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Picture yourself in this

Head Rambles Posted on by

I am an inveterate meddler.  I like tweaking things.

This week, I have been tweaking this site, and this morning I added a new thingy to the site.

There is no reason for it.  It was just an experiment to see if I could.  And it worked.  Maybe I’ll take it off again sometime, but I’ll leave it for now to see if it locks up the site.

So what did I do?

I added little pictures onto the comments.  I believe they are called Avatars or some such silly name.

So how do they work?  Where do the pictures come from?  How come some people had pictures as soon as I installed the code?

The pictures are associated with your email address, so if you have an email address you can have a picture.  The service I used is one called Globally Recognised Avatars, or Gravatars.

I registered my Gravatar a while ago, and it’s appearing in a lot of places now.  My Woopra software uses it, for example.

If you want a Gravatar, just nip over to the Gravatar site.   You just enter your email address and you can then upload your image.  It can be any image.  That’s all there is to it.  And it’s free.

So nip over and try it.  Then come back here and leave a comment.  That’ll show whether it has worked. 

Or not.

And if you want to install ’em on your own site, then fuck off and don’t bother me.  It involves writing bits of code, and I’m not going down that road.

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Comments

Picture yourself in this — 60 Comments

  3. yep, now that flag – I know it’s some net thing and nothing to do with you, I’ll live with, after all we are all Europeans now, sez Sarkozy.

  9. Try as I might (and I’ve spent quite a while) – I’ve never been able to get avatars displayed on my own “b**g”.

  10. god I feel better – it works. there is my avatar. all of a sudden I’m not so old after all.

  12. Was that last bit just for me? 😉

    Tried it when Roy advertised it. Got too complicated. Gave up.

  13. I don’t know what is going wrong here.

    Maxi – I’m fairly sure you popped up on Woopra with a picture, but it’s not appearing here.

    There is a thing called cash/cache that stores information, which I keep clearing out [in case it has the old images in it], but no joy.

    Le Craic – I used a nasty plugin from Gravatar themselves. I say ‘nasty’ because you have to code the fecking thing into the page by hand, and their explanation is a bit thin.

    K8 – No. Not just for you. It should be simple enough. As long as you use the same address you use for commenting……..

  14. It took you this long to catch on?

    Probably a good thing though. Before Automattic (them WordPress, Aksimet, BBPress guys) bought out Gravatar the service was lousy. Great idea but they didn’t have the server capacity for it. Now it comes from the same type of servers that “Aksimet” runs out of. Much better.

    Why can’t I ever stop being a geek? I’m too bloody old to be a geek. Why can’t I just be old and crusty like my friends? But noooo!…I have to be geekish as well.

    I’m going for another cup of coffee, y’all scuse me…

  15. That plugin was on my list of things tried Grandad. I got as far as getting Gravatars to appear – but they were all the Gravator icon. I think it’s a really nice feature to have on a site so I will do a bit more code work and see if I can’t figure it.

  17. That a lot of work you went through just to add Gravatars.

    And from the sounds of things, maybe a good few don’t know of the WP function you can use. This is what I have to add them on my blog’s comments:

    EDIT: OK, guess the php tags get stripped 🙁

    Right, use this inside php tags:
    echo get_avatar( $comment, $size = '60', 'identicon' );

    And for more reading: http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Gravatars

  19. Why do I always get help after the event??? Thanks Bock and TheChrisD

    Kate – It ain’t technical at all [unless you are trying to install the damn thing on a site]. Try uploading your image again, using the email address you use here.

  20. I have done that a total of four times now – I have cropped it and added it – but it doesn’t appear to work for me!

  22. WAYHAY!! It works, even for Kate. 🙂

    TT – If they are small, they are OK. And as long as they aren’t animated. Animated ones are incredibly annoying!

  24. I bet you wish you’d never started this don’t you and of course you know I’ll get sick of seeing myself and have to change it for one of the greyhound or something – this could get out of hand!!!

