Automattic

Beau Lebens

IntenseDebate

IntenseDebate Comments enhance and encourage conversation on your blog or website. Custom integration with your WordPress admin panel makes moderation a piece of cake. Comment threading, reply-by-email, user accounts and reputations, comment voting, along with Twitter and friendfeed integrations enrich your readers’ experience and make more of the internet aware of your blog and comments which drives traffic to you!
Full comment and account data sync between Intense Debate and WordPress ensures that you will always have your comments stored locally on your own server.
Note: IntenseDebate is currently being maintained, but not actively developed.

IntenseDebate Comments


Sounded like a good plugin but it does not connect with your wordpress site after adding the plugin.  When trying to login it will always say login failed.  I even clicked the create new account and tried and it still failed.


Will not connect

IntenseDebate comments enhance and encourage conversation on your blog.  Build your reader community, increase your comments, & boost pageviews.

Sibin Grasic

Letter Avatars enables custom avatars for users without gravatar. Avatar will be replaced with the first letter of username or e-mail.
Letter Avatars does not use any images, scripts, or font-icons. All letters will be rendered by your theme font (or Optionally via a Google font).
Features
<ul>
<li>Works anywhere – Plugin hooks into pre_get_avatar function, so the avatar size is preserved</li>
<li>Highly customizable – You can change colors, letter font, as well as the font size</li>
<li>Stylish – You can change the background and letter colors or you can randomize them for all the avatars</li>
<li>Lightweight – Plugin does not use any external stylesheet, image, or js files. It only adds a small inline css in your header</li>
<li>Highly compatible – You don’t have to edit your theme / plugin files, it works automatically and plays nice with other plugins</li>
<li>Works with BuddyPress – Users and groups without gravatar / local avatar will use Letter Avatars</li>
<li>Works with YITH Reviews for WooCommerce – Avatars in reviews support Letter Avatars</li>
<li>Works with WP User Avatar – Users with Custom Avatar will use those, users without avatar will default to Letter Avatar</li>
</ul>

Letter Avatars

Nice

Nice work! Much better than "Mystery Man" for unknown users.



Featured on iThemes Training Plugin Roundup, March 2016

I chose this plugin over another similar plugin which had more installs and reviews because this plugin offers a solution as simply as possible. No images or scripts needed, just plain old CSS for the win. Kudos to the developer.

Lightweight & Elegant Solution

Works great and with good support by the maintainer. Thanks for your work!

Works great and good support

Sets custom avatars for users without gravatar. Avatars will be replaced by first letter of usename (or e-mail) on a colorful background

IntenseDebate Comments vs Letter Avatars