Let’s face it, not everyone who comments on your Gravatar-enabled blog has a Gravatar.

Instead, commenters lacking their Gravatar are assigned a boring default icon.

What if these commenters could have their own uniquely generated icon, that remained constant as long as their e-mail remained the same?

That’s where these WordPress plugins come into play:

• Wavatars
• WP_MonsterID
• WP_Identicon

Each of these plugins will provide your Gravatarless readers with their own custom made avatar. Read on to learn how to use them…

Wavatars

This is the first Gravatar-replacement plugin is the Wavatars plugin. What this will do is assign a colorful face to those users without Gravatars. It’s based on an e-mail address, so as long as the user uses the same e-mail, they’ll have the same icon attached to it.

You can get the plugin at WordPress.org.

WP_MonsterID

Similar to the above plugin, except WP_MonsterID will generate monster-like characters for your Gravatarless users. I currently have them in action on the comments section of Theme Lab, so if you don’t have a Gravatar, you’re assigned a MonsterID. Another similarity with Wavatars, is that WP_MonsterID icons are based of the user’s e-mail address.

You can get the plugin here. After installing the plugin, make sure to select the Gravatar + MonsterID option under Gravatar Support to have MonsterID as your fallback to a Gravatar.

WP_Identicon

By the same author as WP_MonsterID, WP_Identicon will generate a pretty pattern-based icon in replacement of a Gravatar. You may recognize these from Matt Mullenweg’s blog.

Conclusion

If you’re tired of the default Gravatar image, luckily there’s a few choices available to you to provide your users a unique (temporary) Gravatar replacement solution. If you’re a blog author, make sure you add Gravatar support to WordPress comments - if not already present in your theme. If you’d like to make your own Gravatar, I suggest you read this article and scroll to the “How Do I Make My Avatar/Gravatar?” section.