Create a Gravatar Account

For those of you who have ever commented on a blog, this one or another, have you ever noticed that sometimes there is an Avatar photo next to some commenter’s names and some are blank?  Perhaps the blank ones have that grayed-out place holder of a head-and-shoulders, where it looks like a photo should go.

Unless you have signed into a blog, such as blogger.com or blogspot.com, then the commenters are probably using Gravatar.  Gravatar is a Globally Recognized AVATAR, which means that once you create a free account on their site, you can link a thumbnail photo to your email address, or multiple email addresses.  Then you can go to sites who host their own blogging software, such as I do, and enter your email address (which is usually unseen by everyone but the blog owner) and the blog comment will show your avatar next to it.  The blog software has to use Gravatar in the backend, but most of them do already.  WordPress certainly does, which is the software I use.

So go sign up, register your email and your avatar thumbnail, and make your blog comments a bit more snappy.  You can test it by commenting below