How To Set a Avatar – Gravatar Tutorial

I noticed just a couple of people here in comments have avatar set for their accounts. It is OK, but if you wish to personalize your account here a little bit, here is a step-by-step guide.

This blog uses a WordPress – the most popular blog engine in the world. Guys from WordPress made a special website with public API where you can store your avatar and use it on many-many websites over the Internet, not WordPress-based only.

After you create an account on Gravatar, your avatar will magically appear on many websites where you have accounts or leave comments. To make it possible, you should use the email address you use to post comments for registration on Gravatar.

Step1. Go to the Gravatar.com and click the Register button.

Step 2. Enter your email address. Remember: it has be the same email address you use to post blog comments.

Step 3. Gravatar will ask you to add their email address to your contact list. Most likely, they ask us about this to prevent placing their email into the Junk/Spam folder. Most email services will do this if you get an email from an unknown recipient.

Step 4. Go to your email client and add donotreply@gravatar.com to your contact list.

Step 5. Return back to Gravatar webpage and click the “OK - donotreply@gravatar.com is in my contacts” button. You will receive a confirmation with an activation link sent to your email address.

Step 6. Go to your Inbox and click the activation link to confirm your email address exists. This is necessary to prove your email address and prevent spam registrations.

Step 7. You will be forwarded to a special webpage where you can select a username and a password. You will need them if you want to change your avatar in future. Bad news is that almost all usernames are occupied. You can check if your username is available by clicking the Check button. Good news is that it is unimportant which username you choose – Gravatar won’t show it anywhere.

Step 8. Click the “Add one by clicking here” link to upload an avatar picture.

Step 9. Choose where you want to upload your picture from. I will select a picture from free avatars db, so I click the “An image on the internet” button.

Step 10. Whoa, I’m a bit tired! Aren’t you? Enter a location of an image on the internet and click the Next button.

Step 11. We still have to continue: our gravatar will appear on all blogs on the internet. After clicking the Next button, you will see a dialog where you can crop your image. Do this using dotted rectangle around the image and click the Crop Image button below it. You may need to scroll the webpage down to see this button.

Step 12. You need to select avatar rating. If your avatar doesn’t contain nudity, click the G button.

Step 13. We did it! It’s hard to believe we finished so long process but it’s true. Your gravatar will appear next to your comments in an hour or so. So do something good for yourslef!