Identicons, MonsterID’s, and Wavatars! Oh my!

April 22, 2008 | Posted by apokalyptik

We know that some sites don’t always appreciate the big blue G being all over their comments sections. Many sites use the default option to give their non-gravatar-able comments a feeling of continuity with their site design, but we’ve heard you calling out for more. It’s not ideal that anyone who isn’t “in” doesnt get to be unique.

For the community member Gravatar should be able to give you an implicit identity, letting you customize it explicitly from there. For the site owner Gravatar should give your site a feeling of community, helping to solidify your hard work by giving your members a face, some semblance of permanence.

Looking around at the existing wordpress plugins for inspiration we found these three exceptional projects: WP_Identicon, WP-MonsterID, and the Wavatars plugin. We decided to take the truly inspiring work that these projects have done, and internalized those ideas into gravatar. Now you will be able to specify a &default= value of wavatar, monsterid, or identicon to produce results like these:

identicon

wavatar

monsterid

default

Please let us know if there are others that you think would be worth supporting. And again: Kudos to the authors of these plugins for their hard work and brilliant ideas!

« SezWho supports Gravatars
Disqus supports Gravatar »

54 Responses »

  1. Alenônimo Says:
    April 22, 2008 at 2:14 am

    I’ve already implemented on my site. But my I make an suggestion?

    You see… Both Wavatar and MonsterID are… well… ugly and bad drawed. You could make some new ones, with anti-alias, by people who know how to draw… It would be cooler.

    If I knew how to make these, I would do something cool. Where’s the specifications?

  2. lori Says:
    April 22, 2008 at 2:43 am

    I think the monsters are totally cool looking :)

  3. ScottS-M Says:
    April 22, 2008 at 2:49 am

    That’s great. I’ve been wondering when gravatar would implement something like this.

    @Alenônimo
    Can’t really argue with you there although at least Identicons don’t take any drawing skills. Anyway funnily enough, someone who knows how to draw voluntarily drew up some cool new monster for the MonsterID plugin. It takes a bit more processing power to color them in though so not sure how gravatar would handle it (although I think you might be able to cut out the inner shading and just overlay it like Shamus does with the Wavatar’s gradients).

    Also since I don’t want to steal anybody’s thunder, the original ideas for Identicons came from Don Park and from Andreas Gohr for MonsterId’s.

  4. chaoskaizer Says:
    April 22, 2008 at 3:23 am

    second that, those 3 above is ‘not a pleasant avatar’.

    IMO the default Gravatar is presentable maybe you could create a transparent background (PNG or GIF) instead of the default “blue”.

  5. photolord Says:
    April 22, 2008 at 3:44 am

    Neat idea. I like it.

  6. Viper007Bond Says:
    April 22, 2008 at 4:46 am

    Alenônimo: they are generated by computers from a list of pre-made shapes and styles and are based on the e-mail hash. Click the links for Wavarar and MonsterID in the original post above and you’ll see.

  7. Bruce Says:
    April 22, 2008 at 5:45 am

    Shame that this was a priority over reversing the pulling of alpha-transparent PNG during the last downgrade that broke many people’s gravatars—which they had already been happy with.

  8. matthewmmoore Says:
    April 22, 2008 at 6:48 am

    Is there some way to set a second default if the wavatar fails? Some of the trackbacks on my blog don’t have an associated email address, so I end up with an empty 2 pixel square box where the avatar should be.

  9. Daniel Richard | Winning Everyone Says:
    April 22, 2008 at 7:03 am

    I created a heart shaped gravatar image as the default for my site. :)

  10. Mladen Mihajlovic Says:
    April 22, 2008 at 7:11 am

    I agree with Bruce. One thing people _are_ asking for is PNG’s and transparency…

  11. גירסאת ניסיון לתוסף הגדרת צורות ברירת המחדל של אווטרים מgravatar — מסעותיו של מרק בשבילי החיים Says:
    April 22, 2008 at 7:45 am

    [...] קראתי שבgravatar מוסיפים בצורה די פשוטה פונקציונליות של בחירת סוגי אווטרים שונים למגיבים שלא קיים בשבילהם אווט…, ובעצם מאחדים פונקציונליות של שלושה תוספים לתוך [...]

  12. fredelig Says:
    April 22, 2008 at 9:27 am

    Perfect, thanks…

    I think the Wavatars look great! :)

  13. Edward Says:
    April 22, 2008 at 11:01 am

    The monsterid is cute! :grin:

  14. x111 Says:
    April 22, 2008 at 11:05 am

    I love the idea, but I’m hoping better looking sets will be added. I think I’ll go for the Wavatars.

  15. Group Writing Projects Says:
    April 22, 2008 at 11:08 am

    Cool! I Stumbled this.

    I do agree with Alenonimo though, the monsters and wavatars aren’t very slick and hopefully it will be possible for the plugin to accept customized blog iconsets

    Jacob

  16. Carson Sasser Says:
    April 22, 2008 at 12:52 pm

    It would help if the Gravatar logo could be customized a bit. Like change the size and colors. I’m not impressed with the other three.

