How To Create An Avatar with Gravatar

In the previous post, we gave a few good and practical reasons to have an avatar. We are now going to show you how to go about setting up an avatar.
So how do you associate an avatar with your email address?
Decide on which email address you would like to associate with your avatar. It would most likely be that email account you use more often more often in social networks websites such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook and so on.
Here are a few steps to get it done:

1. Go to http://en.gravatar.com/site/signup and signup to get your FREE gravatar account.
2. Enter a valid email address for your gravatar account – that email address will not  be necessarily linked to your avatar.
3. You will be then sent a confirmation message to validate your email address along with other details to complete the setup of your gravatar account.
4. Choose a password for your account.
   You will always need to provide your  email address and password to access your Gravatar account.
5. Now that your account is active, you can “add a new image” from your computer.

Because your avatar will be resized into a small icon about 40×40 pixels in dimensions, it’s best you optimize your image first  using  graphic program such as Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Fireworks before you upload it. That will give you a crispier avatar even after it’s processed by gravatar.com

Keep in mind your Gravatar.com account allows you to create an unlimited  number of avatars each associated with one of your multiple email accounts.

Another web site you can use to create fancier avatars is  Evolver.com. It allows you to customize pre-made avatar to suit your need. A second option is to convert your very own photo into an avatar looking model.

So even if like me you would like to keep your online privacy, using an avatar instead of your actual photo can be the best alternative for an online identity.