Wordpress Plugin: Official Gravatar Plugin

Posted by Kyle Eslick on February 22nd, 2007 | Category and Tags

If you’ve been following this site for a bit, you know that I’m a big fan of Gravatar, which is a Globally Recognized Avatar. Simply upload a picture that you want to use to represent yourself online.

If you run a Wordpress blog, a great tool for building communities is the Gravatar plugin. There are actually 3-4 of them out there, but they all seem to have quit working while Gravatar was temporarily down for a few months. Now that its back up and running, you can once again access the official Gravatar plugin created by Tom Werner, the creater of Gravatar. In Tom’s most recent blog post, he mentions they are working on a new version of this popular plugin, which will hopefully have increased functionality. The other ones created by third parties don’t seem to work yet.

If you have an existing Gravatar account, when you check out the comments on this blog, you should see a picture next to your comment. This will help others find recognize comments from individual users. To get a Gravatar, simply go to their site, enter your E-mail address, then upload your picture. It couldn’t be any easier!

Once you’ve got your Gravatar account created, comment below to see it in action!!

Update: In reviewing the blog posts notes, it can take a few hours to show up, and some people have stated their Gravatar still isn’t working properly. I’m waiting to hear back from Tom Werner regarding this.

[Download the Wordpress Gravatar plugin (Wordpress 1.2 or later required)]

Update:  Due to Gravatar’s problems, I have since upgraded to the MyAvatars plugin on this site.  If you want your avatar to show up, you will need to sign up for a MyBlogLog account and upload your picture there.   Thanks!

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    1. Comment by Kevin on February 22nd, 2007:

      Did you consider the MyAvatars plugin as an alternative? It does the same thing, but with MyBlogLog avatars. And if the user isn’t an MBL member, you can set it to check for a Gravatar as well.

    2. Comment by Kevin on February 22nd, 2007:

      Something strange is happening with your “subscribe to comments” plugin. After commenting on this post, I received a new comment notification for a comment on your “Best Firefox Plugins” post (which I didn’t comment on).

      I tried to click on “manage your subcriptions”, but after entering my email I get a PHP error message (Fatal error: Call to undefined function is_do_not_mail() in /home/admin/public_html/wp-subscription-manager.php on line 50).

      No big deal, just thought you’d want to know.

    3. Comment by Cloporto on February 22nd, 2007:

      Hi, I m just trying this service to know if it s working

    4. Comment by Kyle Eslick on February 22nd, 2007:

      Kevin -

      Thanks for the heads up. I don’t have access to my FTP server at the moment, but will look it over tonight to make sure everything is working correctly.

      I have given it some consideration, but haven’t taken the time to test it out yet as its still in a very early version. With the increased popularity of MyBlogLog, I think that it will definitely be a popular plugin over time if it works well.

      Cloporto - If you just registered for Gravatar, it might take a few hours for your Gravatar to go live. I would recommend checking back after 24 hours. :)

    5. Comment by Kip on February 22nd, 2007:

      Hey Kyle. I’m the current author/owner of the Gravatars2 WordPress plugin. The Gravatar.com 2.0 service is still using the same syntax to retrieve images, so the Gravatars2 WP plugin still works. The biggest benefit of this plugin is caching — even if (when) gravatar.com goes down or becomes very slow due to load, you can still quickly serve up the gravatar images from your cache. As people are discovering, the new gravatar.com service is still a bit unstable right now — hopefully Tom gets that fixed soon.

    6. Comment by Kyle Eslick on February 22nd, 2007:

      Kip,

      Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment!

      I had that extension installed, but after reviewing your site, it looks like I didn’t finish getting it set up correctly to see if it worked. I will be testing it out sometime this week.

      Have you considered integrating MyBlogLog into the plugin? With its popularity, that would be really neat, similar to the MyAvatars one posted above in the comments.

      Thanks for reading!

    7. Comment by Garry Conn on February 25th, 2007:

      I am not sure why, but my gravatar isn’t working yet…

    8. Comment by Leopold on February 25th, 2007:

      Tom Werner has been MIA since he “launched” the much touted Gravatar 2.0 on February 15. Read the blog comments and you’ll see the problems that exist with 2.0, and the fact that Werner is nowhere to be seen.

      It’s amazing how irresponsible this guy is. He launches the “new” service, problems immediately arise, and he just runs away from it. Why Werner doesn’t just give this project up to someone capable of managing it is beyond me.

    9. Comment by Kyle Eslick on February 25th, 2007:

      Leopold,

      Since writing this post, I’ve started to feel similar to you regarding Gravatar. I’ve sent two E-mails that went without a response and left a few comments. I didn’t see anyone else’s comments get responses either.

      I really believe in the idea of Gravatar, so I’ve done my best to actively promote it, but I’ve lost a lot of respect for Tom Werner and the way he has handled this issue.

      Hopefully the fix gets in place soon. MyBlogLog is missing out on a tremendous opportunity here, but they’ve had some of their own problems lately. ;)
      Thanks for the post!

    10. Comment by Garry Conn on February 25th, 2007:

      Hmm… so why do some work and mine doesn’t?

      And yes… MyBlogLog could really jump all over this. And yes, they have their issues as well… But, at least they have a public blog, and at least Eric and Rafer is communicating to us and telling everyone that they are aware of the problems and here is what they are doing to correct them.

      I think the Gravatar program is really cool… I would like to see it up and running, and maybe if Tom and his staff can’t run it, they can sell it to someone who can??? I guess time will only tell, and in the mean time, Kyle it looks like your traffic is up… and I would hate to drive traffic away once my picture appears! LOL!!

