We’ve always sort-of had profiles here on WordPress.com — you probably remember giving your name and such when you first signed up for WordPress.com — but they’ve always been a little lame. You’d see your information when you wrote comments, or with some themes, or on the forums. Such basic functionality worked, but you guys have been asking for richer profiles that showed a bit more personality and were as easy and ubiquitous as your Gravatar.
These days you’re not just blogging on WordPress, you’re also posting photos on Flickr, updating your friends on Facebook, and Tweeting (Buzzing?) about everything in between.
What if your Gravatar wasn’t just an image that showed up when you comment, but you could attach more of yourself to it to better represent your style, flair, and personality not just with more photos but with links to all the cool stuff you’re doing around the web.
That’s what Gravatar profiles are, and they’re now live to the world and easy to edit right inside your dashboard.
We’re continuing the tradition of complete openness and transparency that Gravatar (and WordPress) has been known for, so nothing you put into your profile will be locked behind proprietary APIs or a scary terms of service — what you choose to share in your profile will be open to the world.
You’ll find some cool features on the new profiles: you can have a gallery of your favorite photos, add a variety of contact methods, and link your other profiles. Every linked account is verified so you know it’s not an impostor, and we also might be able to do cool stuff in the future like aggregate your content or update your avatar in multiple places when you update Gravatar.
While we’re all getting familiar with this new system, you will only be able to view your own profile on Gravatar.com, so you’ll have a bit of time to spruce it up before we’re out of beta. Check out this handsome fellow:
Sample profile on Gravatar.com
To edit your profile on WordPress.com just click this link. From there you can edit all of your information to build out your profile. Some of the links will go through to Gravatar.com, since that is the engine behind all of this, and you can also go edit it on Gravatar.com instead, it’s the same thing.
Edit your Public Profile
Personal settings and options now have their own page in the “Personal Settings” sidebar menu under “Users” in your dashboard.
Profiles will become public for everyone soon so make sure to check yours out and update it to include (or leave out) exactly what you want. If you remove all information from your profile, then other people will only be able to see your Gravatar, just like right now.
