Richard Farrar

Life, Technology and Everything...

  • Home
  • About
    • Musical Interests
      • Tap Thru’ – Band
      • RedStick – Duo
    • PhD Thesis
    • Patent
    • Digital Radio Design
    • Privacy Policy
    • Cookie Policy
    • Terms of Use
  • Podcasts
    • The PlantAdvice Gardening Podcast
  • Podcast Equipment
  • Podcasting Resources  
    • Top Podcast Directories
    • Featured Podcast Widget for WordPress
    • Skype Interview Guidelines for Guests
  • Archives
    • Polls Archive
  • Contact

How to get your Picture in Blog Comments

Filed Under: Blogging

Churchill silhouetteIf you’ve stumbled around the web for a while, then you’ve probably seen the little pictures that some people use alongside their comments in blog posts,  or on forums. So how do you go about getting your own picture against your blog comments or forum posts?

Not all blogs or forums allow their users to have pictures of themselves next to their comments or posts, but those that do tend to utilise the same easy-to-use system.

If you post questions on forums, or leave comments on blog posts and would like to enhance your comments with your photograph or some graphical icon, then read on, as it’s really not that difficult to achieve.

Avatars

The little pictures that you see next to blog comments or forum posts are called avatars. An avatar is a computer user’s representation of themselves in the online world.

In computer games an avatar is often the three-dimensional character that users use to represent themselves, in blogs and forums though, an avatar normally takes the form of a picture of themselves, a cartoon representation, or some graphical icon having some particular meaning or significance to the user.

To be able to use your own avatar on different blogging or forum platforms, there would really need to be a universally accepted system for the use and transfer of avatars across platforms, otherwise you’d have to set up a separate avatar for every system or website that you’re likely to use. This, as you could imagine, would be a real pain.

Fortunately, such a universal system does exist and it’s called GRAVATAR.

Gravatars

Mona Lisa 80 x 80 pixelsA gravatar is a Globally Recognised Avatar and is an free online service to serve avatar images globally and in a defined way.

A gravatar is always square and can be up to 512 pixels wide, although the default standard is 80 x 80 pixels.

To be able to use gravatars, all you need is a valid e-mail address and a suitable image that you want to use as your avatar.

Gravatars are linked to your e-mail address. Whenever you leave a comment on a blog post, the blogging software uses your e-mail address to retrieve your avatar from the gravatar website. However, in an effort to alleviate spam your e-mail address is not used directly, but an encrypted version of it, called an MD5 hash (or message digest), is used instead.

The MD5 hash, derived from your e-mail address, uniquely identifies your gravatar and prevents spam by not sending your real e-mail address in the process. Furthermore, there is no possibility of anyone extrapolating your e-mail address from the MD5 hash!

The MD5 hash of an e-mail address is always 32 characters long, using the characters 0 – 9 and a – f (hexadecimal notation). For example, the MD5 hash of the e-mail address iHaveAn@email.com is:

3b3be63a4c2a439b013787725dfce802

To call up the gravatar linked to this e-mail address using its MD5 hash, the blogging software would use something of the following format:

www.gravatar.com/avatar/3b3be63a4c2a439b013787725dfce802

Try clicking on this link and your browser should display the gravatar logo.

Ratings

The gravatar system also has an in-built (voluntary) rating system to try and prevent inappropriate images being displayed.

When choosing your gravatar image, if you feel that it may be unsuitable for certain audiences, you can choose which of the following ratings is most appropriate for it:

  • G   – Suitable for all audiences
  • PG – Possibly offensive, usually for audiences 13 and above
  • R   – Intended for adult audiences above 17
  • X   – Even more mature than above

Website managers running websites supporting the gravatar system can set the appropriate rating for their site. For example, if you ran a site that children may visit, then you would set the site’s gravatar rating to G. This would mean that only user’s gravatars with a G rating would be displayed and any gravatar with a higher rating would be replaced by a safe, default image.

Sign Up for a Gravatar

If this captures your imagination and you fancy getting your own avatar, then you will need to sign up with the gravatar system.

To sign up for a gravatar, you need to:

  1. Go to www.gravatar.com and click on the signup link
  2. Enter your e-mail address and then click signup
  3. Check your e-mail and click on the activation link in the e-mail sent to you from gravatar. If you can’t find the e-mail, try checking your junk mailbox just in case your spam filter has caught it by mistake.
  4. Choose a username and password
  5. Click on the link to add an image
  6. Choose an image from your computer and upload it to gravatar
  7. Crop and size your image
  8. Choose a suitability rating for your avatar

You should now be ready to go. Your avatar image is now linked to your e-mail address through the gravatar system and will appear when you leave comments on gravatar enabled blogs and forums.

Give it a Go

If you’ve successfully managed to create a gravatar and are now itching to try it out, why not leave a comment on this post to see how it all works?

