to make posting comments a little bit more rewarding i implemented gravatars on this blog.
two days ago i commented on an entry over at urs’ blog and some fancy image turned up next to my comment. i’ve seen that already turning up on different blogs (e.g. moblg.uk and blog.ch).
the code with which i implemented it is shown below for your abuse and modification.
<MTComments>
<div class=”comments-body”>
<$MTCommentBody$>
<span class=”comments-post”>
<a href=”<$MTCommentURL$>”>
<img src=”<$MTGravatar default=”https://habi.gna.ch/blank.jpg” size=”40″$>” alt=”gravatar” align=”left” />
</a>
posted by: <$MTCommentAuthorLink spam_protect=”1″$><br />
on <$MTCommentDate$><br clear=”all”>
</span>
</div></MTComments>
i made it so that every person gets a gravatar, even it there’s none registered (for example, see peters comment here). if your gravatar is missing the pictures gets replaced by blank.jpg. the gravatar is linked with the url or the (spamsafe) email link of the person that left a comment.
so, ladies and gents, if you want your picture to show up in the comments, then step over to gravatar and register yours.
thanks, goodbye.
Which makes me think: One could decentralize this functionality, so we don’t depend on Gravatar’s services. Everyone places his gravatar saved as ‘gravatar.jpg’ in the root of the URL he leaves with his comment. (Similar to the Favorites-icons for bookmarks.)
The blog-software would only have to link to the image if it exists. Or cache it on his webserver.
This idea is not bad, really. It makes Gravatar no longer necessary. But the problem is that people who don’t have a homepage, or have a homepage somewhere else in a subdirectory can’t have an avatar of their own…
Other than that, I think I’ll have to Gravatar-enably my Blog soon, too :-P
to gravatar or not to gravatar that is the question…
how do i set this up in wordpress?
nchenga, here’s a handy documentation: http://gravatar.com/implement.php#section_2_2
Even I managed to do it, so it can’t be very difficult :-).
i’ve also read that the gravatas can be used to prevent commment spam, e.g. can be used to help build a trusted community. i’ll have to look into this, for now it’s just nice…
Pretty Sweet Stuff