Gravatar.com

Frequently Asked Questions

General Concerns

• My email address is already in use, but I never signed up

  Gravatar.com and WordPress.com share the same user database. It's possible that you registered a WordPress.com account (either for a blog or for an Akismet API key,) which automatically now gives you a Gravatar.com account. If you use your WordPress.com password to log in you should experience no problems using Gravatar. If you cannot remember that password you may use the forgotten password link on the login page to reset your password.

• I never got my confirmation email!

  The most common reason for this by far is the use of anti-spam measures. Especially those systems which require the sender of an e-mail to manually verify a message. The second most common reason for not getting e-mails is that the e-mail address entered does not exist, double check those e-mails! Finally, certain email services (such as msn and hotmail) seem to be better able to receive our messages to you if you have donotreply@gravatar.com added to your contacts already.

• I changed my gravatar, but I still see my old one on sites!

  We cache your gravatars for periods of time, which means that your new gravatar will take effect after the old one expires from the cache. The reason we do this is to be able to serve your (and indeed everybody’s) gravatar images much more quickly and reliably.

• My gravatar doesn’t show up for a particular rating (or site!)

  Many sites only support displaying avatars with a rating of G. If your avatar is rated as too explicit (you get to set the rating yourself) it will not be shown on sites that do not support that particular rating. The check tool (http://en.gravatar.com/support/check) will show you what your gravatar might look like for all ratings. If you wish to change your images rating, simply hover your mouse over the image in the list at the bottom of your manage page, and you will see the rating appear in black. Click on that rating, and choose a new one from the next page. As always give it a bit of time for the new rating to take effect!

• My gravatar doesn’t show up on a particular site!

  The most common reason for this is the rating of the image you are using for your gravatar (see “My gravatar doesn't show up for a particular rating (or site!),” above. After that, the usual reason for this is a common error in making image links on the originating site. (Click here: http://en.gravatar.com/support/check to double check your gravatar.) If your image comes up correctly, then you may want to direct the site in question to the “I'm trying to implement gravatar for my site, and some gravatars aren't displaying!” FAQ entry below.

• How do I clear my cache?

  This is a pretty concise guide on clearing your cache no matter what browser you use: http://kb.iu.edu/data/ahic.html.
  
  Basically your computer (in an attempt to make things faster for you) keeps copies of things (your avatar image, for example) on your computer, and the next time you request one of those things instead of getting it from the internet it gets that local saved copy. in this case you don’t want the saved copy, you want the new one from the internet. Thats what clearing your cache does... it deletes all the local copies of things that your browser keeps around.

• Can I delete my uploaded images?

  Yes, simply hover your mouse over them in the list at the bottom of your manage page, and click the red “X”.

• How do I close my account?

  Because of how our system works, we cannot delete accounts completely. If you remove all images from your email addresses (click the "Don't use this image" link) and then hide your profile (see below), your account will no longer be accessible by other folks.

• How do I hide my profile?

  While you cannot completely delete your profile, you can remove all of your profile information easily through the "Edit My Profile" page, and you can also hide your profile from external access. Visit your profile page (click your name in the top navigation of the website), then click the "Hide My Profile" link in the bottom, right-hand corner.

• OK, but how do I contact support?

  Send an e-mail to support at gravatar dot com

• I turned off Gravatar Hovercards, how do I get them back?

  To re-enable Hovercards that have been disabled with the Turn off hovercards option you will need to delete the cookie nohovercard from the domain .wordpress.com.
  
  If you are unsure about how to clear individual cookies you can visit this site for details of removing cookies for various browsers.

Developer Concerns

• I’m trying to implement gravatar for my site, and some gravatars aren’t displaying!

  The most common cause for this issue is the e-mail address case. Gravatar uses lowercase e-mails exclusively for serving content, so an md5 hash of FOO@BAR.COM is not the same as foo@bar.com. In php, try md5(strtolower($email)); (adapt for other languages) The gravatar verification check tool might prove useful.

• MD5 isnt strong enough encryption, they’ve cracked that havent they?

  MD5 is plenty good for obfuscating the email address of users across the wire. if you’re thinking of rainbow tables, those are all geared at passwords (which are generally shorter, and less globally different from one another) and not email addresses, furthermore they are geared at generating anything that matches the hash, NOT the original data being hashed. If you are thinking about being able to reproduce a collision, you still don’t necessarily get the actual email address being hashed from the data generated to create the collision. In either case the work required to both construct and operate such a monstrocity would be prohibitively costly. If we left your password laying around in the open as a plain md5 hash someone might be able to find some data (not necessarily your password) which they could use to log in as you... Leaving your email address out as an md5 hash, however, is not going to cause a violent upsurge in the number of fake rolex watch emails that you get. Lets face it there are far more lucrative, easier, ways of getting email address. I hope this helps ease your mind.

• Transparent PNGs look terrible in most versions of IE

  If you’re worried about what transparent PNG images look like for your IE visitors, I would recommend taking a look at this handy Transparent PNGs in Internet Explorer 6 page which offers an explanation, information on workarounds, and a drop-in javascript which will work for all the images on a page.