Posted on 06 September 2008Tagged: avatar, blog, comment, comments, forum, gravatar, hash, md5

Share this Page!

  • Tweet
  • RSSRSS Feed

Comments

  1. Marco commented

    08 Sep 08 at 3:03 pm

    Nicely written article, covering every aspect of Gravatar 🙂 .

    Keep it up!

    Reply
  2. Peter W commented

    25 Sep 08 at 7:51 am

    Richard

    Very useful – the sad thing was I went and did it!

    Reply
  3. Miss Ida commented

    05 May 09 at 12:03 am

    did it work?

    i hope it did. if no than i just wasted 3 minutes of my life.

    Reply
  4. Robbie commented

    27 Jun 09 at 6:59 pm

    Thanks for the help!

    Reply
  5. Elizabeth Cairns commented

    24 May 10 at 7:34 pm

    Fantastically helpful, even for a techie novice, thanks for the tips

    Reply
  6. Brandon Edick commented

    10 Jun 10 at 11:45 pm

    thanks for the great how to article

    Reply
  7. Matt commented

    05 Aug 10 at 7:52 pm

    thanks for the articles

    Reply
  8. yes commented

    14 Sep 10 at 4:21 pm

    hm, this seems interesting, I think ill give it a try

    Reply
  9. royce reed commented

    17 Sep 10 at 10:06 pm

    thank you. God on a Wheel that was easy.

    Reply
  10. Adam Haworth commented

    03 Oct 10 at 10:51 pm

    Really helpful thank you.

    Reply
  11. Ida commented

    24 Oct 10 at 4:47 pm

    Testing. Testing. 1….2….3…..

    Reply
    • Richard commented

      25 Oct 10 at 12:12 pm

      Receiving you loud and clear 🙂

      Reply
  12. Jazz Rules commented

    03 Nov 10 at 5:25 pm

    Ahhh a avatar for my blog comments! Cheers!

    Reply
  13. Carl commented

    09 Dec 10 at 6:56 pm

    did it work? well did it?

    Reply
  14. Kelly commented

    13 Dec 10 at 8:49 pm

    Yeah! This is very cool information!

    Reply
  15. Carl Evangelista commented

    19 Dec 10 at 12:54 pm

    Wow.. that is crazy how easy you made that. Most times it takes me hours to figure out new things. This was very easy thanks again!

    Reply
    • Richard commented

      19 Dec 10 at 5:41 pm

      You’re welcome. Glad it worked for you.

      Reply
  16. Jimmy Rooney commented

    21 Dec 10 at 11:07 pm

    Very helpful. Lets post this comment and see if it works.. Hmmm 🙂

    Reply
  17. Fred Tracy commented

    31 Dec 10 at 11:10 pm

    I was wondering how to do this. I just went to the site and picked an image, let’s see if it worked!

    Reply
  18. Ron commented

    02 Jan 11 at 6:20 pm

    Perfect – nice work. thanks!

    Reply
  19. Melinda commented

    13 Mar 11 at 8:20 pm

    Just testing. 🙂

    Reply
  20. Paula commented

    14 Mar 11 at 4:48 am

    Try again. Maybe I needed to wait some time. Think I did it right. Feel free to delete above mishaps.
    Thanks again. P

    Reply
    • Richard commented

      14 Mar 11 at 12:43 pm

      Hi Paula, I deleted your first two attempts. 🙂

      Reply
  21. Jimmy commented

    17 Mar 11 at 4:46 pm

    Awesome!! So glad this worked!!

    Reply
  22. Las Vegas Air Conditioning commented

    07 Apr 11 at 6:42 pm

    Very new to blogging & commenting, hope it’s not bad etiquette to put in a keyword as my name? (Did a quick search on blog etiquette, didn’t see anything that indicated it was bad or too spammy, but let me know.)

    So yes! Very helpful instructions, thank you very much. Noticed some people had pictures next to comments, googled it, landed here, and Voila! Super easy to do. Just wanted to say thank you!

    Reply
    • Richard commented

      10 Apr 11 at 1:33 pm

      Hi, Looks like you’ve got your Gravatar working now, glad my post helped.

      In answer to your question, having your keyword in your name can certainly be considered spammy and you may find some of your comments getting deleted on various sites because of it.

      Reply
  23. Stefano commented

    20 Apr 11 at 8:00 pm

    I already had a gravatar.com account … and didn’t know (because of a wordpress.com account I once had setup).
    Thanks to your post I started using it!

    Thanks!!
    Stefano

    Reply
    • Richard commented

      24 Apr 11 at 1:14 pm

      It certainly seems to work. Pleased that I could help.

      Reply
  24. Yilmaz commented

    22 Apr 11 at 4:58 pm

    See if there is my ugly face now next to my comment? 🙂

    Reply
    • Yilmaz commented

      22 Apr 11 at 5:00 pm

      Awesome, it worked!

