Subscribe
Grab a Gravatar!
February 14, 2007 | 5,070 views | Trackback | |
Update (17 October, 2007): Techcrunch has just reported that "Gravatar" has been acquired by "Automattic", the company behind Wordpress.com. This effectively opens up ALL Gravatar features (including the premium ones) to the public for free and means that all future releases of Wordpress will have the Gravatar feature built in.
My "switched on" readers and hopefully commentors out there will have noticed I added another new little feature to my Blog last night - Gravatars!
The purpose of this post is to explain what Gravatars are, why they are a cool thing to get for yourself, and with the Gravatar 2.0 website being launched tomorrow, I'll even walk you through the new registration process step by step.
So what are Gravatars? Most of us are "visual" beings - that is, we tend to excel in forms of communication and understanding when we have visual cues to prompt and guide us. It's no wonder then that when we visit or use online communications tools and services like MSN Messenger, Blogs or even simple forums and bulletin boards, our experience is enhanced by the existence of those little pictures or icons of people's faces or "otherwise", commonly known as "avatars".
AVATAR
av·a·tar (ăv'ə-tär') pronunciation n.An avatar is an Internet user's representation of himself or herself, whether in the form of a three-dimensional model used in computer games, or a two-dimensional icon used on Internet forums and other communities.
I'm heading somewhere with this I promise!
Taking the whole "Avatar" concept one step further, some clever cookie out there named Tom recognised that it might be cool to have a central web-based database from where you could manage one or more personal avatars, and came up with the online tool that is now known as "Gravatar 2.0″ or "Globally Recognised Avatars".
The concept is simple. When you get yourself a Gravatar account, all you are basically doing is associating an avatar or icon with an email address. Once signed up, your Gravatar icon will pop up every time you leave a message or comment on any Blog out there that is "Gravatar enabled".
If you browse through the comments section on each of my posts in the past you will notice the odd smiley face (other than my own) will pop up. These faces belong to people that have there own Gravatar account. Those of you who don't have an account will, for the time being have a nice shadowy figure representing you and your comments.
I'd rather you share your beautiful faces with the rest of my readers, so let's now look at how you go about getting your own account.
1. Visit the Gravatar Website
Rock along to the brand new Gravatar v2.0 website and head to the sign-up page at http://site.gravatar.com/signup
2. Register Your Email Address
Simply enter in your email address in the field provided and hit "Signup". A verification email will be sent to your inbox enabling you to activate your account by clicking on the link provided.
3. Set a Password For Your Account
Upon clicking the link in the email you receive, you will be taken back to the Gravatar site where you will be prompted to set a password for your account.
4. Create Your Default Gravatar
The next thing to do is upload and create your very own Gravatar. Find yourself a great representative image on either the web or your own PC (it doesn't matter how big it is). Click on the "add a new one" link and then make the choice on where you are going to import your image from. Either browse to the file on your computer or provide the URL (depending on the option you chose) and hit "Next".
5. Crop Your Image
Here's the neat part. Manipulate the provided slider to resize your image and drag the lit square to the portion of the image you want to use for your Gravatar. When you are done, hit the "Crop" button.
6. Select Your Image Rating
This bit's pretty self explanatory. Simply read the rating blurbs and select the one that is right for you.
7. Apply Your New Image To Your Email Address
Now the final step - click on your new Gravatar and select "Confirm" when prompted to finish off the job!
You can add more email addresses and more icons and arrange them in any combination you want. Just follow the prompts - it's all dead easy.
To test out whether your Gravatar creation has been successful or not, just leave me a comment below or browse back through the comment sections of previous entries of mine that you have commented on.
And that's it! Easy! Your new Gravatar will not only pop up on my Blog when you leave me comments, but it will also appear on all the other Blogs you stumble upon that have also added this feature!
Let me know how you go!
