Author image/gravatar?
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Just migrated to WordPress.com, and grappling with unnecessarily complicated interface. On my previous platform I had a small widget in my sidebar which included my photo and two lines of descriptive text underneath. I’m no technophobe, but simply cannot replicate that – have no idea why it should be complicated at all. Equally, have no clue what the heck a gravatar/blavatar/avatar is supposed to do, mean, or look like. I don’t care about images beside posts or comments, and I don’t especially want my image to be automatically inserted whenever I comment. All I want is for a headshot of me to go under the banner heading of my blog, with two lines about what I do. Am I stupid?
I have uploaded an image of myself as my avatar. I have also uploaded an image of myself (the same image) as a gravatar. (What’s the difference?) I did this yesterday. Both appear in my admin settings. Neither appears on my blog. I repeat: am I stupid?
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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There is no difference between gravatars and avatars, except that Gravatar is a service whose avatars work on blogs even outside WordPress.com.
As for your blog and what appears where, we can’t help you without a direct link to the blog, starting with http. It’s necessary, since the answer will depend on the blog.
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As that’s a protected blog, I can’t see it, so I can’t give you any specific advice. Here’s some general advice:
Make a post with exactly what you want in it, and make it Sticky. That will put it first before all your other posts, and you can put your headshot and whatever else you want in that. You can also put the same thing in a text widget and put it at the top of your sidebar. Many themes have About pages, or you can always write one and put things in there, although that doesn’t get them to the top of your main blog page.
Here are some useful links:
http://support.wordpress.com/widgets/text-widget/
http://support.wordpress.com/posts/post-visibility/#sticky-posts -
God; sorry. I’ve now unprotected it. Thank you for the suggestions… I guess I’ll have to write some HTML in a text widget… I just thought that WordPress would be easier than that – I’m a bit disappointed that it isn’t just drag & drop… Thanks again.
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we can’t help you without a direct link to the blog, starting with http. It’s necessary, since the answer will depend on the blog.
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We do now have the gravatar widget which allows you to show your gravatar, have it linked to your site, and also gives you the option of adding text to the widget along with the gravatar.
Add the gravatar widget to your sidebar, select your username/nickname (associated with your blog here) from the pulldown, select what size image you want to display, add the text you wish into the bottom box and when satisfied, click save, wait a few seconds or so to make sure it has saved and then click close. Take a look at your blog.
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@priceofsanity, they are not talking about uploading a new gravatar, they are talking about putting the gravatar image in a text widget in the sidebar.
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Thanks all. @thesacredpath – I did try the gravatar widget – in fact, I tussled with it endlessly, over a couple of days, uploading different photos, rating them differently, leaving it alone for hours, all to no effect – it simply would not place an image of me on my sidebar. In the end I’ve given up, and followed @raincoaster – taught myself a bit of HTML and done a workaround solution in a text widget… see http://quitealone.com – it looks fine to me; hope it does to the rest of the world…
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@quitealone and thesacredpath,
I’m having the same issue as quitealone concerning gravatar. I’ve uploaded the picture I want to be displayed on my blog several times, but it still won’t replace the black and white art block that is there at the moment. This is my blog: http://1stdistricttenn.wordpress.com/ . I’m not exactly sure what more I’m supposed to do other than load the picture into the gravatar widget. Anyone have a suggestion as to what I’m doing wrong?
Thanks.
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@quitealone, Under the “Select a user or pick custom and enter a custom email address” did you select your username from that pulldown? Your gravatar will not appear unless you do that. Alternately you can put in the email address associated with your account here (which is also the email address associated with your account at Gravatar).
You can see my test gravatar widget at the top of the right sidebar at http://opposablethumbz.wordpress.com/ .
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@thesacredpath – I put in my username… or maybe it was my real name… ah – perhaps that was the problem? But the only options it gave me in the pulldown menu were Custom or <My Real Name>. I did both, with and without the email address associated with my account. None worked. Like I say, I’ve done a work-around, which suits me fine, so I probably won’t change now unless there’s a real need to. But thank you nonetheless.
I must admit that that issue, along with all the necessity for HTML coding and assumed knowledge (which I don’t have!), didn’t endear me to WordPress upfront, despite a personal recommendation to migrate here. I thought it would be simple plug-and-play – but all the faffing around chewed up a bunch of time I don’t have, and I’m still not thrilled at the lack of flexibility (e.g. what’s with force-listing links in alphabetical order; this crazy usage of tiny point sizes in my sidebar – which, when I add HTML code to bump up by 0.5, suddenly boosts them to double size; all this avatar/blavatar/gravatar nonsense, force-linking me through to sites I’ve never heard of and don’t want to spend time getting to know; themes with custom headers talking about ‘change title font and colour’ but not offering a button to do so; etc etc).
No doubt I’ll get used to it. Today has felt a bit 1990s, though. Sorry.
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This is not a reply but a question: why doesn’t my gravatar show up on other wordpress blogs? I am very new to this, so am sorry for a dumb question.
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I an having similiar problems except my gravatar is not showing up on the widget ‘Authors’. My gravatar is showing up on my comments and in Users > Your Profile. I have also checked in gravatar.com and it is th same email and picture. By the way, another author on the site / blog has a ‘avatar’ and his shows up perfectly everywhere.
Any ideas?
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Not without a link to the blog, starting with http. Also: what does your gravatar look like, as opposed to what you’re seeing in the widget?
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If this is the blog you are talking about, http://supercoachtips.wordpress.com/ , this is what I see:
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raincoaster + thesacredpath
Yep, that is my blog (http://supercoachtips.wordpress.com). But you are seeing the right things, so I am not sure what is going on. I am having the same problem with the blavatar as well. Can you show me what you are seeing as my blavatar?
Thanks heaps for your help, really appreciate it.
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