      Thank you Richard.

      Love,
      Y

      Reply
      • Richard commented

        24 Apr 11 at 1:13 pm

        You’re welcome, glad it worked for you.

        Reply
  25. Bert commented

    06 Jun 11 at 5:51 pm

    Have no idea whether this is going to work or not as it doesn’t show up on some sites.

    Reply
  26. Jerry Hart commented

    01 Jul 11 at 9:28 am

    Thanks for the article, it covers every aspect of Gravatar.:)

    Reply
  27. tracey steinberg commented

    06 Jul 11 at 2:30 am

    great post! you made it seem very easy to get an avatar and it was. thanks for the tip 🙂

    Reply
    • Richard commented

      07 Jul 11 at 12:45 pm

      Glad you found it easy to follow, thanks.

      Reply
  28. zed commented

    24 Jul 11 at 1:33 am

    thanks for the tutorial but what I was looking for is how do people do that .. I mean .. like I can see on your blog .. some people use their pictures .. how can I do that ??? ..
    all I have is a leave a reply section .. name mail website !! ..
    I keep seeing that on blogs !! there is no registration page where I can create a profile and put my picture !! .. and there’s no login with your facebook or something ..

    So, How on earth can I do that ??

    Reply
    • Richard commented

      25 Jul 11 at 1:43 pm

      You need to go to the Gravatar website to create a profile with your picture that is linked to your e-mail address. Whenever you leave comments on a blog using the same e-mail address (if the blog is Gravatar enabled) your picture will automatically show up next to your comment.

      Reply
  29. Andrew Allen commented

    24 Jul 11 at 3:19 pm

    Testing out the functionality

    Reply
    • Richard commented

      25 Jul 11 at 1:37 pm

      Seems to be working fine for you, congratulations.

      Reply
  30. Terry Lynn Meyer commented

    29 Jul 11 at 8:02 am

    Thanks for your post. Exactly the information that I was looking for. I appreciate it.

    Reply
  31. james commented

    06 Aug 11 at 9:12 pm

    I am having trouble seeing how exacly you post a picture. Where is the button down here?

    Reply
    • Richard commented

      07 Aug 11 at 1:02 pm

      There is no button on this page to post your picture. You have to go to the Gravatar website first to create a profile with your picture that is linked to your e-mail address. Then, when you leave comments on a blog using your e-mail address (if the blog is Gravatar enabled) your picture will automatically show up next to your comment.

      Reply
  32. Marta commented

    11 Aug 11 at 12:34 am

    Very useful information. Thanks a lot.

    Reply
    • Richard commented

      11 Aug 11 at 12:06 pm

      You’re welcome and it looks like you’ve got it working.

      Reply
  33. Silver commented

    27 Aug 11 at 1:55 am

    Thanks so much! Been wondering how all the cool people did it 🙂

    Reply
    • Richard commented

      05 Sep 11 at 12:42 pm

      You’re most welcome, and glad to see you have it working.

      Reply
  34. peggy commented

    29 Sep 11 at 5:04 pm

    Ok, here goes! If it doesn’t work, I’m gonna try it again! I would like to know if previous comments I made with this email address will fill in with the new avatar. Do you know if it does? Thanks! Now I’m not a white figure on a gray background anymore…I hope…once I click on “submit comment”

    Reply
    • Richard commented

      29 Sep 11 at 5:16 pm

      It certainly seems to work and in answer to your question, yes, previous comments that you have left using the same e-mail address should now display your avatar (providing the website in question has Gravatars enabled).

      Reply
  35. Debi commented

    04 Oct 11 at 2:32 am

    Here is my first effort in trying out my new gravatar

    Reply
    • Richard commented

      04 Oct 11 at 12:06 pm

      …and it worked!

      Reply
  36. Ethan commented

    05 Oct 11 at 5:40 am

    Yup, just got my Gravatar. I hope it works !

    Reply
    • Richard commented

      05 Oct 11 at 4:54 pm

      It did 🙂

      Reply
  37. patrick commented

    22 Oct 11 at 8:59 pm

    i am testing to see if my avatar is working

    Reply
  38. Patricia commented

    03 Jan 12 at 12:17 am

    Not sure if I did this correctly ~ here goes

    🙂 🙂 🙂

    Reply
    • Richard Farrar commented

      04 Jan 12 at 2:08 pm

      You certainly did do it correctly 🙂

      Reply
  39. Michelle commented

    05 Jan 12 at 4:44 pm

    Thank you!! Hope this works – appreciate it.

    Reply
    • Richard Farrar commented

      05 Jan 12 at 4:50 pm

      You have success! Happy New Year!

      Reply
  40. Charles commented

    13 Jun 12 at 3:10 pm

    Thanks for posting this information. 4 years and still getting hits!

