Removing Gravatars/Avatars in WordPress 2.7+ Themes

Monday, July 19th, 2010

In WordPress 2.7, the wp_list_comments function was introduced, putting all of the elements of comments in one easy function. The new function comes with an imitation of the old get_avatar function built-in.

So how do you remove the avatars without removing the wp_list_comments function, which is much needed for outputting all of the other elements of the comment section?

The answer is to use CSS to hide the avatar. Place the following code into style.css:

.avatar {
display:none;
}

Hat tip: rhysboy84 from Sitepoint.

Tags: gravatar, wordpress styles, wordpress themes
Posted in Blog Design, WordPress Blogging | 12 Comments »

Gravatar Profiles Go Public, Privacy Concerns Arise

Sunday, June 6th, 2010

The Blogosphere just became much more of a personal place with the announcement of public profiles for everyone on the Gravatar Blog.

With the change, many of the avatars (small images that represent the authors) on blogs and websites will link to a public profile, complete with a biography, contact details and personal links.

The Gravatar service acts as a “centralized identity point.” Rather than uploading avatars and filling in biographies on multiple websites, individuals only need to fill out information in one location (Gravatar.com) and websites will have access to that information. (more…)

Tags: automattic, blog security, gravatar, technorati
Posted in Blogging News | 2 Comments »

WordPress Gravatars: What They Are and How to Install Them

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

Gravatar avatars are small images that represent an email address. Their purpose is to allow for global recognition of commenters and persons on the Internet. Rather than having a different avatar for different sites, people can register an avatar at Gravatar.com and associate it with their own unique email address.

Blog posts in WordPress that have commenting enabled typically require an email address to submit a comment. Once a comment has been submitted with the email field filled in, WordPress sends the email address as a data string to Gravatar.com; if Gravatar.com has an avatar for that email address, the avatar will be used. Often times Gravatar.com does not have an avatar associated with an email address, in which case a default avatar is used.

(more…)

Tags: commenting, gravatar, wordpress help, wordpress tutorials
Posted in Blogging 101, WordPress Blogging | 2 Comments »