston

Thanks for this good blog post, it has been an interesting read.

Comments are closed