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Avatars vs Gravatars

I have set my site up to use Gravatars, but I wonder if there is any advantage to using Avatars. Googling around I found arguments around privacy issues, but I personally believe that if one wants to remain private, they should avoid posting to public forums.

That leaves me with the risk that Gravatar (i.e. Automattic) goes nuts someday and shuts down, substitutes images, or begins to charge for Gravatars. The other thing may be that downloading Gravatar images might slow down page loads. That’s all I got, and I’m totally guessing.

So, am I missing some more important benefits of using Avatars instead of enjoying the portability of Gravatars?

Wed, 2 Sep 2009 17:43:17
  • drmike
    • DEV MAN’s Mascot

    +1 for local avatars. I also dislike using 3rd party offsite material like this in general as you never know if it’s going to be up all the time.

    edit: It’s a selling point as well for your site as they can use that avatar elsewhere as well.

  • Christopher Price
    • The Incredible Code Injector

    I can see that retaining full control of such a visually important part of a site could be important.

    edit: It’s a selling point as well for your site as they can use that avatar elsewhere as well.

    Really? I understand that it will follow a user throughout the site — except BuddyPress — but where else is elsewhere? :slight_smile:

  • drmike
    • DEV MAN’s Mascot

    The rest of the net. The term is ‘hotlinking’ if you’re familiar with it. Just tell folks that they can use the avatars on sites elsewhere and maybe write up a small faq on how to figure out the urls and what sizes are available.

    That reminds me. Andrew, if you’re up to it, can you add in 80 pixels to the avatar plugin’s sizes? I believe VBulletin, SMF, and a couple others use that size as a default. Been meaning to suggest that.

  • Christopher Price
    • The Incredible Code Injector

    Thanks, drmike. I am familiar with hotlinking and that is a clever trick. Unfortunately, my community is an especially non-techie one. I have enough difficulty teaching them how to insert an image into a post, so I have concerns that many wouldn’t be up to that challenge.

    It seems that I need to decide between the ubiquity of Gravetars vs the control of local avatars.

    Thanks again, drmike and Andrew!