  17. cyclingplatypus Says:
    April 22, 2008 at 2:59 pm

    Gravatar Blog + Safari 3.1 (Mac) don’t play well together…weird.

    I’d like to see transparency and PNG too!

  18. jo0lz Says:
    April 22, 2008 at 3:57 pm

    I prefer having my own default avatar. Frankly, all the “default” gravatars are quite ugly :D

  19. Twenty Sided » Blog Archive » Wavatars: Depreciated Says:
    April 22, 2008 at 4:00 pm

    [...] read on the Gravatar blog that several popular icon systems have been simply built in to the Gravatar system. This means my Wavatars plugin is now superfluous. Instead of installing Wavatars on your blog, you [...]

  20. Catsandbeer.com Says:
    April 22, 2008 at 5:06 pm

    the idea is good, the execution is …

    hopefully this will inspire someone to make nicer looking default avatars (auto-generated or not)

  21. Matt Says:
    April 22, 2008 at 6:39 pm

    Dig the idea, and thanks for making it easy to execute, but . . .

    http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1618#comment-92317

    It would’ve been nice if you’d at least notified the plug-in authors before taking over their inventions. Even better, how about tossing some of that $29M in venture capital in their general direction?

    After all, a blog thanks a respect knuckles don’t pay the bills, you know?

  22. GreyDuck Says:
    April 22, 2008 at 7:37 pm

    This is dead sexy. I have the Easy Gravatars plugin installed now, and replaced the “default image URL” value with simply ‘wavatar’ and… it works! No muss, no fuss, no diddling around with my theme code. Color me thrilled.

    (I love Mandingo: Not once have I had to touch the raw PHP files, and I have random banner graphics and my Google Analytics and Gravatar/Wavatar support and… yeah. Dead sexy.)

  23. Now With Added Wavatars! : Losing it[1] Says:
    April 22, 2008 at 8:13 pm

    [...] Identicons, MonsterID’s and Wavatars! Oh My! [...]

  24. jazzle Says:
    April 22, 2008 at 8:39 pm

    just a pale (partially transparent) blue G would suit me

  25. John Says:
    April 22, 2008 at 9:03 pm

    Why not just allow anyone with a Gravatar account to upload their own image that will display for anonymous or non-gravatar users? Couldn’t this be just as easily acheived as Gravatar is to begin with?

  26. Matt Says:
    April 22, 2008 at 10:50 pm

    John, you can pass a URL to the default parameter to redirect it to your own image, a semi-transparent blue G, anything you want. That’s the whole idea.

  27. Viper007Bond Says:
    April 23, 2008 at 12:07 am

    matthewmmoore: edit your theme and hide Gravatars for trackbacks via a conditional.

  28. Travis Says:
    April 23, 2008 at 3:54 am

    this is related to matthewmmoore’s question — but if someone doesn’t enter their email address it displays a broken image. is there a way to hide gravatars if no email address is present — i mean, i’m sure there is but i’m not smart like that. can someone help me out with some simple instructions?

  29. Ma.tt » Identicons from Gravatar Says:
    April 23, 2008 at 5:34 am

    [...] and they were originally conceived by Don Park. With a single parameter, you can have the Gravatar API fall back to an identicon or even force it to return one. This works in any size Gravatar supports, up to 512 pixels. Sweet! (0) [...]

  30. Partha Says:
    April 23, 2008 at 6:15 am

    I hope for hoping better / eye shooting looks will be added. I think I’ll go for the Wavatars.

  31. Ben Says:
    April 23, 2008 at 10:14 am

    These are a nice addition as the blue G isn’t a great default for most sites.

    I’d like to see a more subtle 4th set added, just something to brighten the comments up but nothing really OTT like the monsters. The Identicons are nice but are too bright for black backgrounds.

  32. Fiona Says:
    April 23, 2008 at 11:15 am

    I loveing it! :) The look to sweet! :)

  33. jacksonj04 » Blog Archive » New Avatar Joy! Says:
    April 23, 2008 at 1:11 pm

    [...] who has commented on anything around the site now has their own totally unique avatar! This uses a clever bit of plugin called wavatar to create unique monsters for everybody who hasn’t set up their own Gravatar [...]

  34. jacksonj04 Says:
    April 23, 2008 at 1:51 pm

    As noted by Travis and matthewmmoore comments without an email address (Which includes trackbacks) return an invalid image URL. This is an implementation problem with WordPress (And possibly other blogs, not sure), not Gravatar. I look to Automattic for a fix, since it’s their application :D

  35. Otto Says:
    April 23, 2008 at 2:04 pm

    Nice.

    Implementing this with WordPress 2.5 turns out to be super easy. All that has to be done is to add a third parameter to the get_avatar call. So mine looked like this before:
    echo get_avatar($comment, 40);

    And now it looks like this:
    echo get_avatar($comment, 40, ‘identicon’);

    Just that simple.

  36. The Back-up Brain Weblog | Gravatares: Agora com Identicons! Says:
    April 23, 2008 at 3:21 pm

    [...] O Gravatar incorporou três variações novas, todas frutos do trabalho de usuários do WordPress que já procuravam aderir à idéia dos Identicons: Os projetos WP_Identicon, WP-MonsterID e Wavatars foram automaticamente mesclados ao Gravatar original, o que facilita a inclusão de qualquer um deles em substituição ao padrão original. Para isso, basta acrescentar o sufixo &default=opção à função get_avatar() original, onde “opção” pode ser qualquer uma dessas: [...]

