Locally mirrors commenters’ Gravatar, Libravatar and Mastodon avatars and serves them from your site, rather than loading them from a third-party web site upon each page load.
This has several effects:
<ul>
<li>
If most of the comments on a post have no avatar, those turn into one load of a shared image, instead of one for each comment, that happens to return the same “mystery” image.
</li>
<li>
You will be serving more (small) images.
</li>
<li>
If a commenter’s URL looks like a link to a Mastodon / ActivityPub profile, their Mastodon account’s avatar will be displayed.
</li>
<li>
When commenting, a live preview of the avatar tracks the contents of the “Email” field.
</li>
<li>
<a href="https://www.gravatar.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">gravatar.com</a> and <a href="https://www.libravatar.org/" rel="nofollow ugc">libravatar.org</a> no longer have a web-bug on your blog that is loaded by each viewer. Instead of being loaded at every page view, the avatar is loaded just once, on the server-side, at the time each new comment is posted.
</li>
<li>
If someone changes or deletes their avatar, your site continues displaying the image that was their avatar at the time that they last posted.
</li>
<li>
Likewise, the user’s Gravatar or Mastodon profile is saved along with their comment, viewable by admins even if they later change or delete it.
</li>
</ul>
<h3>Security and Privacy</h3>
<ul>
<li>
<a href="https://www.libravatar.org/" rel="nofollow ugc">Libravatar</a> is open source. Gravatar is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravatar" rel="nofollow ugc">owned by WordPress</a>, and their <a href="https://automattic.com/privacy/" rel="nofollow ugc">privacy policy</a> says that they don’t monetize that info. But hey, corporate policies change, subpoenas exist, and domain names get sold.
</li>
<li>
Should you trust Gravatar with user data? Well, in 2024, Gravatar announced that they are <a href="https://jwz.org/b/ykXF" rel="nofollow ugc">pivoting to blockchain</a>, whatever that means, so that’s fairly disqualifying. See also <a href="https://jwz.org/b/ykPk" rel="nofollow ugc">WordPress “growth hacking”</a> and <a href="https://jwz.org/b/ykNg" rel="nofollow ugc">WordPress sells users’ data to train AI tools</a>.
</li>
<li>
There used to be a potential issue due to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravatar#Security_concerns_and_data_breaches" rel="nofollow ugc">Gravatars using MD5 hashes</a>, but these days they use SHA256, so I assume that’s no longer a problem.
</li>
</ul>

Mirror Gravatar


The plugin does just what it says and it's a great way to improve WordPress just a little bit.


Great plugin to make WordPress a bit better

Locally mirror commenters' Gravatar or Mastodon profile images.

Ronald Huereca

Cozmoslabs

Alaa Alsalehi

User Profile Picture is no longer under active development, but will continue to work as is. We have integrated the current functionality in <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/profile-builder/" rel="ugc">Profile Builder</a> where it will actively be maintained, and we recommend migrating to it.
Set or remove a custom profile image for a user using the standard WordPress media upload tool.
<a href="https://www.cozmoslabs.com/user-profile-picture/" rel="nofollow ugc">View Documentation and Examples</a>
<iframe loading="lazy" title="User Profile Image" width="750" height="422" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9icnOWWZUpA?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Users must have the ability to upload images (typically author role or greater). You can use the plugin <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/profile-builder/" rel="ugc">Profile Builder</a> to allow other roles (e.g. subscribers) the ability to upload images.
A template tag is supplied for outputting to a theme and the option to override a user’s default avatar is also available.
<h3>Documentation and Feedback</h3>
See the documentation on <a href="https://github.com/madalinungureanu/user-profile-picture" rel="nofollow ugc">GitHub</a>.
<blockquote>
Please <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/metronet-profile-picture/reviews/#new-post" rel="ugc">Rate the Plugin</a>.
</blockquote>

User Profile Picture

Nice & works perfectly

Set a custom profile image (avatar) for a user using the standard WordPress media upload tool.

Mirror Gravatar vs User Profile Picture