{"id":598287,"date":"2018-03-20T14:00:18","date_gmt":"2018-03-20T13:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-rocket.me\/?p=598287"},"modified":"2023-08-29T13:25:29","modified_gmt":"2023-08-29T11:25:29","slug":"3-ways-speed-wordpress-gravatar-delivery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp-rocket.me\/blog\/3-ways-speed-wordpress-gravatar-delivery\/","title":{"rendered":"3 Ways to Speed Up WordPress Gravatar Delivery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Images can really slow down a website. They make up a whopping 48% of all web content<\/a> and account for almost half of your page load time. This is why optimizing images is so crucial.<\/p>

Yet, when it comes to WordPress, many people don\u2019t realize they can also optimize the load time of their Gravatar images.<\/p>

By default, WordPress uses Gravatar for displaying profile images and comments. But while these small pictures look great and help create a sense of community, they add inefficiencies to websites that really hit your page load speed.<\/p>

While it would be easy to just not use Gravatar (which we\u2019ll explore below), having no profile images at all would make for a dull commenting experience (it\u2019s nice being able to see who you\u2019re replying to, right?).<\/p>

Fortunately, there are a few methods that can help speed up Gravatar delivery. In this article, we\u2019ll take a look at three different ways you can speed up Gravatar on your site and reduce HTTP requests: caching, using locally hosted images, and using a CDN.<\/p>

What is Gravatar?<\/h2>

Gravatar stands for \u201cglobally recognized avatar\u201d and is a popular service that enables platforms like WordPress and other web applications to display user profile photos.<\/p>

When you create a Gravatar account, you can choose an image to associate with your email address. So when you set up an account with a site that supports Gravatar, it will automatically use the image linked to your email as your profile picture.<\/p>

Here\u2019s an example from the comments on the WP Rocket blog:<\/p>

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>

Gravatar links user emails to profile photos.<\/em><\/p>

What\u2019s so convenient about Gravatar is that your profile photo follows you around the web. This means that whenever you create a new account on a website you don\u2019t have to upload a photo each time.<\/p>

But this convenience comes at an expense: page load speed.<\/p>

For example, if you publish a post that gets a lot of comments, a visitor\u2019s browser will have to load all of the associated Gravatar images from Gravatar\u2019s external servers each time they view the post. Each time a browser has to retrieve an image from gravatar.com<\/a>, that\u2019s another HTTP request.<\/p>

Here what that looks like\u2026<\/p>

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>

HTTP requests to Gravatar\u2019s servers.<\/em><\/p>

The more comments you have on a blog post, the more HTTP requests to Gravatar\u2019s servers. While Gravatar.com<\/a> does use HTTP\/2 to help speed things up, caching and speed is still out of your control.<\/p>

In order to show you the kind of impact Gravatar can have on a site, I set up a test website with a blog post featuring 50+ comments. The site uses Gravatar by default.<\/p>

I ran the blog post through Pingdom to see how many requests my site was making to Gravatar\u2019s servers. Of the 49 HTTP requests, 33 are to Gravatar\u2019s servers \u2013 that\u2019s 67% of the total requests!<\/p>

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>

More than half of the requests are for Gravatar images.<\/em><\/p>

While I have caching enabled, there\u2019s a lot of potential here for reducing the total number of HTTP requests and streamlining my site.<\/p>

So let\u2019s take a look at how to optimize Gravatar three different ways.<\/p>

How to Cache Gravatar Images (with a Plugin)<\/h2>

Caching Gravatar images ensures site visitors download them once and don\u2019t have to load them again the next time they visit your site. While WP Rocket has plans to add Gravatar caching as a feature<\/a>, until it\u2019s available the FV Gravatar Cache<\/a> plugin is a great free option.<\/p>

FV Gravatar Cache allows you to:<\/p>