  37. Homo Sum » Blog Archive » Gravatars & Identicons Says:
    April 23, 2008 at 4:11 pm

    [...] missed photo day at school” silhouette for their avatar image, however Gravatar.com also just rolled out the ability to generate images for people who don’t have a registered image us…. The idea here is that the generated image is always the same for any given input (i.e. [...]

  38. Strolling Brain » Blog Archive » Gravatars for all Says:
    April 23, 2008 at 4:31 pm

    [...] was right. I am sick of seeing the default little “gray guy” for all the people who were [...]

  39. Sterling Adventures Blog » Avatars Plugin Says:
    April 23, 2008 at 11:47 pm

    [...] feature that I have discovered is to set the default to wavatar (other options exist, check the link)! [...]

  40. Pete Says:
    April 23, 2008 at 11:54 pm

    Nice! And so easy. I have also developed a cool little plugin to allow local avatars for registerd users of your blog…
    Here’s the link - http://www.sterling-adventures.co.uk/blog/2008/03/01/avatars-plugin/

    So, now you can have the best of all worlds! Gravatars, personalised Gravatars, and localised user Avatars! :razz:

  41. Gravatar Adds MonsterIDs and Identicons :: Dammit Jim! Says:
    April 24, 2008 at 2:32 am

    [...] looks like Gravatar has added Identicons and MonsterIDs to their system. I’d been wondering when they would add [...]

  42. dino Says:
    April 24, 2008 at 3:32 am

    how i get my gravatar??

  43. Dusty’s » Post Topic » Ich bin ein… Says:
    April 24, 2008 at 5:30 pm

    [...] …identicon [...]

  44. Default gravatars wordpress plugin | A software blog Says:
    April 24, 2008 at 6:25 pm

    [...] week the gravatar guys had announced that they have integrated the functionality of three wordpress plugins, which created a random [...]

  45. earlemartin Says:
    April 25, 2008 at 6:45 am

    MonsterID, yes, well… how about OpenID, guys?

  46. Stephen Chu Says:
    April 25, 2008 at 3:00 pm

    This sounds like a solution looking for problem. We can customize what the guest/missing icon looks like for years. Or am I missing something? Oh, yes. Transparent support many many people want and use that got pulled.

    Weird priority if you ask me.

  47. tech.chodo.de » Gravatar: Service verbessert « Says:
    April 25, 2008 at 3:31 pm

    [...] 25. April 2008 | Autor: chodo Gravatar hat ein neues Feature eingeführt: Man kann für nicht bei gravatar.com registrierte User nun Identicons, Wavatars oder MonsterIDs anze…. Wer dadurch seine Privatsphäre eingeschränkt sieht, der kann natürlich einfach eine der vielen [...]

  48. fritz freiheit.com » Friday link dump Says:
    April 25, 2008 at 7:08 pm

    [...] Identicons, MonsterID’s, and Wavatars! Oh my! « Gravatar Blog (WordPress,PlugIn) [...]

  49. WordPress 2.5.1 some nice plugins, Identicons and more — Orangescale.NET / Thomas Arie Setiawan Says:
    April 26, 2008 at 2:33 pm

    [...] can have not only Gravatar when displaying comments, there are also Identicons, MonsterID and Wavatars. And, we can have them from [...]

  50. Recent Links: April 16 to April 23 at Alex Jones Says:
    April 28, 2008 at 7:00 am

    [...] Identicons, MonsterID’s, and Wavatars! Oh my! Information about adding a single parameter to your Gravatar call to have the service provide an ‘identicon’ for people who don’t have Gravatar account, instead of the default Gravatar logo. [...]

  51. hernaaan Says:
    May 5, 2008 at 2:22 am

    I do think that you have to improve resizing of the default blue G. I have 50×50 px Gravatars, and when I tried the ‘default’ option the resize of the G was awful, so I *had* to go back to the plain white/gray man.

    And could exist the posibility of having identicons (or even blue Gs) for trackbacks and pingbacks? If not, the border I assigned to gravatars would look quite nonsense.

    Thanks!

  52. Monsters and Geeks « Thunder of the Dragon Says:
    May 5, 2008 at 6:59 am

    [...] of code. You’ll need to add a bit more to that to enable Identicon/Wavatar/MonsterID. Try going here to know how to do [...]

  53. Doing more with gravatars: Part 2: Using gravatars for an author's bio Says:
    May 5, 2008 at 7:20 pm

    [...] can change the word “wavatar” to default, identicon, or monsterid. See the gravatar blog post to read about these options. I just like wavatars the [...]

  54. Encephalosponge » Now with Identicons Says:
    May 6, 2008 at 6:00 pm

    [...] from a while back, so I’m glad they had a recent backup copy. In other news, I also added the new Gravatar support for Identicons to the comments. That means that now instead of the boring old “blank face”, anyone who [...]

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