How to Activate and Set up Gravatar in WordPress.

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I have been hard at work creating my branding around the internet.  One of the components I recently implemented was to set up my Gravatar.  You can set up your Gravatar here for free.

The name Gravatar came from Globally Recognized Avatar. An avatar is simply an icon or an image that represents a computer user. Using Gravatars is really very simple. Since WordPress Version 2.5, Gravatar support has been built into the core WordPress functionality.

Here is how I set it up, some problems I ran into and some tricks I learned along the way to enhance your Gravatar presence on the Web.

Gravatars on Other People’s Blogs

When you leave a comment on a blog and the blog is Gravatar enabled and you have set up your Gravatar account, then your picture will show up next to your comment.   Your picture is tied to your email so anywhere you input the email address you set up with you Gravatar account, your picture is inserted into the Gravatar space.  Pretty slick.

Setting Up You Gravatar Account – It’s FREE

When setting up your account it is important to remember what email address you used so you can make sure you are leaving the correct one when you are leaving comments around the internet.  

When uploading the picture to the Gravatar site you  will want to make sure you crop your image to be square.  If you don’t it will load in a distorted, stretched out looking picture.

Making the Gravatar Show Up on My Blog

One of the problems I encountered was making the picture show up on my own blog.  I could get it show up on other people’s blogs, no problem, but could not figure out my own blog. 

I searched and searched for the answer, I knew it was simple but I could not find where I would put the email address that was tied to my Gravatar.

The answer is in the Author Profile section.  

In the dashboard of WordPress go to

Users –> Authors & Users –> and edit the particular author and insert the correct email address into the account.   If you are running WordPress version 2.5 or above you don’t need to use a plugin anymore. 

All you need to do is activate the Gravatar function.

Dashboard –> Setting –> Discussion –> Avatars.

Creating Your Own Default Gravatar – It’s EASY

You will be asked to choose a default Gravatar for anyone that does not have a Gravatar account.  In my quest to find out how to get my Gravatar to show up on my own Blog I ran into some code to create my own default Gravatar and make it show up here in the selection.  It is really easy and allows you to be a little more unique and creative with your Gravatar functioning. 

Go here to read the article and get the code to make this easy to do upgrade on your default Gravatar picture.

Hope this helps and happy branding and blogging.

Comments are appreciated.