Gravatar already provides a simple WordPress plugin, but it suffers from a common plugin problem: if you add its “gravatar” function to your comments template, you either have to wrap it in a function_exists check, or you’ll get a fatal error when you deactivate the plugin.

My gravatar plugin lets you use WordPress’s action hook callback system, so it just disappears when the plugin is deactivated.

How it works:

• If you just want to display a commenter’s gravatar image, just add
  

  
  <?php do_action('gravatar') ?>
   

  to the appropriate place in your WordPress comments.php template. By default, it will generate a gravatar image.

• But you can customize it as much as you want, by passing an array of arguments to the ‘gravatar’ action hook. On my blog I’ve done the following:

  
  <?php do_action('gravatar', array('div_class' => 'gravatar', 'return' => 'div', 'default' => get_bloginfo('stylesheet_directory') . '/images/default_gravatar.png', 'rating' => 'PG')) ?>
   

  That tells the plugin to wrap the gravatar image in a div with a class of “gravatar”, using a default gravatar image located in my theme’s images directory, and returning only PG-rated gravatars.

  Here is a complete list of arguments you can pass to the gravatar hook:

  • alt: Text for the alt attribute of the gravatar image.
  • border, b: An argument you can pass to the gravatar server, the “border” is a hex color to be generated around the gravatar image.
  • comment_author_email: The email on which to base the gravatar. By default, the plugin gets this from the comment’s author email.
  • default, d: The default image to use if no gravatar is available.
  • div_class: A class for the div element surrounding the gravatar, if you’ve set “return” to “div.”
  • echo: Whether to echo the result (true by default). If you wanted to assign the gravatar image URL to a variable named $path, you would do the following:
    
    
    <?php $path = apply_filters('gravatar', array('echo' => false, 'return' => '')); ?>
     
  • gravatar_id, g: The gravatar id. Usually this is generated from the commenter’s email, but if you want you can pass it directly.
  • img_class: A class for the gravatar img element.
  • rating, r: The rating of allowed gravatar images, as explained at the gravatar website. Optinos are G, PG, R, and X.
  • return: What to return. By default, this is an image element (“img”). You can also select “div” for a div element around an image, or just return the path to the image with “return” set to “”.
  • pattern: Any string containing %s; the plugin will return that string, replacing %s with the gravatar image path.

    For example, setting “pattern” to would return the gravatar image in a span element.

  • size, s: The size of the gravatar image, in pixels. Currently it can range between 1 and 80.

Download

Filosofo Gravatar Plugin 1.5 | March 15, 2007

• filosofo-gravatars.zip
• filosofo-gravatars.tar.gz

If you have problems, questions, or suggestions, please leave a comment below or open a ticket in my support forum.

See some of the other WordPress plugins I’ve created.
Like this plugin? Is it worth a latte?



This month I have received $31.50 in donations for the free plugins I offer here, which is about $0.01 per download.

]]> http://austinmatzko.com/2007/10/23/gravatar-plugin/feed/ 68