Why Is My Photo Not In The Comments?

One of the questions I get asked quite a bit by folks who leave comments at Life As A Human is:

Why do I not have a photo next to my comments but others do?

Here is an example comment stream. Eric left a comment. I replied. I have an image. He does not.

The reason Eric does not have a picture is because he does not have a Gravatar! What is a gravatar you ask?

Gravatar (an abbreviation for globally recognized avatar) is a service for providing globally unique avatars which was created by Tom Preston-Werner. ~ wikipedia

The good news is, getting a gravatar is very easy. Here’s how:

Surf to Gravatar.

Sign up for an account OR if you have a wordpress.com account (do not confuse that with your self hosted wordpress account) , you can use that to sign in.

Once you have signed in, you can upload an image and associate it with your e-mail address or multiple e-mail addresses. Here is what that screen looks like.

Once you have done this, within 2 to 3 hours, your image will begin to appear on comments that you have entered using that e-mail address. Even if you entered a comment last year here, at Life As A Human, or pretty much any other site, your photo will appear on those old comments. If you get tired of your image, just go back to your Gravatar account and upload a new image. Wait a few hours and all of your comments will have your new Gravatar.

Pretty cool eh! So … now the big decision … should I switch my Gravatar to this pic?