How to set up a Gravatar account and image

Have you ever heard of Gravatar before? Wondering what on Earth it is?!

Gravatar is a service that provides avatar images that are associated with your email address. The avatar you create with Gravatar is also known as a Gravatar.

You might have seen that on some websites went you leave a comment an image appears beside your name like this:

This image is a Gravatar image. When you provide your email when commenting on a website the system will pull through the image associated with that particular email address.

Also, if your website or blog runs on WordPress, the profile picture for your account is the Gravatar image associated with the email address that you used to set up your WordPress site with:

In order to be able to customise these images, you need to set up a Gravatar account.

In this post, I’m going to show you how to set up your own Gravatar account and image. 

1 | Visit the Gravatar website

Firstly, head over to the Gravatar website. On the homepage, you should see a button that says Create Your Own Gravatar. Click on this.

2 | Log in or create a WordPress.com account

Next, you will be taken to a page where you will need to login to your WordPress.com account.

If you don’t have a WordPress.com account you will need to create one. They’re completely free to set up and it doesn’t matter if your website runs on a different platform such as the self-hosted version of WordPress, Blogger, Squarespace, etc.

If your website does run on the self-hosted version of WordPress, setting up a WordPress.com account won’t have an impact on your existing website. It’s also pretty handy to WordPress.com account because it is required if you use plugins like Akismet and Jetpack.

Once you’ve logged in to your WordPress.com (or created one) you will be asked for permission to log into Gravatar using this account. Click Approve to continue.

You should then be taken to the Manage Gravatars page.

3 | Upload your image

On the Manage Gravatars page, click Add one by clicking here! or Add a new image.

Clicking either of these links will open a standard image uploader when you can upload the image you wish to use as your avatar.

4 | Crop your image

After your image has been uploaded, you will be asked to crop your image to the right size and dimensions (I always crop out my massive forehead!). On the right-hand side, you will be able to preview what your avatar will look like.

Then when you’ve finished cropping your image, click Crop Image.

5 | Choose a rating for your image

Next, you will be asked to choose a rating for your image. Unless your image contains anything rude, offensive, pornographic or violent (which it hopefully won’t) then choose the G rating. Then click Set Rating.

And that’s it. If all has been successful you should see a page that looks like this:

If you want to change your image at any point you can just log in to Gravatar using your WordPress.com credentials, and then upload your new image using the same process.

To see your image when you leave a comment on a website, make sure you use the same email address that you used to set up your WordPress.com account with!

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