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.

Lorna Timbah

This plugin creates a widget to show the top commentators in your WP site. Always go back to the Widget settings after each version update to Save your settings. Demo can be found at http://demo.webgrrrl.net
The Top Commentators Widget plugin is adapted from Show Top Commentators plugin at Personal Financial Advice, this widget is easier to manage via the control form (no need to edit the PHP file); additional options are also available to make it more flexible. Read the FAQ section on how to customize the widget. Read the Changelog as well as http://webgrrrl.net/tags/tcw for the latest news on this widget.
This widget is extensively tested with the following settings: Google Chrome 13.0.782.215 m, PHP 5.2.13, Apache 2.2.15 (Win32), MySQL 5.0.51a, WordPress 3.2.1. Further testing and bug report on this widget is greatly welcomed and appreciated.

Top Commentators Widget

Adds a sidebar widget to show the top commentators in your WP site. Demo: http://demo.webgrrrl.net

Mirror Gravatar vs Top Commentators Widget