Gravatar Signup Encouragement (download) is a plugin that will encourage users without avatar on Gravatar to make one. It checks e-mail address that unregistered users enter in forms or stored e-mail address of registered users on gravatar.com to see if there is avatar associated to that e-mail address. If there is no avatar, it will display message which will inform user that he doesn’t have avatar on Gravatar and give him a link to sign-up page of Gravatar which would be pre-filled with user’s e-mail address.
Checks on gravatar.com for user’s e-mail address are done via simple and fast AJAX.
Message can be shown to:
- unregistered commenters when they leave text input field for e-mail address
- registered commenters to whom their registered e-mail address is checked
- registered users on their profile page, to whom their registered e-mail address is checked
- users who fill registration form when they leave text input field for e-mail address
There is no need for editing of theme’s files in order to show message, everything is done via JavaScript.
Both AJAX and display of messages are done with use of jQuery library. This plugin will load jQuery file to head of your page if it wasn’t already loaded by theme or other plugin(s). You can speed up your web site and save on bandwidth and server resources with use of plugin Use Google Libraries which will load jQuery file from Google AJAX Libraries. See here how will this help you.
You can select in what of four cases to show message, plus you can choose for each case where on page to show message. There are several elements already available to choose for all cases and you can alternatively add custom element by providing it’s id. Since this plugin uses jQuery selectors to find element, you can add even more advanced filters for selecting. Note that all selectors start with # . Also be aware that display of message may not look good with your theme.
Customization of styles of messages is also possible. You can customize messages by defining CSS style of it. Whole message is wrapped with div with ID depending on case:
gse_comments_messagefor comment formgse_profile_messagefor profile pagegse_registration_messagefor registration page
Text of message is also customizable, you can write any message you want, even use HTML tags you want. Note that you should leave link with URL placeholder if you want to show link to Gravatar’s signup page pre-filled with user’s e-mail address. Also note that same message is shown for all cases.
There will be no mess in database made by this plugin, since it adds only one field in database which is deleted if you uninstall plugin using WordPress’ built-in feature for deletion of plugins.
This plugin is fully internationalized, you can translate all text and link to locale version of Gravatar’s site. You can find .pot file in translations folder where you should place your translation. Please send me your translation by contacting me so that I can include it in next releases.
Editing of settings is done on page Discussion Settings in administration area of WordPress, in section Avatars. Here is a screenshot of how settings should look with all cases checked.
Settings form with all expanded options
Here are screenshots of displays of message in all cases with default settings.
Message shown to unregistered commenter on default theme with default settings
Message shown to registered commenter on default theme with default settings
Message shown on profile page with option to show below “About Yourself” header
Message shown on registration page with default settings
Gravatar Signup Encouragement is released under the terms of GNU General Public License. It is completely free so if you find it useful you can give something back to author. Your help could be done by translating plugin to your language, sending bugs and suggestions, promoting plugin in blogs, forums and other websites, or by buying web hosting and domain names through author’s catalog of industry’s best offers.
Support for this plugin could be get in comment section of this page or through WordPress support forum. Note that I don’t guarantee that I’ll respond to your entries nor that I’ll do it in short period of time. Before posting, please read documentation on this page or on plugin’s page in WordPress plugin directory. I’ll may delete questions for which answers are provided.
What a great plugin!
One minor problem, though… when I installed and tested it, it did correctly show the message when I entered an email address with no Gravatar. However, when I changed the email address to one which does have a Gravatar, the message did not disappear. This could mislead some folk.
Thank you for your comment and sorry because I didn’t reply you before; I was offline for ten days.
This issue is fixed in latest version.
I have upgraded to Version 0.94.8 and it works fine.
Thank you for fixing this.
Great plugin! But now that I switched to the Carrington theme, it seems not to be working anymore. Is there something to add to a template?
I checked your website and the problem is with some nonstandard code in comment form. On my server I installed Carrington theme but it didn’t use that code as on your pages.
What version of this theme you are using and did you make any modifications to it’s files or in it’s settings? If you didn’t, do you use any other plugin related to comments?
I again checked Carrington 2.2 and I can confirm that problem is with it (I don’t know how I saw different thing when I first time tried it). Unfortunately, in order to use this plugin with this theme, you’ll need to manually edit plugin’s file.
In plugin’s file, find two occurrences of
jQuery("#email")and replace it withjQuery("input[name='email']"). Then go to plugin’s settings and in section “Comment form (unregistered users)” check “Custom ID” and fill in text filed next to itcomments. After that, this plugin should work without problem.Note that if this plugin get updated and you use built in function for automatic upgrade or you manually replace files, your edits of code will be lost so you’ll need to repeat them. Also, if you change theme, there will be no more need for this changes so you should reinstall plugin to use it with that theme.
You can check “Notify me of followup comments via e-mail” to receive e-mail notification when new comment is posted.
Sorry, only noticed now that you had replied.
I’ve checked and cannot see any active, comment-related plugins. I had changed a few items in the theme but I don’t recall fiddling with the comment form, although I still have to get familiar with Carrington’s weirdish structure.
I’m using the latest version (Carrington Blog 2.2), by the way.
Thanks for this, I’ll try that this week-end.
Now I’ve seen the email notification widget.
The more I try these things the more depressed I get for being such an obvious dunce. I have tried to do everything step-by-step and I don’t see the suggestion anywhere on my site. Can someone take a look and give me a clue where I made the mistake? I’m at the point where I’d share the ID &PW with you to find the problem.
First thing, on page “Discussion Settings” in administration of your blog, you probably checked “Users must be registered and logged in to comment”. With this enabled, users must register first on your blog and then they could post a comment, and not like you posted comment here (by providing name, URL and e-mail address). You can try this when you log-out of your blog.
Maybe you did this intentionally but I need to warn you.
Second thing, on bottom of page “Discussion Settings” there is a section called “Gravatar Signup Encouragement” where you can setup options for this plugin. If you don’t know what is what, read this blog post above and FAQ.