Change WordPress Avatar or Gravatar

“How do I change WordPress Avatar?” was the question that popped out of my mouth this morning when I saw myself as the mysterious “Mystery Man”!

Default avatars available in WordPress

As a brilliant start to my day, I received comments on this new baby site for Genesis WordPress Theme – why preferred!  And of course I just had to make a response.  Which I did. And then I saw myself in that comment response – and I was the Mystery Man!  It just didn’t seem fair!

So the next questions that popped out were:

How do I change my WordPress Avatar?  .. or is it a Gravatar?

What is the difference between an Avatar and a Gravatar?

Avatar or Gravatar?

“Gravatar =  Globally Recognized Avatar
Your Gravatar is an image that follows you from site to site appearing beside your name when you do things like comment or post on a blog. Avatars help identify your posts on blogs and web forums, so why not on any site?”
~ https://en.gravatar.com/

Even better and easier – if you are a WordPress user, as far as you are concerned, Gravatar and Avatar are the SAME THING.

So How do you Change WordPress Avatar or Gravatar?

Tip: Since WordPress 2.5, you no longer need additional plugins to use an avatar (aka gravatar).

There are various ways you can get your own gravatar. Both methods are free.

• Go directly to add your image at Gravatar or
• Go to your public profile at WordPress.com to change WordPress Avatar.

I chose the latter because I already have an account at WordPress.com (since I needed one for my plugin Jetpack by WordPress.com).  So I might as well do it all in one place.  Plus I can fill in more details re my public profile at my WordPress.com account.

My suggestion is if you are going to use Jetpack plugin and/or you already have a WordPress.com account, then just click to go to your public profile.

There, in the

Click to upload image for you WordPress avatar

And that’s it!  When I now look back on the Mystery Man avatar attached to my comment, he is gone!!

My Gravatar Avatar has automatically arrived!

Note added 21 Aug 2013:

Your gravatar/avatar is directly linked to your WordPress User email address.  On WordPress, your user email address is found at WP Admin >> Users >> Your Profile

Once your gravatar has been correctly linked to that particular user email address, then you will be able to see that at WP Admin >> Users >> All Users

You can have more than one email address at Gravatar.  Just add a new email address and associate a profile picture with it.

Reference for those who like more:

•  gravatar.com – Gravatar: A Globally Recognized Avatar
• wordpress.com – Support on Avatars >> Gravatars (more useful information)
• wordpress.org – Using Gravatars