Custom Avatars For Comments
This plugin was initially written for a client and he agreed to open-source it. Thanks, John! Your visitors will be able to choose from the avatars you upload to your website for each and every comment they make. This can make leaving a comment on your blog more fun and more interesting for the visitors. See the comment form at the bottom for an example.
Downloads are available at wordpress.org.
The beautiful avatars on this page were created by Deleket.
Related posts:
This entry was written by nicolas, posted on 31. March 2010, filed under Content Management and tagged custom avatars, WordPress, WordPress plugin. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
I am Nicolas Kuttler, a web developer, system administrator and IT consultant from France, currently living in Germany. 
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This is a comment with a custom avatar from the list above the comment form. Nice, isn’t it.
This is another comment, this time showing my gravatar. Gravatars can be disabled if you like.
Haha. I just noticed this old comment. The old custom avatars in the comments are gone because I moved the wordpress install to a new server and didn’t export all meta data. See lower on this page for comments with custom avatars.
Saw this on WP.org today! Cheers!
Testing the cool stuff…
I see
As I understand, everybody can choose the same avatar or change. So maybe it’s more like a “mood” presentation, no ?
Well, I guess you could say that. Depends on the avatars you have of course. If you used some product images for example that wouldn’t be too moody.
Nice work! Is there any way to have the plugin automatically pick an avatar for new commenters. (like monster.ids from gravatar) I am afraid my commenters won’t know to manually choose one.
Sure, you can add a default.png avatar and set the checkbox to use that as default. That will override gravatars.
Or, you can set a checkbox to always select the first avatar from the list automatically. I’m not sure how the files are sorted though atm, I guess I should look into that code.
Actually, do you mean something like select one randomly? That would be very easy to add.
With some additional coding it could even be persistent, so that the plugin remembers a user’s avatar and automatically selects it on the next visit.
Yes I would love for it to choose them at random – so everyone doesn’t default to the same avatar. That would be excellent!. And if it could remember that would be nice too!
The random thing I’ll add soon. Remembering the avatar will take some time though. I like both ideas.
Oh btw, random selection is included now. Won’t work with caching plugins though, that would be too much coding right now.
hi
Nice, I think I’m going to use it on my blog. Cheers!
Wow. I really like it. Planning to post about it on my blog. Keep up the good work.
Great! Looking forward to reading your post.
ola parabés pelos avatares, náo consegui colocar no meu site.
Mas estou tentando…
Fascinating.. do you speak english? If the avatars don’t work on your site see the Install section of the readme.txt.
I can’t get this to work. (just updated the plugin and uploaded the folder and the pictures.)
I can’t remove the tick in the last two settings in the backend page for the plugin.
Any help would be appreciated.
Hm, very sorry about this. I had this problem while developing the release but thought it was gone.
Please try to deactivate the plugin, then delete it (through the plugin admin page). Then reinstall. That will erase all your settings. I kind of suspect the config upgrade code to be broken, I’ll test this right now.
If what I wrote above doesn’t work try the dev release that will be available in 15 minutes here: http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/custom-avatars-for-comments.zip
It has a new checkbox at the bottom to reset the form. Please do tell me if any of the steps fixes your problem.
Wow, fast answer. I’ll test it out and let you know.
I have a little feeling that the template I’m using (http://arrastheme.com)might be broken a few places. It uses some kinda special widget code, that rewrites a widget.php page when installing and using widgets.
It is after all a free wannabe-premiumpaid theme. So it’s gotta have some flaws – the searchbox sidewidget has to be at the buttom for instance. But that’s just some unclosed divs somewhere I think.
Oh almost forgot! The 2.0.0 version doesn’t make the commentsavatar folder in the wp-content by itself, I had to make it manually.
Yes, the earlier versions didn’t either. I’m not sure if I should do it because users need to upload their own avatars anyway. Maybe some day if I have some nice default avatars, with the right license.
I think you have a good selection right here, maybe try and ask the people who made them if you can get use them for your plugin?
Well, maybe I’ll add download links. I’d have to write a lot of code to install them through the plugin…
All right, I tried both of your problem solving solutions, still wont work (apart from the link to the plugin at the bottom of the page).
I also tried to change the theme to the default one to know if it was something with my theme, but it wont work in the default either.
I have added pictures to the commentsavatar folder, they are 100x100px, could that make a problem?
That shouldn’t be a problem at all. If you don’t mind send me a login though my contact page and I’ll look into it.
Sorry for not responding right away!
You can’t recreate the issue? the only other plugin I have is sexybookmarks (newest version) and akismet.
No. As I said, I had it during development, don’t even remeber why. I’m running this plugin on two domains atm and can’t reproduce the problem.
