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Using Your Picture as Avatar

scotty on 13/02/2007 - 15:34

Just announced: Gravatar 2 has been released as public beta.

Gravatar was created by Tom Werner back in 2004 to provide a "Globally Recognised Avatar" from your email address, so that the same avatar image can be shown on blogs and content management systems that use Gravatar. It has grown in huge popularity over the last two years, and you will probably see it implemented on every other blogs you visit.

However because of its popularity, the system was always under heavy load which sometimes make blog sites using it almost unusable. The problem worsen in late 2006 — to a point that Tom has to close the registration system to prevent more signups, while he was working on the new revamped version.

Gravatar 2 was announced last month when Tom re-opened the website, however the registration was still closed. The fans were waiting, and a few have defected to other systems. But finally, the secret has been revealed today, and the Gravatar 2 beta has been released to everyone. You can now go there and sign up a gravatar, to have your picture displayed on web sites that use it.

Hmm. Not really a bargain. And what does it have anything to do with OzBargain?

OzBargain has been using Gravatar to power the avatar of each user right from the beginning. That is the picture you see right next to your name when you submit a new bargain, or a slightly larger picture next to the comments youu post. Currently, you will probably see a picture of a question mark there — that's probably because you don't have a gravatar. Sign up (using the same email address you used here), upload your picture and you should be able to see your own unique avatar here within 12 hours.

Now, I am pretty sick of seeing my own picture there on the front page. Go, get a gravatar and come back to post some great deals :)


  •  
    noneother on 13/02/2007 - 16:50

    Yes boss! :)

  •  
    moo on 23/05/2007 - 19:20

    Uploaded a new image a few days ago @ Gravatar. Checked the e-mail to make sure it was the same as the one used here. Still hasn't appeared yet :(

  •  
    scotty on 23/05/2007 - 21:10

    Hmm. I use a caching system here for gravatar for up to 12 hours. I have to manually flush the cache and now gravatar is here :)

    I have to say that I am not all that excited about the gravatar service, except it is currently the easiest way to get a universal personal avatar onto a website (from developers' perspective). :(

  •  
    moo on 24/05/2007 - 00:20

    Unless you just have a variable where a user can just enter the URL to their avatar? Which can be uploaded to their personal webspace or anywhere else on the web.

    Doesn't matter either way, as mine is showing now ;)

    Thanks Scotty.

  •  
    scotty on 24/05/2007 - 01:17

    Good thing about gravatar is that they do all the rating for me so I can say "I only want to serve all gravatars rated G" and keep this site family friendly :)

    •  
      HueyData on 02/03/2008 - 09:40

      You'd be hard-pressed to fit anything recognisably X-rated in a 38×38 image ;)

      Edit: Giving it a try now (G-rated that is), will see how it comes through after the cache clears.

      •  
        HueyData on 04/03/2008 - 20:33

        Hmmm, I can still only see the placeholder, even though everything looks fine in my Gravatar account page.

        •  
          scotty on 04/03/2008 - 22:04

          I'll investigate. It kept on pulling the default Gravatar placeholder…

          •  
            POWERevolution on 04/03/2008 - 22:39

            Yeah, check it Scotty. I had change my to Port Power few months ago & it's still North Melb on this site.

          •  
            scotty on 04/03/2008 - 23:30

            HueyData — I checked and it is indeed pulling down only the placeholder image. It could be a Gravatar issue.

            Skippy — does your new avatar shows up in other blogs that employs gravatar? I can't seem to be able to pull down your new avatar. Did you use the right email address?

            •  
              POWERevolution on 05/03/2008 - 03:01

              I don't use other blogs so dont know but it show up in Gravatar & same email as I registered here.
              Here's the pic from my Gravatar

              •  
                scotty on 05/03/2008 - 08:41

                Skippy — well it somehow fixed itself… I also have to to manually delete the old cache and it is all working now.

