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If A Commenter Does Not Have A Gravatar

Let’s face it, not everyone who comments on your Gravatar-enabled blog has a Gravatar.

Instead, commenters lacking their Gravatar are assigned a boring default icon.

What if these commenters could have their own uniquely generated icon, that remained constant as long as their e-mail remained the same?

That’s where these WordPress plugins come into play:

  • Wavatars
  • WP_MonsterID
  • WP_Identicon

Each of these plugins will provide your Gravatarless readers with their own custom made avatar. Read on to learn how to use them…

Wavatars

This is the first Gravatar-replacement plugin is the Wavatars plugin. What this will do is assign a colorful face to those users without Gravatars. It’s based on an e-mail address, so as long as the user uses the same e-mail, they’ll have the same icon attached to it.

Wavatars

You can get the plugin at WordPress.org.

WP_MonsterID

MonsterID

Similar to the above plugin, except WP_MonsterID will generate monster-like characters for your Gravatarless users. I currently have them in action on the comments section of Theme Lab, so if you don’t have a Gravatar, you’re assigned a MonsterID. Another similarity with Wavatars, is that WP_MonsterID icons are based of the user’s e-mail address.

You can get the plugin here. After installing the plugin, make sure to select the Gravatar + MonsterID option under Gravatar Support to have MonsterID as your fallback to a Gravatar.

WP_Identicon

Identicon

By the same author as WP_MonsterID, WP_Identicon will generate a pretty pattern-based icon in replacement of a Gravatar. You may recognize these from Matt Mullenweg’s blog.

Conclusion

If you’re tired of the default Gravatar image, luckily there’s a few choices available to you to provide your users a unique (temporary) Gravatar replacement solution. If you’re a blog author, make sure you add Gravatar support to WordPress comments – if not already present in your theme. If you’d like to make your own Gravatar, I suggest you read this article and scroll to the “How Do I Make My Avatar/Gravatar?” section.

Comments   Leave a Reply

  1. Hi
    thank you for this great site.

  2. @Jordan: It appears you’re right. All of these plugins are included with 2.6. This post came at exceptionally bad timing!

  3. You could always wait till WordPress 2.6 and have these built in options.

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