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An “avatar” is an image that represents you online—a little picture that appears next to your name when you interact with websites.

A Gravatar is a Globally Recognized Avatar. You upload it and create your profile just once, and then when you participate in any Gravatar-enabled site, your Gravatar image will automatically follow you there.

Gravatar is a free service for site owners, developers, and users. It is automatically included in every WordPress.com account and is run and supported by Automattic.

Getting started with Gravatar is easy; you’ll need to have a WordPress.com account and then authorize that account to connect to Gravatar.

On the Gravatar home page, click on the Sign In button at the top-right of your browser window.

You’ll see a sign in window that will appear and ask for your WordPress.com account information. If you have a WordPress.com account, please enter that information here. (You’ll then be asked to authorize Gravatar for your account.) If you don’t, please click Need an account? to register for a new account.

If you need to sign up for a new account, please enter your email address (make sure this is correct), and select a username and a password. The system will tell you if any of the information you are entering is invalid. Click Sign Up to submit your registration.

Now, we’ll send you an email to confirm your address. You won’t be able to use Gravatar until you click on the link in that email. The email will come from WordPress.com, not Gravatar. Click on the Activate Account button to finish the process.

You’ll be taken back to WordPress.com where you’ll see a wessage thanking you for confirming your email and asking you if you want to head back over to Gravatar. Click the Sign In to Gravatar button to do that. We’ll log you in to Gravatar automatically.

That’s it! You are ready to add images and customize your profile.

For your Gravatar to work properly, we’ll first need you to provide us with an image for your profile. Follow these steps to upload that image and prepare it for use with your account.

Login at Gravatar.com using your WordPress.com account by clicking the button at the top-right of the page.

Once you are logged in, click on the Add an Image link at the top of the page.

We’ll ask you where you’d like to source this image. Click My computer’s hard drive.

Now we’ll ask you to direct the uploader to the image in question. Click Choose File.

Locate the image on your computer and select it using the button that appears for your operating system (which will usually say Choose or Open).

You’ll see the filename of the image appear in the uploader. Click Next to upload the image to us. (NOTE: on Internet Explorer 9 and later, the image name may disappear when you click Next. This is normal and in most cases the image is being uploaded. Please be patient.)

Now you can crop the image to only the portion of what you uploaded. Drag the cropper handles to select the part of the image you want. All images uploaded to Gravatar must be cropped as a square.

Once you have the crop the way you want it, click Crop and Finish.

Choose a rating for your image, making sure your image is appropriate to the rating. Keep in mind that many sites will only display G-rated Gravatars. Click on the rating you think is appropriate for your image.

Your Gravatar image can then be added to your address. We’ll ask you which one it should apply to right away, or you can wait and not assign it to any of your registered emails yet.

Make your selection, and then you’re done! You’ll be taken to the My Gravatars screen, where you can continue to manage the images and email addresses that are assigned to your account.

For your Gravatar to appear on another site you use, comment on, or interact with, here’s what needs to happen:

• The site you’re using needs to support the Gravatar service for loading images. Though many sites and blogs do this, Gravatar isn’t yet in use everywhere. Notable exceptions are services like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, which don’t yet support Gravatars.
• The email address you use for your account on the other site must be one of the email addresses that is registered to your Gravatar account. Gravatar uses your email address to provide your image to other sites. If we don’t have any record of your email address, Gravatar won’t be able to display your image.
• Your selected Gravatar must use a rating that’s permitted by the other site. Lots of sites restrict Gravatar images to G or PG ratings only. WordPress.com blogs are set by default to only permit G-rated images. If your Gravatar’s rating is higher than the rating allowed by the site, a default image will appear instead of your chosen Gravatar.

If you need to check your Gravatar to see how it will appear, we’ve set up a page where you can check the Gravatar for your email. Enter your email address and click check. We’ll show you the image for that email and what it’s rated.