My "No Gravatar Yet" Icon
I really like Gravatars. They’re an evolution of the buddy icon that you see just about everywhere, especially on social networking sites. These, however, are tied to your e-mail address, and they automatically show up in weblog comments when you use that e-mail address (example).
It’s up to the weblog owner whether to install a Gravatar-enabler on his or her site before the icons show up (though I believe WordPress 2.5 comes with this functionality by default), and it’s up to the commenter to have an account with Gravatar in order for the right icon to appear. One neat thing is that you can have multiple addresses with separate avatars in your Gravatar profile. But on the flipside, you can be displaying Gravatars, and get a comment from someone who hasn’t set one up.
There are a couple of ways you can go. You can tell your weblog not to show any icon for someone without a Gravatar, and rearrange the layout accordingly. This is an elegant solution, with one major downfall: someone without a Gravatar will see the comments of people who do have one, and wonder how they got their picture to show up. That’s what happened to me for a long time.
Alternately, you can let people know how to get their picture to appear by using a default Gravatar when none exists (same example).
Space is limited, so I used the phrase “No Gravatar Yet”. I chose these words carefully because I wanted to explain why a boring gray box was appearing, and include a very searchable word for how to fix it. I fiddled with the font and the sizing for quite a while before I landed on something that worked at a small size:
So I’m officially giving it away for free. Copy, download and use at will, if you find it useful.
Comments [1]
22 April 2008, 09:47
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— Bryan 22 April 2008, 10:13 #