Gravatar is a service which lets you upload a custom blogger avatar or profile picture and connect it to your e-mail, so whenever you use your e-mail address to put in the e-mail text box while you write a comment, people can see your custom avatar picture like forums, and Facebook profile pictures. However, the avatar will be posted on any WordPress blog you comment on as long as you use your Gravatar connected e-mail in the E-mail comment field.
Gravatar also shows up on your blogger profile in WordPress like the TwentyTen and other themes with a blogger profile for posts written by you.
I notice many blog commenters on this blog never sign up for a Gravatar E-mail even though it is simple and free to sign up for one at Gravatar.
Having a custom profile picture for your blog comments can increase the likelihood of someone reading your comments, and clicking your website link, or Commentluv link on your comments which will increase your traffic.
Also, your Gravatar image might get index by Google image search, so when people search for your name online via Google image search they might find your avatar as a top search result which is a lot better then finding a picture of a shady looking character or criminal with the same name as yours.
You will also appear more trustworthy since people know how you look like. People like seeing faces or logos rather then those generic avatars with nothing on them or a picture of a man who looks like the guy on the sign for the mens washroom, or a picture you do not want your website or name being associated with like an adult rated or violent image.
An avatar will make your comment stand up from all the comments which do not have any profile pictures.
It is best to use your own picture, or a picture which is related to your blog’s main category if you rather not share your picture of yourself online.
It only takes a few minutes to sign up for an Gravatar Account, and it is free. The image is also hosted on Gravater, so you would not have to use your own bandwidth and storage space to host the image.
Sign up for a Gravatar account at en.gravatar.com , verify your e-mail account, upload an image, or take one from your webcam, crop your image, and enjoy the benefits of having a custom avatar when posting on other people’s, and your own blog.
If you have a wordpress.com not .org , Gravatar is built into WordPress.com, so you can use your WordPress.com blog and e-mail connected to your blog to upload your picture.
I hate gravatars 😐
Why?, I like Gravatars they allow people to see the face or the symbol of the blogger.
can i use beside avatar for blog
I’m not sure, but I think if the forum, CMS, or website supports Gravatar avatars on their site it will work. Otherwise, you have to upload your avatar on the forum, website, or cms with the profile’s avatar option.
I think Gravatar works on BBbPress forums which is a WordPress discussion forum software for WordPress.
Thanks for sharing this information. Keep sharing more and more
nice post and very useful for novice bloggers
Shippingbee, Cool Gravatar picture .
I thing using a Gravatar is perfect. The world of internet is getting bigger and bigger everyday and we spend so much time on the internet. We need to make those times as efficient as possible so we need to do anything possible to make our times efficient.
“Having a custom profile picture for your blog comments can increase the likelihood of someone reading your comments, and clicking your website link, or Commentluv link on your comments which will increase your traffic…..” I had to keep this in mind. Thanks for sharing this.
Thanks, I will be giving Gravatar a try 😀 nice post. Keep it up
I’m building Gravatar code for a theme for SEO reasons, basically don’t like the default Word Press Gravatar code because for each avatar it adds an image to the page with no alt text which could have a negative SEO impact. Instead using the image as a background image with has no SEO impact.
I don’t have Gravatar.I will sign up for the links you provided on order to create Gravatar even Avatar.