Filed Under web & tech | Trackback | |
![[r:m] design and photography](http://www.masey.com.au/blog/wp-content/themes/revolution-magazine/images/rm.gif)
Hey Masey
Just tried doing this this morning and got as far as saving my image, but then I get stuck trying to select my gravator. I get a 'Runtime Error as occured' error message every time I trry and select my image. I get this a lot on my crappy Colombo computer but I can usually clear it but cancelling and refreshing which isn't happening on this site. Perhaps the best thing to check again on my home computer?
Cheers, other than that it was really easy
Karen
Hmm... that's odd as I have successfully played around with mine plenty for the past few days...
Let me know again tomorrow if you have any troubles... x
Like I said, I think it may be something to do with my Sri Lankan computer and internet firewalls over here...It also has no cd writer, no dvd reader, no usb plug that actually works an no graphics program except publisher....I miss my sony vaio so much
If you email me your login details hun I'll get it fixed for you.
And attach any photo you want to use as well just in case I need it.
I had the same trouble as Karen selecting my gravatar with 'script error' briefly appearing each time I clicked on the image in Maxthon & IE6. Eventually I tried it with Firefox and it worked first time.
So far my gravatar hasn't shown up outside the gravatar website though.
I can understand that maybe the new Gravatar 2.0 website still has a few bugs to iron out as the demand on its server right now must be pretty enormous, but if you have successfully set up an account there's no reason why it shouldn't be pulling your icon into my site at least.
It's working for other people already...
All done Masey, tried again this morning and it worked without script errors. Hopefully you'll be seeing my ugly mug on your screens very soon
And what do you know... there you are cutie! Sa-weet!
Hi, I have some problems implementing my own gravatar. In the control-panel at gravatar.com, my email adress has correctly signed a gravatar on it. But when I post something, for example here, the blue G is appearing, instead of my own Gravatar. What am I doing wrong?
Rogier... it's funny you say that cause I have been scratching my head over the same problem for a while now. I know for a fact that there's a few of my commenters that have signed up, set up their accounts to the letter and still their Gravatar doesn't show.
If it makes you feel any better, I just checked out the Gravatar 2.0 Blog and there's a LOT of disgruntled people on there with the same problem. My guess is that they didn't account for the extreme volume of sign-up traffic and the system has just ceased up. Perhaps simply a little patience is required here...
Yeah, I think I have to wait and see what happens. Thanks for your reply! I was wondering, do you have a links/blogroll section so we can share eachothers' links in order to get a higher pagerank?
Actually I have no real need to increase my pagerank and therefore I don't do the "blogroll" thing other than featuring some of my close friends... sorry...
Hi,
I just created my site recently from WordPress and hence I attempted to implement the gravatar plugin into my site. My email doesn't seem to work on there as I keep getting the default gravatar I set up on the FTP server.
Seeing the comments, I wouldn't be surprised if it won't work for me, but you did offer to let us use this entry for "testing" our gravatars.
It probably is the issue of the servers getting loaded, as I remember a 503 a while ago.
Excellent review post!
Congrats on getting the whole thing working.
So far, while the site thinks I've assigned a gravatar, I can't get anything - not even the gravatar blog - to recognize it; all I get is the blue-and-white G icon. Invariably, the 'crop' stage fails (no control to crop with, no image to crop), but even uploading a pre-sized image, I can see it in the page where I select a gravatar to assign to my address, but it never propagages - and I can't find any way of contacting the developer to figure out what's going on. There has been no provably valid response on the blog to the problem, and the problem persists. I'd be very interested in knowing how to make this work, and keep it working.
Am I Gravatarred??
The whole Gravatar thing seems to be a pain in the neck. Mine has never stopped working, but most of my friends have never been able to set theirs up.
Ooooh, mine's working now... but it looks strange. Kinda blurry. I like it.
It seems like everyone's are starting to pop up now. I guess they found the gremlins...
It makes people who don't have a gravatar look like losers. He he. Let's all point & laugh at the losers! Hehehehe...
good to see you have returned to loser status, ha,ha...loser, welcome back.
i take it back....moo seems to have it working now.
And where be yours Gregor?
someone has to be a loser. i do it so well.
Is it working yet?