Blogging

Use Gravatars to Build Recognition

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. For additional tips and tricks that aren't published here, you may want to subscribe to vAS News. Thanks for visiting!

With the advent of WordPress 2.5.1 comes the integration of Gravatars. What are Gravatars you ask? A gravatar, or globally recognized avatar, is an avatar image that follows you from blog to blog, appearing beside your name when you comment on gravatar enabled sites. Gravatars help identify your posts on blogs and builds recognition for you around the blogosphere, particularly if you’re an active commenter on others’ blogs.

You can associate an avatar of your choice (or of your own creation) with your email address at Gravatar.com. You can register multiple email addresses with the same avatar, or associate a unique avatar for each email address.

Using Gravatars has long been on my ‘to-do’ list here at vAS, but thanks to Tom asking for help enabling them on his blog, I’ve gone ahead and enabled them here, too.

If you’d like to see how simple Gravatars are to use, follow these easy steps:

1. Go to Gravatar.com and register your email address. (This link opens a new window so you don’t lose your place here.)
2. Click the link in the confirmation email you’ll receive and set yourself a password.
3. Upload the picture of your choice (you’ll be able to crop it after you upload it)
4. Come back here and leave a comment and you’ll see your Gravatar beside your comment!

If you don’t have a Gravatar of your own set up, this is the Gravatar that will be used for you here.

Note: Gravatars are not specific to WordPress, and can be used not only on other blogging platforms, but on websites and even desktop applications!

If you’d like your blog to be Gravatar-enabled and need some help, contact me.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

© 2008 vAssistant Services.