Did you install the dev version and use the reset form option?
Yes, I did deactivate it and removed it, then installed it again, didn’t helped, then download it from the link you provided, and then re-installed it with that. Still got the same issue.
Well, I have no idea what to do without an account to check.
You need to get in the backend of the wordpress to check it?
I can’t think of another way. Just use my contact form and we can discuss this on skype/aol/etc.
Ok, the problem was solved very quickly. If anybody runs into this problem too, the new 0.2.1.0 release has a checkbox at the bottom of the settings page to reset all plugin settings. After that, all should work again.
If not, try logging out of WordPress and in again.
i like that widget, well done!
Thank you!
Great plugin! Also, I was wondering if there was a way for the admin to have access to different plugins such as admin.png or something along those lines? Just something to differentiate from regular users and the admin team. Thanks. Great work.
Hi Torrey, yes, such a feature is relatively easy to add. The admins can still use the gravatars though, even with the plugin active. But I’ll keep it in mind for a future release.
[...] Eklenti Ana Sayfası [...]
Muy buen plugin
I am having some trouble getting the “Pick An Avatar” Option. I have added the title for the selection, and a few avatar images in the folder. But still, the “Pick an Avatar” option is not showing up. What do I have to do?
Do I have to add a line of code somewhere? Or do I have to re-name the avatar files to something specific?
Thank You
Hi Bhavya, did you check the FAQ? Yes, it’s possible to add the select field by hand to your theme. Or maybe you checked the box on the settings page to hide the avatar field. Or your theme wasn’t coded properly.
Never mind I got it, but is there a way to re-arrange the “Pick an Avatar” area? It comes AFTER the submit comment, I need it before the text field for the comment. How do I do that?
It’s described in the FAQ http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/custom-avatars-for-comments/faq/
hi – i’m just building this blog – i’ve installed this very nice plugin – thank you!
1 issue: in the select list, beside each avatar is the text “custom avatar” – I can’t find a way to eliminate that – would like list to display as it does on your page – images only. Thanks!
I just discovered that the text “custom” avatar seems to be a placeholder for an image.
it seems that this can also be selcted and will be displayed as “custom avatar” as if it were an image… hmmm, not sure.
take a look: http://thekeystothezoo.com
i solved the problem with the ‘custom avatar’ issue – discovered that if uploaded files were not checked in, then the list of avatars included both .LCK files and those not locked.
(this does affect Dreamweaver users who have enabled checkin/out)
Hi Deb, that’s right, the plugin doesn’t check if files in the avatar directory are images or not, and tries to display them all.
thanks for your great work and support!
You’re welcome!
i cant get it to work on mine
I hope this http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/custom-avatars-for-comments/faq/ can help.
[...] Eklenti Ana Sayfası Share WordPress Eklentileri [...]
Very nice!!!
I’m going to give this a try
Hi Nicolas. Really love your work here!
I gave it a go but unfortunately the avatars don’t seem to display at the comments section after having submitted a comment. (everything works great until that part)I’m sure it’s a coding issue on my theme, just that I’m unsure of where to tweak or how.
Hi Adrian, thanks! The plugin assumes that the theme uses gravatars. There’s some documentation about them on this site: http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Gravatars
I guess you wrote a custom comments loop? You could have a look at what the default theme does, the plugin works with it. Something like
echo get_avatar($comment, 64);should work.Hello, avatar in admin page are not the same one as I picked in comment page. My English is not good sorry.
That’s right, the custom avatars don’t appear in the admin. I thought that was a good thing, but maybe I’ll add an option so that they are used in the dashboard as well.
Tank’s a lot for this plugin. Really pretty
Is possible to change that? Ummhhh???
huh?
Nice! This really works
I need some help installing this plugin. It’s activated, but the page displays this error: “no wp-content/commentavatars/ directory exists. Please create it and upload some avatars”.
now what do I do?
Hi Lauren. You need to find avatars you want to use and upload them to your FTP server. Create the directory the error mentions and put your avatars in there.
Can you give us a little more detail on where to put the directory for Lauren’s comment “wp-content/commentavatars/”. Everytime I try creating this it tells me I can use the / at the end.
The location can change from server to server. The wp-content directory is usually in your WordPress root directory.
If your ftp client doesn’t like the trailing slash just try to omit it, it’s not needed.
Thanks for answering. Could it be called a subdirectory in wp-content? Or a folder? These might be stupid questions but, to me, the only stupid questions are the ones not asked.
Yes, wp-content/commentavatars/ is a subdirectory of wp-content/.
And yes, sometimes directories are called folders.
Maybe I should include one or two avatars with the plugin, but I’d need to find some where the license allows to redistribute them. And not everybody would use the shipped avatars anyway.
