Anyone who uses WordPress has probably heard of Gravatar. Since 2007, this service has been owned by Automatic, the company that operates WordPress.com, which was founded by WordPress inventor Matt Mullenweg.
Gravatar has set itself the task of providing globally available avatars using email addresses. Anyone with an account can store multiple email addresses there and upload their picture. As soon as you use one of these email addresses on WordPress or other services such as HootSuite, GitHub, or Disqus, your Gravatar is often automatically used as your profile picture there.
This is actually a good thing, but in our opinion not for your own WordPress website. Since the Gravatars are located on a third-party server, an additional request to the Gravatar server is generated when your website is accessed, which costs time. Thanks to plugins such as FV Gravatar Cache, these images and the request can be cached, but we are convinced that your profile picture should be located on your server in order to achieve the best performance. In addition, every author on the blog or website, like every commenter, would have to have a profile with Gravatar, which can be very cumbersome.
Your own profile pictures on WordPress
We are happy to show you how you can upload your own profile picture without Gravatar. Simply follow our instructions.
Open the plugin menu in the WordPress dashboard.
Once you are in your WordPress dashboard, open the "Plugins" menu on the left-hand side. Select the "Install" sub-item.
Install Simple Local Avatars
Here you now have the option of either searching for the "Simple Local Avatars" plugin and then installing it, or downloading it in advance from the WordPress.org website (Simple Local Avatars) and then uploading it manually using the "Install" button.
Upload and activate a new profile picture
Now that you have activated the plugin, you can decorate your own profile with a new image via the "Users" menu item. To do this, go to the "Avatar" item at the bottom of the page. Here you now have the option to upload your own image.
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