My faceless Gravatar
Help, I’ve been overtaken by Gravatar. I didn’t want it, didn’t need it, but I can’t get rid of it.
When I first joined WordPress, I used to enjoy clicking on an avatar and seeing a wonderful, exciting Home page. This one avatar click would bring me directly to the avatar owner’s website. From there I could view all they had to say. It was simple, and a wonderful experience. How lovely to see such variety in the way people communicate, with just one click on a photo.
All that changed with the introduction of Gravatar. Now, when I want to see what a blog is about before replying to a comment, most times, all I get is a boring blue screen with a stupid blank head. A bit like a cheap chess piece. Often, it is difficult to go anywhere from this screen, and so I end up not communicating with the gravatar owner. I hated the Gravatar screen when I fist saw it, and I still hate it now. I certainly wouldn’t want it on my website.
Harrumph! It doesn’t seem to matter what I want; I seem to have acquired it. I didn’t even get a confirmation email either, so it was without my permission. I know I definitely wouldn’t have responded to one of those because of my dislike of the Gravatar screen. Gravatar mysteriously appeared on my website yesterday. Not only that, but it seems to have taken it over. I say mysteriously, but I fear I might have played a small part in its appearance. Yesterday, I was changing my WordPress avatar photo to the one above. Midway through the process, I was shocked to see the words ‘Gravatar image’ on the screen. I immediately clicked on ‘Don’t show this image’ thinking I was removing it from Gravatar, and it would just revert back to my previous Wordpress image. How wrong could I be?
When I next posted my reply to a comment someone had made, my avatar showed as a green abstract square. I tried to insert my photo again, but Gravatar wouldn’t allow me to do that. Ever since then, I’ve been trying in vain to remove Gravatar, and get my website back to what it was. Apparently, it cannot be done. I followed all the instructions about removing information from the profile page and deleting all photos. However, when I then closed it down and rebooted my wordpress website again, I noticed my avatar had the chess piece head. Oh! I got rid of the photo, I thought, I’ll have to upload it again to WordPress. So I did, and guess what? I’ve apparently uploaded it to Gravatar again. Grrravatar!
Can anyone help?
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Author -Carole Parkes 
Good luck taming your gravatar – mine is also quite out of control. Jan
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Thanks for your comment. I found the link from Mark very helpful. See further down the comments.There are some helpful bloggers on Woedpress.
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You look great right now!
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Ooh! Thank you.
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As they say in Italy, “forget about it”, its there don’t worry it will never stop your creativity , your power to share your talented gifts, God bless You. David A. Morrow SR.
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What a lovely thing to say. Thank you, your words are appreciated.
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I’m all thumbs technically speaking. Hope the link the other commentor left helps.
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Yes the link from Mark worked a treat, and helped me undertand the basics of Gravatar.
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I’m really bad with technology and it looks like you have some useful advice already, but once I had a similar problem and found it was because my gravatar was set to an R rating. Maybe that is helpful?
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I’m still having very minor problems; I’ll check that. Thank you Marissa.
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http://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/how-to-disable-gravatars-in-wordpress/
Hope that this may be of some help, I’ve tried it and it seems to work.
Best of luck,
Mark
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Thank you, that looks as if it might be really helpful.
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I’m so grateful you sent me this link Mark; It certainly brought my avatar photo back. Thank you.
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Carole, can you send any screen shots of your problem?
Gravatar is fine, it’s a good way to add some info about yourself, any links and more than one photo.
I’m not sure whether you are just complaining about your non-avatar or others too? For example, does mine work?
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Your gravatar works fine. I just don’t like the lifeless blue screens my first click sometimes brings, nor the fact you have to then search for the website and click again. If you have a slow connection, as I have sometimes, it can be very frustrating.
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To get the website, you click on the name. Not the gravatar, eg roughseas, not the pic.
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No wonder I thought they were pointless. Must try harder. Must try harder. must try harder. Must try harder Must try harder…
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Carole
Wordpress ADMIN – USERS – MY PROFILE is where you change your Gravatar photo
You can also add / delete any sites / blogs associated with you
DON’T FORGET to UPDATE PROFILE after any changes are made
Hope this helps 😀
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Thank you, I’ll get back to you on this.
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Is there not something in your WordPress settings that you could fiddle with Carole? I had a problem where the Gravatar page wasn’t linked to WordPress, and I remember that I had to copy and paste my URL somewhere, but I can’t remember where exactly.
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Thanks for your imput Jo; I’ll look into it.
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Oops! ‘input’.
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