If you’ve been with WordPress awhile, you’ll probably remember back in October of 2007 when Automattic purchased Gravatar.   The concept behind Gravatar had always been an incredible idea, but it had always lacked the time and resources needed to make it work.  Now that Automattic acquired Gravatar, it was pretty obvious that the service would be resurrected and would be a great fit for the WordPress platform.

Earlier this year when WordPress 2.5 came out, a shift was made in the WordPress community from the widely popular MyAvatars plugin (which uses MyBlogLog avatars) to Gravatars.   In addition to being built into WordPress.com blogs, we were also given the ability to build Gravatars into your WordPress.org blog.  But, did you know that WordPress.org blog owners can now also create your own custom default Gravatar image?

Over at Pro Blog Design, Michael has written a great tutorial explaining exactly how to add your own default Gravatar image, as well as provide some tips on how to make a good Gravatar default image.

In order to add the image you’ve made, you just need to take your Gravatar code and add the image URL right after the comma:

Before

<?php if(function_exists(’get_avatar’)){ echo get_avatar($comment, 50 );} ?>

After

<?php if(function_exists(’get_avatar’)){ echo get_avatar($comment, 50, 'http://www.wphacks.com/wp-content/themes/HackWordPressPro/images/nophoto.gif');} ?>

Great tip Michael!  You’ll want to click over to see Michael’s tips on creating a custom “No Gravatar” logo for your website.

There are a variety of things a blog author can do to improve comment recognition on their blog, ranging from comment author styling to adding additional information to your comments.   Comment styling can go a long way to help single out the authors comments, but what about your top commentators?  If you get a lot of comments on your blog, it is probably fairly common for commentators to get involved in a discussion that doesn’t involve one of the authors.  

This is where comment avatars are truly useful, as they allow readers to associate pictures with the comments themselves.   When reading type, its different then seeing people talk or hearing their voices.  Typing is unique, therefore providing a visual cue such as an avatar allows readers to easily follow who is saying what and see who is talking back and forth. 

For Wordpress users, thanks to the great WordPress plugin community we have, there are a large variety of ways to add personal avatars to your blogs comments.  The benefits to doing this are numerous, but in my opinion the most important benefit is the personal branding.  This is why I usually recommend blogger’s use a picture of their site’s logo, favicon, or something memorable instead of a personal picture as their avatar.  This helps people to associate your avatar with you as a person and as a blogger.

Currently, there are 3 different types of avatars that are popular.   The most popular plugin currently is the MyAvatars plugin. This plugin looks at the commentators e-mail address and matches it up with their MyBlogLog profile. It then places their MyBlogLog avatar next to their comment, allowing users to easily indentify the comments with the person writing them. The reason I prefer to use this plugin on most of my blogs is because it seems to cause the fewest problems with site load time and also seems to get the fewest number of blank avatars. If for some reason you don’t like MyAvatars, their are two other good choices.

The first alternative option is Favatars, which is a favicon plugin that will look at the URL used in your comment and add the favicon from that site next to your comments. This is nice, but there are many sites that don’t have a custom favicon.   Hack WordPress uses Favatars only because there wasn’t enough room to include an avatar next to the comments on this blog.   In the future I plan to redo the comments section, so I expect to switch to MyAvatars once this is done. 

Your second alternative option is the Gravatar plugin, which works just like MyAvatars, except it uses your Globally Recognized Avatar (Gravatar).  Unfortunately, very few people actually have a Gravatar it seems due to some site performance issues, so that is why I list this as the third best option.  Hopefully this will change now that Automattic owns Gravatar.  A quick Google search will also show a few other versions of Gravatar plugins available if you like the idea of displaying gravatars on your site. 

Overall, the type of plugin you use doesn’t matter, but I believe it is important to display some sort of avatar next to your blog’s comments.   MyBlogLog seems to provide the fewest blank avatars, so that is why most people prefer it over the other two.