Gravatar is a free service that gives you a globally recognized avatar. Upload the picture once, connect it to whichever email address or email addresses you use, and shazam! 

 

 

 

Wherever you go, when you write a post or leave a comment, your avatar comes along for the ride. Head to gravatar.com, where you can sign up for an account in seconds. It's as simple as adding an email address, responding to your activation email, adding an image right from your computer or somewhere on the web or directly from your webcam, and once you've added the image, you can crop it down to size.

 

So don't worry about trying to get it perfect before you upload the picture. 

 

 

 

Now you get to decide a rating for it, kind of like a movie. Sites that display Gravatars can decide which of these they'll allow through the net. So if you're keeping things relatively tame, it's best to go for a "G" rating. If you decide to smatter your Gravatar with potty-mouth, sexy-violent action, you might want to go with an "R" or an "X" rating, depending on how hard-core your image happens to be. Otherwise, a "G" for "general" covers your more run-of-the-mill profile picture. 

 

 

 

You can upload as many pictures as you like, so you can swap them out at a moment's notice or assign them to different email addresses. Gravatar is supported by lots of different sites, and if you happen to use WordPress.com, you can even sign up right from your profile page without ever having to visit gravatar.com. 

 

 

 

And for developers, adding Gravatar to your site or service is easy as pie. Check out the information on gravatar.com to get started. 

 

 

 

Gravatar, globally recognized avatars.