You can keep your big blue animated 3D aliens, even if the women were oddly attractive. I prefer small square 2-dimensional pictures of what are usually people’s heads. While the technology behind James Cameron’s blockbuster was bleeding edge, the system behind Gravatars is relatively lo-tech, but the idea is so simple that you wonder why nobody thought of it earlier.

Gravatars are globally recognised avatars (the original image kind), that follow you around the internet. You can sign up to the service for free, upload your chosen image, and it will automatically appear on a number of sites. The comments you make on all WordPress powered blogs (such as this one) support Gravatars by default, thanks to Automattic’s acquisition in 2007. That’s just the start, with a growing awareness leading to an explosion of support, including:

• WordPress.com
• Stack Overflow
• uhh…
• And more!

It’s pretty cool signing up to a site and seeing your face (even if it is cartoonised). As a user it’s a great, simple, no downsides service that makes surfing (is that word even used anymore) the world wide web cooler. As a web developer, you’ve got no excuse for not implementing it in your sites. It’s dead easy, and means you don’t need to mess around with your own profile pic system. You have a lot of control, including setting a rating to censor inappropriate images, change the size of the images, and the choice of default image categories for the users who haven’t woken up yet.

Identicons

MonsterIDs

Wavatars

The process basically involves creating an MD5 hash (helpful online tool) of the user’s email address. You then request the image from the Gravatar server with a simple HTTP get request. So for example, the following request retrieves my Gravatar with a size of 80 by 80 pixels, rated G, and users Wavatars as the default.

You can read all about it on the developer site, as well as reference implementations for a number of different languages. And don’t limit yourself to just the web, with Gravatar’s popping up on the desktop too!

So draw a crazy cartoon head of yourself, and create your Gravatar today!