I’m pretty sure I can say that at some point you have seen or even been “the gray man” when posting a comment on a blog. I’ve been one on my own blog (sad) and I want to share with you how you can fix this very easily. If you see this “gray man” when you leave someone a comment (see beow) then you don’t have an image uploaded to Gravatar.com (Instructions below)

Now you can see “Jen” has a nice personal image of herself that is associated with the email she used to leave a comment with. A well chosen image will add a bit of depth to a comment and give you more of a human element. Below is my comment I left for Jen, see the difference? My comment looks cold and generic, like the persona you would associate with spam or some other faceless brand. Below I will show you how to fix this by updating your “Gravatar”.

What the heck is a Gravatar?

Good question, I found myself asking the same thing. If you use online forums or certain social media sites then you may already be familiar with an Avatar. An Avatar is an image that you (most times) are allowed to chose that is associated with your account. If you use multiple login accounts for Windows XP or Leopard then you might be familiar with these and not even know it. What makes a Gravatar special is that it allows you to associate an email address with an image that is globally recognized. So no matter whose blogging website you are commenting on you will see the image you setup at Gravatar.com

Steps to fix your “gray man” blues

1. Go to Gravatar.com in your browser
2. Sign up/Login (If your not already a WordPress user)
3. Click “Get your Gravatar today”
4. Use “Select an email address (below) to modify or add a new email”
5. Upload your image

Now no matter whose website you leave a comment with, your image you uploaded will appear next to your comment (Assuming the blog has comment images enabled).