A gravatar picture paints…

If you’re trying to create a brand for yourself on the internet then this tip could be extremely useful for you.

Chris Knight of Ezine Articles gave the hint and - at the same time - cleared up a bit of a mystery for me.

Have you ever noticed on blogs or social network websites that some comments have a small picture against them and others haven’t?

I was curious as to how these pictures appeared, Chris answered that question… these people have a gravatar!

Gravatar!

What the heck is that?

Well, an avatar is a small pictorial image, whether that’s your picture or a graphical logo designed to represent your business, that you can use on the web.

A gravatar is a globally recognised avatar.

It is intended to save you time by having just one single graphical image (the avatar), associated with your email address. It means you don’t have to upload your graphical image to, what can seem like a hundred and one, different websites!

You can set up a free account at gravatar.com and upload your image. It is extremely easy to do and the point I really liked is you don’t have to worry about the picture content; for example it could be a group picture you want to use because it has a particularly good image of you. You simply upload the whole photo image and then trim the photo to the area you want to have displayed.

Whenever you add a comment that includes an avatar in the design (most WordPress blog designs do) your picture automatically appears.

Chris suggested trying it out - and I did.

Why not have a go - pop over to www.gravatar.com (if you use this link it opens up in a new browser window), set up your account and pop back to add a comment here. It will be nice to put ‘faces to names’ and to get to know you better.

Have fun.

~ Carol Bentley