Instead of Gravatar – Change profile picture in WordPress

If you use WordPress, you’ve probably heard of Gravatar. This service belongs since 2007 to Automatic, the company that runs WordPress.com, which was founded by WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg.

Gravatar has made it its business to provide globally available avatars thanks to email addresses. If you have an account, you can store multiple email addresses there and upload your picture. As soon as you use one of these email addresses on WordPress or other services like HootSuite, GitHub or Disqus, your Gavatar is often automatically used as your profile picture.

Actually, a good thing, but in our opinion not for your own WordPress website. Since the Gravatars are located on a foreign server, an additional request to the Gravatar server is generated when you call your website, which costs time. Thanks to plugins like FV Gravatar Cache, these images and the request can be cached, however we believe that your profile image should be located on your server to get the best performance. Additionally, every author on the blog or website, like every commenter would have to have such a profile on Gravatar, which can be very cumbersome.

Own profile pictures on WordPress

Total time: 5 minutes

Open the plugin menu in the WordPress Dashboard

Install the WP User Avatar PluginOnce you are in your WordPress Dashboard, open the “Plugins” menu on the left side. Select the sub-item “Install”.

 

Here you have the option to either search for the plugin “WP User Avatar” and install it.

Or you can download it in advance from the WordPress.org site (WP User Avatar) and then upload it manually via the button “Install”.

 

 

WP User Avatar – Check settings

After you have activated the plugin, you will find a new menu item “Avatars” in the menu bar. Here you can change the settings. Our settings look like this:

 

 

Upload and activate new profile picture

After you have activated the plugin and made the first settings, you can use the menu item “Users” to decorate your own profile with a new picture. For this, you will find at the bottom of the page the item “Avatar”. Here you have the possibility to upload your own picture.

After that, please do not forget to save. And you have already changed your profile picture without Gravatar.