Howdy there bloggers! You’ll no doubt remember that when we acquired Gravatar.com, just over a year ago, we intended to fully integrate it into WordPress.com. It’s been a long time coming, but we’ve finally replaced the WordPress.com avatar system with those Globally Recognized Avatars. What does this mean? It means your WordPress.com avatar can now follow you around the web. Your avatar can show up on any Gravatar enabled site, regardless of its affiliation with Automattic!

picture-2picture-4The old avatar tool in your WordPress.com profiles has been replaced with your current Gravatar (left.) If you click on that icon you’ll be taken to Gravatar.com (and automatically logged into your account) where you can easily change your image (right). You can upload an image from your computer, paste in a link to an image on the internet, or even take a picture of yourself using your computers webcam. Cropping and rating your images are as easy as ever. After you finish your new image will automatically attach to your email address (assuming you only have one email address on your account,) or you will be presented with a simple-as-pie list of your email addresses, and you can attach the new image to any or all of them! Just close the Gravatar window when you’re done.

Of course all of the standard Gravatar features are available to you. Upload as many images as you wish, switch them as often as you like, add as many email addresses as you want to your account, and more features still in the works.

If you find that you have an “old” image for your Gravatar, simply click on the link to change it and then click on the “Use your last WordPress.com Avatar” link to get the new one back. There are bound to be some small hiccups here and there. Just let Support know when something doesn’t work quite right, and we’ll get everything ironed out in no time.

Cheers!
DK