Right now you have to create the directory and upload images when you install the plugin. Maybe I’ll find a solution to avoid that.
Hey there! Great plugin.. I just have one question. I installed everything, created a couple of avaters and uploaded them. Now when i want to place a response to a post i do see the avatars, are able to click them but when i post anything it doesn’t show the avater. Any idea whats the problem here? Am i missing code in my comments.php file?
Thanks in advanced,
Dave
Hi Dave. Your theme or some other plugin could interfere with my plugin. Can you do a quick test with the default theme? If it still doesn’t work then, can you paste a list of plugins you use?
Hi Nicolas,
Thanks for the fast response! I tried it with the default theme. I do get the avatars below the comment field but when i post a reponse i still don’t see an avater anywhere near the response.
Any thoughts?
Thanks,
Dave
Whoops.. forgot to paste the plugings..
Contact Form 7
Favicons
Google Analyticator
Random Image Block
Real Statistics
ShareThis
Smilies Themer Toolbar
Sociable
WordPress Tweeter
WP Gallery
Regards,
Dave
Can you post a link to your blog?
http://lekkere dash jongens.nl/portal
I see that you theme doesn’t use any avatars. The plugin can’t add avatars to themes, it lust modifies which ones are displayed. So you will need a theme that uses avatars.
Btw, removed the link for obvious reasons
lol, i understand. Thanks 4 the open mind
.
.
Thanks for all your help, guess i’m gonna be working on another design
Thanks,
Dave
Oh my, I just see that I lost all custom avatar info in this post when I recently moved my blog to a new WordPress install…….
Hey there!
Great plugin..
Thanxx a lot
I have tried it on my site http://ehackz.best4blog.com
Its simply amazing
once again thanxx……….
That’s great! I’m glad you like the plugin!
I just had a quick look at your site and would like to suggest that you scale down the avatars a little. They are small on your site but you link to full size images, which slows down the page loading a little.
P.S. You made the 1000th comment
Thanks for your Suggestion..
And this is my Pleasure to being 1000th commenter.
And one more thing I want to know that as I move my cursor on avatars of your Page I gets Highlighted but not on my why?
That’s a CSS issue. I’m not sure how I implemented it here, if it’s in the plugin or in my theme…
Yes It is CSS issue.
And I found the solution
just change existing css file to
Thanks for this, I’ll look into it. It’s possible that the default CSS is incorrect.
que plugin mas chulo!!
I luuuuuuuuuuuuuuuv this plugin, i’ve already installed it on my website and i am very satsified with it.Congratz for this great job.
Anyway i have a question: I’ve uploaded more than 100 avatars for my visitors to choose and it’s not very beautifull to see all the avatars below the comment form
Is it possible to show the avatar in a pop up form? If yes, what file should i edit? Thanks in advance for the help!
HS/ Je suis français aussi, le monde est petit !
Hey Molotov, I’m not quite sure what you mean by popup. You could use a few lines of JavaScript or jQuery to make a ‘css popup’.
Or you can limit the size of the avatar fields and and use the overflow:scroll property, that won’t give you a ‘popup’ though, just not show all avatars at once.
Thanks for the quick reply Nico !
I will go on in english so everybody will take benefits of your answer.
In fact i mean a pop up form, for example inserting a line of text below the comment form e.g “Choose an avatar” instead of having all the avatars showing up.
When you would click on the text line it will open a pop up window showing all the avatrs.
Of course limiting the size of the avatar fields and and use the overflow:scroll property as you suggest would be even greater than my idea but i’m a total noob at coding so i don’t know how to do this, would you mind advising me on the code i should insert/alter in your files to do it?
You shouldn’t modify the plugin but your theme’s CSS file. Unfortunately I can’t walk you through doing this, but here are some great resources to learn HTML and CSS:
http://wsc.opera.com/
http://www.htmlhelp.com/
http://css-discuss.incutio.com/
http://www.brainjar.com/
http://www.htmldog.com/
http://css.maxdesign.com.au/
I will give it a try then.
Merci à toi!
I have installed it. Works perfectly for me. Thanks a lot.
Hi Nicolas, thanks for the great plugin for avatars, haven’t found anything like this anywhere else! I’ve installed it no problem on my website but unfortunately I have come across a problem that I cannot figure out!
You can see my site with the plugin here: http://www.finalfantasyworld.co.uk/?p=20#comments
All the icons appear nicely and they highlight ok when you rollover them, but it doesn’t seem to recognise when I click on one, so it doesn’t activate. Instead it picks the default avatar when I comment which is the bottom-right image.
