Friday, January 18, 2013
WordPress – Gravatars
Gravatars are Globally Recognized Avatars. An avatar or gravatar is an icon, or representation, of a user in a shared virtual reality, such as a forum, chat, website, or any other form of online community in which the user(s) wish to have something to distinguish themselves from other users. Created by Tom Werner, gravatars make it possible for a person to have one avatar across the entire web. Avatars are usually an 80px by 80px image that the user will create themselves.
A Gravatar is essentially the same thing, but they are all hosted on a single server and are called up by encrypting the users’ email address via the MD5 algorithm. So instead of having one avatar on one forum you visit, and another at a blog you visit, you could have the same avatar at both.
Gravatars can easily be used within WordPress with the Gravatar WordPress Plugin or added manually in the index.php,comments.php and comments-popup.phptemplate files.
Source: http://socialmediarodeo.com/gunslingers/what-are-wordpress-gravatars