    Reply
    • Richard Farrar commented

      13 Jun 12 at 5:29 pm

      Thanks, I suppose people still find the article useful 🙂

      Reply
  41. Jennifer commented

    22 Jun 12 at 1:44 am

    Thanks for the info!

    Reply
    • Richard Farrar commented

      22 Jun 12 at 11:50 am

      You’re welcome and it seemed to help judging by your picture.

      Reply
  42. Nikki commented

    06 Jul 12 at 4:51 pm

    Howdy! How ya’ll doin’ on this fine Summer day?

    Reply
    • Richard Farrar commented

      06 Jul 12 at 5:52 pm

      It’s raining!

      Reply
  43. Mariann commented

    16 Jul 12 at 5:11 am

    Thanks!!!
    I hope this works, for some reason I had a very ugly default avatar. LOL

    Reply
    • Richard Farrar commented

      17 Jul 12 at 12:06 pm

      Seems to work fine and definitely not ugly 🙂

      Reply
  44. Kory commented

    29 Nov 12 at 1:41 am

    Thanks for the post.
    I still seem to be having a problem getting my photo to show up when I post on blogger blogs using my wordpress account. Any idea why this is?

    Reply
    • Richard Farrar commented

      29 Nov 12 at 6:14 pm

      Hi Kory,

      Looks like you have the basic Gravatar working as your photo is showing up in the comments here. Blogger is a Google product now, so I’m not sure if they use the Gravatar system to display photos of commenters. Maybe you need a Google+ account with an associated image for this to work?

      Richard

      Reply
  45. athena commented

    29 Jan 13 at 6:10 pm

    Very helpful, thank you

    Reply
    • Richard Farrar commented

      29 Jan 13 at 6:16 pm

      You’re most welcome, glad it helped.

      Reply
  46. athena commented

    29 Jan 13 at 6:26 pm

    Trying a different gravatar.

    Reply
  47. Lily commented

    19 Jul 13 at 5:57 pm

    Thanks for the info. I was trying to figure out why my photo wasn’t showing when leaving comments.

    Reply
    • Richard Farrar commented

      20 Jul 13 at 12:24 pm

      You’re welcome, it seems to be working for you now.

      Reply
  48. eyez commented

    02 Feb 14 at 10:27 pm

    let me see eheheeeheee

    Reply
    • Richard Farrar commented

      03 Feb 14 at 5:21 pm

      We can see you 🙂

      Reply
  49. jenny commented

    03 Jun 14 at 8:45 am

    Really a nice tutorial.

    Reply
    • Richard Farrar commented

      03 Jun 14 at 5:07 pm

      Thanks Jenny and thanks for the link to the handy utility.

      Reply
  50. T Angeles commented

    14 Feb 18 at 6:57 am

    Just another comment to test Gravatar. Thank you!

    Reply
    • Richard Farrar commented

      14 Feb 18 at 12:20 pm

      You’re welcome, your Gravatar seems to work fine.

      Reply
  51. Douglas R Pitts commented

    12 Jul 18 at 4:49 am

    Thank you. This was very helpful.

    Reply
    • Richard Farrar commented

      12 Jul 18 at 12:35 pm

      You’re most welcome.

      Reply
  52. Pure Art BJJ commented

    27 Nov 18 at 5:37 pm

    Really helpful, Thanks.

    Reply
    • Richard Farrar commented

      27 Nov 18 at 5:47 pm

      You’re most welcome.

      Reply
  53. Cristine commented

    07 Mar 19 at 2:22 am

    This has been, by far, the most intelligent and efficient article I found while searching for help on the web. Any technology is very intimidating to me. So, this year’s resolution is to change that. From all the sites I’ve visited, your article got me interested in learning even more. Thank you very much.

    Reply
    • Richard Farrar commented

      13 Mar 19 at 12:22 pm

      Thanks very much Christine, I’m so pleased you found my article helpful.

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

BBC Radio Interview on Podcasting

Listen to my interview on BBC radio about podcasting and how long a podcast should be:

https://www.richardfarrar.com/audio/BBC-interview.mp3

Topics

  • Blogging
  • Life
  • Podcasting
  • Technology
  • Web Technology

About Me

Richard Farrar

Hi, I'm Richard; an Electronic Engineer by trade, self confessed Geek, Blogger and Podcaster, although as often the case life has the habit of taking us on unplanned journeys... Read More ›

Popular Posts

  • Embedding Album Art in MP3 Files
  • How to Check if your Speakers are Wired Correctly
  • Song Capacity Calculator for MP3 Players
  • What is Joint Stereo?
  • What are ID3 Tags in MP3 Files?

Find Me Online

  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • RSS Feed

Copyright © 2023
All details subject to change without notice. E&OE. All rights reserved.