Bart Kuijper

When displaying a post or comment with avatars enabled, WordPress will always check for the existence of a Gravatar. (Note: even the default avatars ‘mystery person’ and ‘blank’ are in fact Gravatars served from gravatar.com.) WordPress does this by sending an MD5 hash of every displayed post or comment author’s email address to gravatar.com. Even with many plugins that introduce locally stored default or user avatars, this check still happens. On top of that, some themes or plugins force (Gr)avatars to load even if the display of avatars is disabled completely in WordPress’ settings. If for whatever reason you do not wish for Gravatar to receive these requests (which some people have voiced GDPR concerns about), this plugin is for you.
The way it works is every time WordPress attempts to display an avatar, this plugin first checks if the image is about to be retrieved from gravatar.com. If it is, the URL is changed to the locally stored ‘mystery person’ image (included with this plugin). If the avatar has any other source, this plugin doesn’t interfere.
Gravatars are also removed from the Discussion page in Settings and replaced with the locally stored ‘mystery person’ image. Again, any non-Gravatar images are left alone.
Upon activation of this plugin, if a Gravatar is selected as the default avatar, that setting is changed to the locally stored ‘mystery person’ image. If any non-Gravatar avatar is selected, that setting isn’t changed.
Upon deactivation of this plugin, if the locally stored ‘mystery person’ image is selected as the default avatar, that setting is changed to the Gravatar logo. If any non-Gravatar avatar is selected, that setting isn’t changed.

Redirect Gravatar requests

All requests to load an avatar from gravatar.com are redirected to a local image, preventing Gravatar from potentially gathering data about your site  …

Jason Coleman

Paid Memberships Pro

Jared Atchison

<h4>Add an avatar upload field on frontend pages and Edit Profile screen so users can add a custom profile picture.</h4>
Community and Membership sites on WordPress use this plugin as a lightweight solution for custom user avatars. The plugin is compatible with bbPress, as well as many popular plugins with frontend user registration and profile management features.
Admins can upload a user’s avatar on the Edit User admin screen.
Basic User Avatars also supports front-end avatar management for sites that want to keep users out of the dashboard. To use this feature, add the shortcode <code>[basic-user-avatars]</code> to any page in your WordPress site. We recommended placing this shortcode on another logged-in account type page, such as the WooCommerce My Account page, the Membership Account page, or any other front-end profile edit form.
The Avatar Upload form is automatically added to the bbPress User Profile > Edit frontend page.
If you do not want your users to be able to update their avatar, navigate to Settings > Discussion and locate the “Local Avatar Permissions” setting. Check this box to only allow users with file upload capabilities to upload local avatars (Author role and above).
<h4>Seamlessly Migrate from WP User Avatar Plugin</h4>
Version 1.0.5 includes a feature to automatically convert avatars formerly loaded through the WP User Avatar plugin. This means that you can disable WP User Avatar, activate Basic User Avatars, and have a seamless transition for existing avatars in your site. Be sure to update any avatar upload form that used the <code>[avatar_upload]</code> shortcode to use the shortcode: <code>[basic-user-avatars]</code>.

Basic User Avatars

it may have been around for a while but this plugin still works well

still works with WP4.9.1

Add an avatar upload field on frontend pages and Edit Profile screen so users can add a custom profile picture.

Redirect Gravatar requests vs Basic User Avatars