TIP 6 > Gravatar, Yes or No? (Speed Optimisation)
What’s a Gravatar?
Gravatar (global avatar) is the service that allows us and our website commenters to have pictures on our profiles. This is quite a cool feature and there are many advantages for using Gravatar.
But as with everything, there is also a down side.
When we use Gravatar, every commenters profile pictures are retrieved from the Gravatar service, which increases load time. This is further increased because Gravatar also introduces multiple redirects which slows down our site even further.
There are a few options that you can use to eradicate this problem:
- Disable Gravatar on our websites
- Delete spam and excessive comments from posts (therefore reducing the number of overall comments)
- Configure WordPress to show only a few comments at a time
- Use a caching plugin for Gravatar
Recent Comments
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interesting, I hadn't considered Gravatar issues affecting site speed. They seem to be big fans of Gravatar use, overall, here at WA, as they are required for site comments which go directly to the websites here at WA.
So in a sense, your post is slightly 'counterculture,' which is not to say that it doesn't make sense! Marc
Hi Marc, I must admit, I'm a massive fan of Gravatar ...their use brings a personal affiliation when conversing online. What I suppose i'm getting at is that when we build each of these aspects into our sites, they all have the ability to introduce a load, which when taken separately seems negligible...but when accounted for collectively can start to seriously impact on load performance. Being aware of this we are able to mitigate the risks by choosing carefully what we install. Also I'm afraid I can be a little "counterculture" at times, I like to sometimes push the boundaries when they need a little push! Thanks for your feedback and I hope you have a great day.
I'm totally pro-- 'counter-culture' if it leads to better dialogue, debate and creative/more effective solutions, so kudos and thanks! Marc
nice info. I haven't noticed slowness because of Gravatar. If you have a reliable hosting( and a nice optimization plugin) there won't be issues.
Hi Asen, yes there are some effective Gravatar Plugins..which compensate for any lag. The seed I'm trying to sow here is that on there own, a lot of these optimisation tips may seem trivial and you won't see much of a difference if you were to simply ignore them, but in combination they accumulate. Thanks for your comments. Have a great day :)
Shucks this is great info.. I extended my number of comments shown on my website and it is definitely slow. Thank you.. I will change it back to default asap
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Hi Anthony - OK, I can appreciate that Gravatar will slow us down and you offer some ways of speeding up that slowing down - but what is your final recommendation? Gravatar yes or no?
Hi Dom, wow very direct, I respect that :) In a nut shell I'd say NO.
Cool - thank you my friend