And when I set the option to automatically pick a random avatar from the admin, it DOES select an avatar but then you can’t choose a different one!
I’ve compared my code and stylesheet to what is displayed here but can’t find any differences, I would greatly appreciate any help you can give… thanks for your time!
~Amber
Hi Amber,
hm, I can’t see the form on your site because only registered users can comment. What you could try is to install firebug and activate the JavaScript console. I would guess that there is some JS problem.
Hi Nicolas. Thanks for the reply and the Firebug suggestion. I discovered that I was receiving a “comment_avatar_js not defined” error which was quickly solved by inserting “” into the header of my template. It seems it was not linked to the JavaScript file!
Sorry, I inserted this code into the header: “<script src=’../wp-content/plugins/custom-avatars-for-comments/js/comment_avatars.js’ type=’text/javascript’> /script” but with the arrows on the ends.
You shouldn’t have to do that, doesn’t your theme have a
wp_head()call?Merci Nicolas,
J’installe et je me regale ¡
Hi Nicolas, Great plugin idea. Not working for me though. I am using the frugal basic theme and installed the plugin and hacked the comments.php file with select(); ?> The custom avatars show up and it appears you can select one yet when I post a comment the old default avatar appears? I must have to put some code in else where I suppose? It’s not to clear on install instructions on what to do about adding the additional code, as far as I can tell…I must be missing something yes? Charles
Hi Charles, you should probably switch to the default theme just to check if the custom avatars appear there. If the avatar select is visible everything should work, no more changes necessary.
Thanks..Got it. Nice work.
Congratulations for your plugins, you do a pretty nice work aroudn here.
I LIKE your avatar feature
the virtual site was very cool but I have not found the download to the avatars; any help
I have no idea what you mean. There are two download links above.
okay Nicolas, this is what wp is telling me.
No wp-content/commentavatars/ directory exists. Please create it and upload some avatars.
So I went to cpanel opened and attempted to create file- HG system told me it was alreay there.
So I clicked on file and they are there however, after refreashing my admin page for commentavatars the above statement is still there
Hi Johnny,
wp-content/commentavatars/has to be a directory that contains avatar files, not a file. Thewp-contentdirectory is in your wordpress install.I hope that helps.
Hi Nicholas,
Its a great plugin you got there. However I fail to get it working. I have activated it, created the wp-content/commentavatars/ directory and placed about 20 .jpg and .png files in there. I cannot see any avatars on the comments pages.
jack
Hi Jack, please check the plugin’s settings page, I think the checkbox to hide the avatars might be active by default. If not, check the http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/custom-avatars-for-comments/faq/, it’s probably that your theme is incomplete.
If I could make myself a little clearer, I can see the avatars now, but after one is selected it doesn’t appear on the comment after the comment is submitted. It just appears as a broken link.
Hm, that’s rather odd. Can you check the path to the img and try to access it directly? Maybe your webserver doesn’t have the permissions to read the files, I’m not sure if the plugin checks for that.
Thank you Nicholas,
Yes it is strange. However here’s the link to one of the avatars images:
http://www.agora-dialogue.com/wp-content/commentavatars/avat2.png
and it is accessible. I may try and see why tomorrow if I have more time
jack
this is really cool…users aint bothered to upload files.
I want the subscription box module in my comments, but its not working… i have placed the line of code : <?php show_subscription_checkbox(); ?>
in the correct spot but it does not work.
Also, the comment avatars used to have the square around them when you clicked it, but now they have a little selection button beside them. I want the squares back, how do i do that?
Subscription box? No idea what that is.
As for the avatars not having the square, that’s a CSS thing. I guess you disabled the built-in styles.
Cool plugin. Thanks.
Hallo,
Very nice plugin, but i have a problem: Internet Explorer 8 does not show the avatars. It showes only the check boxes
http://www.laleagane.ro/cstrike
Thx a lot
That’s very odd and I have absolutely no idea what’s going on
Hi -
I manually added the code into my theme’s comments.php and could see the avatars to choose, choose one, but it couldn’t be seen in the comment.
I tried what you suggested and switched to the basic wordpress theme and it worked there.
Can you help me further? I’m not sure what to look for in my theme’s files to fix this.
Thanks, I really like the plugin.
-W
Hello Wendi, the plugin will work with themes that use the
get_avatar()function call. Your theme developer should be able to add that, if not you can contact me as well. Good luck!I had to leave a comment because I wanted to try out these avatars! Thanks for this post.
This is very good, very valuable.
Wow,nice! Thank a bunch for this plugin, mister.
how do i enable built in styles?
Hi Bhavya, if they aren’t enabled by default, enable them on the settings page.
installed but its not working.
wondering why.
maybe FAQ helps