            •  
              HueyData on 05/03/2008 - 06:41

              Thanks for looking into that, scotty. Hopefully it will correct itself in time.

              •  
                scotty on 13/03/2008 - 09:27

                @HD — looks like Gravatar has just fixed itself this morning…

                •  
                  HueyData on 13/03/2008 - 20:58

                  Ha ha, superb. Thanks for your help, scotty :)

  •  
    TeAnne on 28/12/2007 - 16:32

    Hi everyone, another newbie :)
    Thanks Scott for your help with the email thingy.

    I've just uploaded my gravatar, (what a neat name)

    I hope everyone has a safe and Happy New Year.

    Cheers
    TeAnne

    Great bargains at ArtWorks by TeAnne

  •  
    ofey on 20/03/2008 - 16:18

    Let's try this, Gravatar account done. Am I going to get an avatar here then? At the time of posting this, no… BOO

    •  
      HueyData on 20/03/2008 - 17:25

      As scotty previously commented:

      I use a caching system here for gravatar for up to 12 hours.

      Not to mention Gravatar could still be having problems as seen throughout the beginning of this month.

    •  
      scotty on 20/03/2008 - 18:33

      I have actually switched to serving from Gravatar's CDN directly instead of using my own caching system, so what you see is what Gravatar gives you. Well, sometimes you just have to be a bit patient — I won't tell you how long it took HueyData's to come through! :)

      •  
        HueyData on 22/03/2008 - 13:55

        I presume caching was to mitigate against Gravatar's unreliability in the first place :)

        Good luck ofey and don't forget to rate your gravatar G.

        •  
          ofey on 31/03/2008 - 07:29

          Still waiting for it to appear… .

          •  
            scotty on 31/03/2008 - 08:58

            You sure you are using exactly the same email address on Gravatar as well as OzBargain?

  •  
    Crownie on 23/04/2008 - 07:33

    It works like a treat scotty.

    The only problem is I'm not 100% happy with my avatar.
    Since they have to be s small, I would have thought the quality of the pic would be good. Mine is quite poor.

    Anyone care to help me make a better Crown logo?

  •  
    foundit on 22/07/2008 - 11:08

    Finally got my gravatar working :)

    Did a few things. Dropped a picture into My Pictures folders. Then had to drop the resolution to 176x144 before Gravatar would accept it. But once I did that I could then work on it inside Gravatar. :) :) :)

    •  
      foundit on 22/07/2008 - 11:10

      My Gravatar is showing up when I click my account in Ozbargain, though not when I post a reply on a forum or bargain. I think there's a cache or something … I remember reading about that a while ago. So maybe in a couple of days my Gravatar will start working :)

      •  
        scotty on 22/07/2008 - 12:24

        Actually we are now serving avatar from Gravatar.com directly and we don't cache it ourselves when Automattic bought them out last year. I think there's some cache issue on their end because I actually have different gravatar depending on the size.

        I know Automattic stores some data at Amazon S3 and they have a proxy in front of it. Amazon S3 has been flaky lately (which you can read about it when you google around). It's now back online so I think the avatar-inconsistency might be only temporary.

  •  
    BarginHunter on 23/09/2009 - 05:21

    Hi sorry if this is the wrong place for this but i uploaded a pic to gravatar.com and my avatar here still hasn't changed.

    The only difference between the email address here and there is here the first letter is capital whereas there it isn't, could that be the problem?

    Thanks In Advance.

    •  
      scotty on 23/09/2009 - 12:22

      Yes the email addresses are case sensitive, and Gravatar uses a one way hash to generate the key to put to the image you have uploaded. A single character makes big differences…

      •  
        BarginHunter on 23/09/2009 - 13:15

        I realized that after reading the faq on the Gravatar site.

        The problem is when i try to change the capital first letter of my email address here the system automatically reverts it back to capital.

        Sorry for not mentioning it in my earlier post.

  •  
    BarginHunter on 24/09/2009 - 23:46

    bump