Feedback on ClipFlair Social Network website Is Gravatar the only way for avatars?  Viewed 47137 time(s), 7 post(s), 11/12/2012 12:35:54 PM - by Markus

yes, the MonoX platform we use currenly has two modes: either a user avatar (uploaded image) or gravatar, but can't have both turned on at the same time. I have suggested in future version for them to try to merge these two functionalities.

In the mean time we opted for gravatar (also used at Redmine, Wordpress and many other social platforms). Gravatar allows you to define a main e-mail (the one you use for logging in there) and associate other e-mail addresses to and set to either use same image for all or separate image for each e-mail address (so that at other services you can see different images, e.g. different one for where you sign in with company/school e-mail and other where you sign in with personal e-mail etc.)

for people who don't use Gravatar.com to assign their e-mail to an avatar icon, we now show a unique geometric pattern (based on a hash number calculated from their e-mail address) image called "identicon" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identicon 

this is one of the fallback options of gravatar.com (others are monsterid [http://www.splitbrain.org/projects/monsterid] and wavatars [http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1462]) which I think has the most professional look

this looks better than reusing the same blank-avatar image (a shady figure), especially when showing list of members of a group