How to set up a Gravatar

Your first question may be ‘what is a gravatar’?! A gravatar is the small square image that ‘follows people around’ on the web! If you look on our home page there is a comments widget in the middle column and you will see that some of the people that have left comments on our website have a photo showing. If you have a gravatar set up and connected to the email address that you are using to comment on a site, blog or forum, then your photo (or the image that you have set up) shows automatically.

Why use a Gravatar?

Gravatars can help to make your website more ‘inviting’ and sticky for your readers by giving a more ‘personalised’ experience, with ‘real’ people involved, and they can also help you to more quickly build relationships externally when you comment on other people’s blogs and forums, for similar reasons. People can see you and it can help them to feel like they know you better than if you are just an ‘anonymous’ commenter. You may also become more recognised if you are a prolific commenter and/or are particularly active in social networks that use the same image for you.