Gravatars are so-called “Globally Recognized Avatars” which allow you to show your choice of image (photo, drawing, whatever) alongside the comments you make on your own or others’ WordPress blogs.

You might find it handy to have multiple e-mails associated with your Gravatar account:

• to avoid every blog out there from knowing your main e-mail (remember, WordPress is often hacked).
• to avoid allow you to section off the damage if one of your e-mail addresses becomes compromised. If you get spam addressed to a given address, you can block just that one e-mail.
• to post to different categories of blogs with different pictures. For example, a dignified picture for responding to work-related blogs, and a fun one for personal comments on various blogs.

To start, go to gravatar.com, log in and select “Add an Email Address” from the “My Account” menu.

Gravatar Add Email: Start

Gravatar asks you for the e-mail to add:

Gravatar Add Email: Specify Email

Enter the e-mail address you want to add, and hit Enter. Gravatar doesn’t add the e-mail automatically, but rather sends a confirmation e-mail to the address you entered. This is to prevent people from associated e-mail addresses that they don’t own:

Gravatar Add Email: Confirmation Email Sent

Go to your e-mail account, and go to the confirmation link in the e-mail that Gravatar sent you:

Gravatar Add Email: Confirm Email Address

Gravatar will activate the e-mail for use with Gravatar and then ask you to select an image to use with that e-mail (if you have more than one image):

Gravatar Add Email: Email Confirmed, Choose Image

Select an image, and confirm it:

Gravatar Add Email: Confirm Image

OK, now you’ve added another e-mail to use with your Gravatar account. And you can keep your main e-mail (that you used to sign up with Gravatar) private.

Resources

Blogs covering adding multiple e-mail addresses to a Gravatar account include the WordPress blog and Leonid Mamchenkov.

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