    11. Comment by Kyle Eslick on February 25th, 2007:

      Garry,

      The reason some work (and the reason I thought everything was fine) is because those that had a Gravatar prior to their temporary shutdown half a year ago have a working Gravatar. Its the people that have signed up since they made the switch that are having the problems, through no fault of their own.

      MyBlogLog is working to correct their problems. Hopefully the resources they now have access to via Yahoo will help out with that.

      The concept of Gravatar is great. The execution hasn’t been since 2.0 came around, which is the problem. Being available to your customers is a key function to today’s business, and Tom Werner or anyone representing Gravatar has not been available to users.

      And thanks for noticing!. Traffic has been up the past two weeks! (about 1,200 hits and 2,500 views a day on average)

    12. Comment by Leopold on February 26th, 2007:

      What I find bizarre about this whole thing is Werner’s complete absence since the 15th when he launched 2.0. There was all this anticipation and excitement prior to the launch, Werner kept promising how great this would be, how much improved 2.0 would be over the previous version, and after nearly four months of waiting, he flips on the switch (as someone else put it) and then disappears. I’ve never seen anything like it. Talk about weird…

    13. Comment by Garry Conn on February 26th, 2007:

      I don’t know… maybe someone should digg this article… it seems to be drawing in a lot of Gravatar Rants! LOL!!! Might make front page! :)

    14. Comment by Jason on February 28th, 2007:

      Just want to see if my gravatar is working yet?

    15. Comment by Gconn77 on February 28th, 2007:

      Kyle,

      I was catching up on JohnTP’s site today and check out his latest post… the MyBlogLog plug in is so much better than Gravatar… I would look into this!

      Here is the link:

      http://www.johntp.com/2007/03/01/wordpress-plugin-myavatars/

      Talk to you soon,
      Garry

    16. Comment by Serena on April 14th, 2007:

      Test ;)

    17. Comment by Serena on April 14th, 2007:

      This one usually works. So sorry to test on your blog!

    18. Comment by Kyle Eslick on April 15th, 2007:

      Serena,

      This post was a few months old. Along with most of the other blogs around the blogosphere, I have since switched to MyBlogLog avatars (which most people seem to prefer). Simply visit MyBlogLog and sign up for an account and load your avatar there!

    19. Comment by therasan on April 18th, 2007:

      Just checking if it works.
      Just cant fix it on my site…

    20. Comment by Kyle Eslick on April 18th, 2007:

      Therasan,

      I have upgraded this page to the MyAvatars plugin (replacing the Gravatar plugin) since this post was published.

      You can now view your picture you add to your MyBlogLog account.

    21. Comment by Geeko on June 19th, 2007:

      working or not?

    22. Comment by Kyle Eslick on June 19th, 2007:

      Geeko - This post was done back when I was using the Gravatar plugin. I have since upgraded to the MyAvatars plugin.

      If you look in the updated section of the post, you can see additional information.

    23. Comment by Melanie West on June 23rd, 2007:

      I am looking for answers to why my gravatar is not working so I landed in this post. Let’s see if this is working here…

    24. Comment by Norda on September 10th, 2007:

      The same that the comment abow mine. I changed my gravatar a week ago, deleted the old, and the old is still being showed.

    25. Comment by James Spratt on September 28th, 2007:

      Trying to get gravatar working on my site want to see whether my gravatar would work here…

    26. Comment by Kyle Eslick on September 28th, 2007:

      I’m currently using the MyAvatars plugin, but if you don’t have a MyBlogLog avatar, then it will use your Gravatar icon automatically.

      It looks like each of you have an avatar showing up!

    27. Comment by Hoodgrown_Magazine on October 25th, 2007:

      just testing

    28. Comment by s on December 25th, 2007:

      just trying to resolve a problem with my gravatar.
      hope it shows here… lol thnx for the testing ground (i can already see it in the preview bellow, but am going to hit submit anyhow)

      what i am doing is trying to add it outside the comments, for the author info next to each post… anyone has an idea if this CAN be done at all?

      thank you and have fun

    29. Comment by s on December 25th, 2007:

      i am using this at the moment


      $user_info = get_userdata(999);
      $usrE = $user_info->user_email;

      instead i would like this

      $user_info = get_userdata(the_author_ID());
      $usrE = $user_info->user_email;

      is there a way to get the_author_ID to give the value instead of printing it out?? easy. don’t want to go change the core files and add a new function…

      anyhow… then i simply display the gravatar with

      <img src="http://www.gravatar.com/avatar.php?gravatar_id=<?php echo md5($usrE) ?>" alt="" />

    30. Comment by s on December 25th, 2007:

      lol solved it with

      get_the_author_id()
      in the author_template.php file

      sorry for the tripple post but it may add value to this blog for others figuring this out maybe :P

    31. Comment by heathenx on January 10th, 2008:

      just testing my gravatar. sorry. having a hard time setting mine up.

    32. Comment by Michelle Sullivan on April 23rd, 2008:

      Also testing my Gravatar :)

    33. Comment by Justin on April 23rd, 2008:

      I’m trying to figure out how to implement the code in my theme.

    34. Comment by Masey on April 29th, 2008:

      Thanks for the link - much appreciated! ;)

    35. Comment by steupz on May 6th, 2008:

      can’t get my gravatars to show at all using wp 2.5

    36. Comment by Jai on May 23rd, 2008:

      Me too testing :-)

    37. Comment by pablo on May 27th, 2008:

      thanks !!

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