Websites are all about sharing information and interacting with the audience on board. To accomplish this chain of interaction, the WordPress website structure entails the creation of several WP website users such as the Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor, and the Subscriber.
Establishing a connection among the website members, interested set of audience, publishers, and administrators is a key requirement for the real exchange of information.
WordPress websites mark the identity of the website participants who are either commenting, publishing blog posts, or interacting on the website so that the other online audience can get to have a semantic digital relationship with them. This is done through ‘Avatars’ that depict the identity of a member on the site. These Avatars can be graphical headshots, the real picture of the members, or anything at random as per the user’s choice.
By default, the WordPress CMS pulls up Avatars of the online participants through their email connected and verified ‘Gravatars’ which are globally recognized Avatars. They show up on the WordPress websites when users comment on posts or carry out other relevant actions.
Alternatively, WordPress offers the ease of creating custom ‘Avatars’ for users with the help of several WordPress Avatar plugins. Other website building platforms incorporate Avatars in their own unique ways.
However, these WordPress plugins are lightweight, easy to install and configure. In this blog post, we are listing 2020’s top 10 free WordPress Avatar Plugins that can help you customize your website Avatars.
Let’s begin the run-down.
WP User Avatar – BEST RATED AVATAR PLUGIN
4.4 out of 5 stars based 191 reviews
With over 3,00,000+ active installations, WP User Avatar is undoubtedly the best Avatar customization plugin available in the WordPress repository. With this plugin, the users can upload an image of their choice into their website’s Media library and use it as their Avatar image.
Offering the feature of using local Avatars and disabling the Gravatar, the plugin allows the website contributors and subscribers to upload their own avatars. However, the site admin can choose to limit the upload file size and image dimensions of these images by other users.
The plugin can also help users add a standalone uploader to a front page or widget with the use of a shortcode [avatar_upload] which will make the uploader visible only to logged-in users.
The plugin’s Support Desk aims to solve issues with the plugin, if any. So, if you are starting as a blogger or a new WordPress website owner, consider going with this Avatar plugin for your blog’s authors, commentators, etc. so that you can raise any issues with their support desk easily.
There is a Pro version of the WP User Avatar plugin as well. If interested in the pro version, you can check out the functionalities of the Pro version, here.
Check out: Best Rated AD management WP Plugins 2020SVG Avatars WP Generator – BEST Rated Premium Plugin
5 out of 5 stars based on 49 reviews
SVG avatars is best-rated WordPress plugin from codecanyon that allows your website visitors and user to create their own avatars. This is suitable for advanced websites where user are logging in quite often and use their member interface.
It comes with a bunch of amazing features such as:
- also available in Jquery version
- males & females avatars
- more than 300 graphics
- transparent background options
- reset option
- responsive
- any color application
- Integration is available with UserPro – Community Plugin (One of the most popular community membership WordPrews plugins).
Avatar Manager
4.9 out of 5 stars based on 35 reviews
Yet another simple yet popular Avatar plugin, the Avatar Manager helps the users store Avatars locally. The website users can choose to display a self-hosted avatar image right from their profile screen.
The unique thing about this Avatar plugin is its on-demand image generation and improved workflow. The admin can also provide custom user permissions to the plugin.
Definitely one of the best avatar plugins on WordPress.org with an amazing review score and used by more than 60k WP users./
Author Avatars List
4.8 out of 5 stars based on 27 reviews
If yours is a multi-user or membership WordPress site, you can use the Authors Avatars List plugin to display the list of user avatars as per their user roles on your WordPress site.
One of the interesting features offered by this free plugin is that you can mention somebody on the site’s post or page along with their Avatar by simply inserting single avatars for blog users or any email address.
If you want to display Avatar lists onto your sidebar by adding a widget or into posts/pages, the plugin will let you do so by seamlessly adding a shortcode with its TinyMCE editor plugin.
WP User Avatars
4.6 out of 5 stars based on 18 reviews
A rather simple one, the WP User Avatars plugin by John James Jacoby serves the purpose of allowing the registered website users to upload & select the Avatars of their choice.
Functional after a really simple installation and activation step, the plugin is a lightweight one.
WP Avatar
5 out of 5 stars based on 1 review
The WP Avatar plugin for your WordPress site will help you use an image of your choice as an Avatar after you have uploaded it to your Media Library. All the other users on the site can also upload their avatars.
This plugin allows the change of default Avatar and also removes the old Avatar as soon as a new one is uploaded, giving way to decluttering.
Podamibe Custom User Gravatar
5 out of 5 stars based on 3 reviews
A very simple Avatar plugin, the Podamibe Custom User Gravatar plugin allows the use of the default gravatar by disabling custom gravatar and also lets the user upload the custom Avatar of their choice by simply uploading it to the media gallery of their website.
It has over 10,000+ active installs in the WordPress community.
WP Custom Avatar
5 out of 5 stars based on 4 reviews
A light plugin, the WP Custom Avatar simply helps the users change the default Avatar on their WordPress website. Using the plugin is fairly simple. All you need to do is download and install the plugin from the repository, and configure it by going to the admin menu and then clicking on Appearance > Customize menu.
Once done with it, the users can upload their custom Avatar image in the WP Custom Avatar section. To select the chosen image, the users will have to visit the Settings > Discussion menu > Avatars section and click on the chosen one.
Simple User Avatar
5 out of 5 stars based on 8 reviews
Offered as a free plugin by Matteo Manna, the Simple User Avatar plugin lets the users add or remove their Avatar simply using images from their Media Library.
Letter Avatars
5 out of 5 stars based on 8 reviews
You must have definitely come across websites that denote users on the platform through the first letter of their names in the Avatar image.
The Letter Avatars plugin does the same for your WordPress website users. By using this plugin, the website users can replace their default Avatars with an image with the first letter of their email/username.
The best thing about this custom letter plugin is that the users can customize the Letter Avatar with the background color, the font color, the letter font, and the letter size of their choice. It also randomly selects the color if you want it to.
Without employing the use of any images, scripts, or font-icons (uses the theme font or Google font), this Avatar plugin eliminates the need of having Gravatars for users. It also does not use any external stylesheet, image, or js files, hence making the plugin lightweight and compatible with other plugins.
Optimize Gravatar Avatar – N/A at the moment
This Avatar plugin works differently from the ones mentioned above. It does not work to let the user choose a custom image for their Avatar. Instead, it optimizes their Gravatar image so that it does not affect the website loading speed.
All it does is store and load the Gravatar after saving it locally. It loads the Avatar from the Gravatar website only for the first time. Afterward, it loads it locally. In case the Avatar is absent, the plugin loads the default Avatar image.
Conclusion
As stated earlier, Avatars help establish a semantic relationship among the website audience, administrators, and even the other people on the internet who might stumble on your website. The presence of genuine Avatars on a website lays the impression that real people are involved with the particular website and it isn’t just there for dummies.
By using one of the many Avatar plugins mentioned above, you can provide a personal touch to your website Avatar images and connect with your site’s audience on an interpersonal basis.
Do let us know about your favorite WordPress Avatar plugin by dropping a comment below. We also look forward to receiving any boost-ups to this blog post so that we could improve our knowledge database and bring out the same for our audience. Thanks for reading.
Disclaimer: this article might containt affiliate links and we might earn commission aftert you purchase any premium plugin. This incomes helps us to cover our expenses to run this magazine.
