If you haven’t heard, Automattic has released a plugin called JetPack that provides self-hosted WordPress blogs some functionality that was only found on WordPress.com blogs (read more about that here). One of the plugins that the pack provides is called Gravatar Hovercards. Here’s what Automattic has to say about this plugin.
Hovercards enhance plain Gravatar images with information about a person: name, bio, pictures, their contact info, and other services.
To see hovercards, look at any blog post on your blog that has comments. If the commenter has a hovercard associated with their gravatar, mouse over their image and the hovercard will appear. To turn hovercards off, click the Deactivate button above.
If you hover over my Gravatar in any of my responses, you’ll see the full effect of what’s possible when you install this. The one thing I’m sure most people won’t have is an updated Gravatar profile, so this caused me to take a little trip over to Gravatar.com and do a little update. If you use a Gravatar, you might want to get over there and update your profile too. I never knew that they have upgraded and added a bunch more functionality. It’s looking to me like they might be trying to emulate some type of business card functionality. I kinda like that idea since I use my Gravatar everywhere I can.
If you’d like to add this functionality to your WordPress site too, you can install the JetPack plugin which also comes with 7 other plugins like (click to visit the actual plugin page) WordPress Stats, a Twitter widget, ShareDaddy, After the Deadline, and a few others. If you would like to just install the Gravatar Hovercard plugin by itself, the page is here, or just do a search for the plugin in your WordPress admin.
Of course, if you don’t have a Gravatar to speak of, you can just head on over to Gravatar and set yourself up. If you’re a little confused by all this Gravatar business, I wrote this post a while ago about Gravatar that should help you out.
I noticed that most of my regular commentators don’t have anything beyond the standard information. If I’m going to enable this type of stuff, I felt it best that I let you all know so you can decide if you want to update your profile to get the best out of Gravatar that you can.
What do you think of the Hovercards? Are they beneficial? Are you considering installing them on your site?
Twitter: waynejohn
says:
Hover over my mug shot to see my Hovercard ->
Twitter: Area224
says:
I may be a geek, but I absolutely have to install this NOW.
HOWEVER…does this work with DISQUS, or is it just for those who use Gravatar?
Twitter: waynejohn
says:
Your results may or may not be the same with Disqus. I’m not sure…
If they use Gravatar for the image, which I know they do since it seems to pull mine, you might be in luck. But, it might not because of Disqus and the way they set things up.
I see no harm in trying it out.
Twitter: ariherzog
says:
Consider this a test comment.
Twitter: waynejohn
says:
Looking good! What do you think? Do you find it useful/beneficial, or overkill?
I didn’t know that Gravatars belongs to JetPack. I was wondering before about the picture placed at the side when you do commenting until someone told me about it and introduce me about gravatar.
I find it cute and entertaining.
Twitter: waynejohn
says:
They are two different things. JetPack includes several plugins in one package, Gravatar Hovercards being one of them.
Cute and entertaining is nice, but what about informative and useful for visitors when they are checking out a person that left a comment?
Thanks for commenting Kirsty!
That’s super cool, Wayne. I see it in the comments here. I’d definitely install it in my new blog. Thanks for the update.
Twitter: waynejohn
says:
Update your profile on Gravatar, and if you install it on your site, let me know and I’ll come check it out.
Pretty cool. It really is about time that the Gravatar got an update and got ushered into the new year.
Twitter: AboriginalMama
says:
This is pretty nifty. I love how it pops when you hover, and your Gravatar’s looking pretty good! Myself, I’ve got a Blogger blog, so plug-ins aren’t really something I can use. But I can at least head over to Gravatar and update my profile info!
Delena
Twitter: waynejohn
says:
Part of it is all fancy-shmansy, the other part is good info for those that want to learn more about you. I think it’s worth the time.
Not sure why your comment keep ending up moderated. It’s not me doing it…I know you are well beyond the 2 comment approval. Hope you don’t mind that happening…I just can’t see why that would happen to you yet.
That was a much needed feature in wordpress, i’m glad someone thought of building a plugin for it.
I should install it soon on some of my blogs and see how it works, but it looks promising at first look.
Thanks for the tip.
Twitter: waynejohn
says:
I’ve always been a fan of Gravatar, glad you liked it, Maria.
Twitter: FinallyFast
says:
Very cool! I’ve definitely been wondering what this whole jetpack business was all about, but I’ve had yet to take a look at it until now. The hovercard thing is awesome, especially the social media buttons you’ve got in yours! I’m gonna have to head over there now and figure out how to do that!
Twitter: waynejohn
says:
Glad you like it. What’s funny is that we can tell that you haven’t made it over there yet. haha
That’s super cool, Wayne.
Twitter: BasicBlogTips
says:
Hi Wayne! I’m a former WordPress.com user and I like the idea that WordPress is bringing some of the functionality over to self-hosted blogs. I already have the WordPress stats plugin installed but I might get Jet Pack instead. Thanks for the heads up!
Twitter: waynejohn
says:
I need to provide an update on this. I’ve since removed the JetPack from my collection. I found that I only use a few of the plugins, and felt that I could do without JetPack and just install the plugins that I want to use individually.
I tried to get the gravatar hovercards working, but something seems to be amiss with the stand-alone plugin. I’m still in redesign mode, so we’ll see what happens.
Thanks for coming by to check out my site, and I’m happy to have you here, Ileane! I enjoyed your site, and you’ll see more of me there for sure.
Cheers!
I also use gravatar and feels good looking others are also happy to use it.
I just found out about hovercards this week, they are so cool!!!
Twitter: waynejohn
says:
They are, aren’t they!
Does that name translate to anything? I notice that you use that in many places.
Gravatar Hovercards….coool. i think i have to install it and check the results.
I too uninstalled Jetpack today. I found that the WordPress Stats part was slowing my site down (tested on webpagetest.org) and a couple of times a page failed to load.
Some good features, but very annoying that you cannot chose which ones to have switched on.
Twitter: waynejohn
says:
Yup, I’ve since uninstalled this too. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to get the gravitar plugin to work outside of Jetpack…total bummer.