With
version 1.9 of DasBlog, which I run here, comes the ability to support Gravatar’s
out of the box. What are “Gravatar’s” you ask? Simple, a Gravatar is a small image
(80×80 pixels) hosted by Gravatar.com which
a site can request of you given your email address. This allows blogs, for instance,
to show an avatar of your choosing next to your comment without having to personally
handle you uploading the file, trimming the image, storing the image, screening the
image for “appropriateness”, and so on.
Gravatar’s have been around for a while, but for over a year they have not allowed
new people to sign up for the service because they had reached the capacity of there
existing infrastructure. Well they’ve completely redesigned for scalability and are
back with style. You will see now that my recent responses to comments include my
ugly mug as an avatar next to my comments, and if you’d like your face immortalized
then all you have to do is go to this site and request an account of your own. Once
you do, you’ll instantly have you’re chosen Gravatar available here, no more work
required provided you left an email address with your comment.
The Gravatar team has a blog here so you can
keep track of what they are doing.