---
title: "User Avatars: Adding an Author’s Photo with a Plugin"
author: "Alex"
date: 2017-04-20
lang: en
source: https://voneff.de/en/user-avatars-adding-an-authors-photo-with-a-plugin/
---

# User Avatars: Adding an Author’s Photo with a Plugin

I guess it's due to the major role that [Automattic](https://automattic.com/) plays for the WordPress community that WordPress out of the box still doesn't support local user avatars. Instead, users have to register with Automattic's [Gravatar ](http://gravatar.com/)to have a profile image displayed on their website (as long as the theme in use supports this). This is weird and a hassle.

While this is most probably solved with a little coding of your own, it's also a niche for plugins – especially if you want your users to upload their pictures themselves.

The plugin with the most active installations, [WP User Avatar](https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-user-avatar/), seems to do the job pretty good. Not acceptable in my opinion though is the fact that the plugin adds a new top level menu item in the WordPress admin bar – instead nesting into “Settings”, where settings like these should go.

This is really intrusive and displays a sense of entitlement by the developers that I can't really understand. Of course, there are ways to clean up the WordPress dashboard – but why clutter it up in the first place? I really don't get why [ this plugin is so widely recommended](http://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/how-to-add-an-authors-photo-in-wordpress/).

Enter the competition: The very similar named [WP User Avatars ](https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-user-avatars/)has 10.000+ active installs and is actively maintained – by widely known WordPress core contributer [John James Jacoby](https://profiles.wordpress.org/johnjamesjacoby). This plugin may has less settings than the afore-mentioned one but it's light-weight, fast and does the trick.