  26. I like to muck about. It keeps me out of mischief for a while.

    There’s nothing wrong with greyhounds?

  31. Betchya all come around to my way of thinking on this eventually. Question is willya admit it? Or are these irritating and distracting not to mention repetitive pics here to stay ?

  32. You are quite right – and my greyhound is particularly beautiful! just don’t know if I can face all that again! But there’s always tomorrow………

  33. Hiya Popeye! How’s she cuttin’? have a can on me.

    TT – The only irritating and distracting thing around here is a certain person who’s whinging all the time. *bloody Americans*

    Kate – Sure, you’re grand as you are. Maybe the sight of you will mellow TT??

  34. I don’t think TT is up for mellowing particularly from a mad hippy!!! And, sadly I can see the point in that – just couldn’t stand the ghostly grey figure – I like colour in my life – if its only in my hair!!!

  38. Ooh, Xbox is lookin’ foxy. And there’s Greyhoundy Kate! I always wondered what she looked like. I want them on MY comments too! *stamps feet*

  40. Help a lad, would ya? Kate’s face isn’t showing up at my place. Would somebody mind posting a test for me?
    Thanks

  41. Careful now – you might not want to see it – be careful what you wish for ……

  45. Well… what can I say? A kind gentile dispatcher of tourists – poor old boy – he can’t help it …… rambling – does it a lot!!! Never been bad to me tho – hence the ‘it’s only Grandad’ – 🙂 bet there’s only 5 years between us but you do ‘gwan’!!!!!

  46. Blogger just ‘does it’ no code . . Add picture and save. Nice to see what people ‘look’ like! Kinda!

  48. Jaysus Grandad, i don’t know about all this technology shite and fecking around with things. I hope this isn’t a consequence of what those nasty Men With Pens said a while back?
    Blogger pages have always had the picture option and I’m not really sure about it because it makes the whole thing feel a bit too much like social networking. What i like about blogging is that we’re forming our opinions of people solely on how they write, rather than how pretty their hair is. I’m one of the sexiest bastards in the western hemisphere but that’s not what my page is about.

  50. Agree with Bock. It is the shits. It’s shittier than stepping in dog shit and then trying to stand on one foot to wipe it off and then falling over into your choice of either cow or horse shit.

    My, that’s a lot of shit 🙂

  51. Andrew – Nah. Nothing to do with MwP. I just thought I’d brighten the place up a bit and make each comment look individual. It actually makes reading the comments a bit easier, I think.
    As for seeing how people do their hair, then I think Bock looks rather good? A very tidy coiffure? But if TheChrisD really looks like that, then I’m out of here. Fast.

  53. I feel rather exposed now with the gravatar – I liked the anonymous grey profile and felt like the Saint or the Milk Tray man. Time to spill the hoops on my real identity I guess

  54. Spag – I have logged in rather late, and either you have changed your avatar, or you are invisible?

  55. well i knew my gravatar didn’t load so I assumed the ? A damn sight better that your hairy mug!

  56. I went to register and it said I already have. That happens a lot. It’ll be interesting to submit this and see what I used as an avatar. I wish I’d tell me about the things I do more often, and not be so secretive.

  57. Okay Grandad, it wasn’t showing at first so I worked at it a bit and it’s there now.. thanks for bringing it to my attention. You’re the most awesomnest, and wonderfullest Grandad EVER!

    ..and thanks for the sidebarrolladd thingy.. I’m honored.. or is it “honoured”?

  59. I wonder if my “face” will show up?

    Well good news – today Woopra finally “approved” me! Took so dang long I sort of forgot who/what Woopra is…but if I have any questions, you’ll gladly walk this ol ‘bra’wd throught it, right Grandad?

    Woo-Hoo! It’s me! 🙂

  60. Olga – There ye are in all your glory! Why am I suddenly the Woopra expert around here?

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