Gravatar is a portmanteau for Globally Recognized Avatar and is a user image associated with an email address. The Gravatar is then used whenever that email address is used for comments or post authorship on websites which have Gravatar enabled.
Gravatar is owned by Automattic, the company that runs WordPress.com. WordPress blogs, both .com, and self-hosted WordPress.org blogs use Gravatars for user avatars unless otherwise disabled by the website owner.
If a user leaves a comment and is a guest or doesn’t have a Gravatar, a default icon will be used instead – website owners can choose from a default user icon, the Gravatar logo, or from several randomly-generated icons: Identicon, Retro, MonsterID, or Wavatars.
Type of site | Avatar hosting |
---|---|
Owner | Automattic |
Created by | Tom Preston-Werner |
URL | gravatar.com |
Commercial | Yes |
Registration | Optional |
Gravatar (a portmanteau of globally recognized avatar) is a service for providing globally unique avatars and was created by Tom Preston-Werner. Since 2007, it has been owned by Automattic, having integrated it into their WordPress.com blogging platform.