Do gravatar images increase the load time of your website? Well, cache gravatar images in WordPress website, and you will be good.
These days, almost every website owner has gravatar in the author box. At the same time, you will be able to see the gravatar for the commentators as well, which is quite sensible as the website looks more genuine and authentic with avatars.
But yes, it slows down the website’s speed. Gravatar pulls the images to load from every commentator’s Gravatar server. Which is attached to the individual email address.
Hence, while loading the images, the website has to make several HTTP requests, which dramatically increases the load time. And if your website receives several comments, then your users have to suffer a lot.
What is Gravatar cache?
Gravatar cache ((Globally Recognized Avatar)) likely refers to the caching mechanisms used by Gravatar to optimize the loading of user avatars. Caching can occur on the client side (local device) or server side to store and quickly retrieve frequently requested avatar images, improving overall performance and reducing server load. If avatars are not updating as expected, it could be due to caching, and clearing the cache may resolve the issue.
In the context of Gravatar, caching may occur at different levels:
- Client-side caching: Once a Gravatar image is requested by a user’s email address, it may be cached locally on the user’s device. This helps in reducing the load time when the same avatar is needed again on the same website or other Gravatar-enabled sites.
- Server-side caching: Gravatar servers may implement caching mechanisms to store frequently requested avatars for a certain period. This reduces the need to regenerate the avatar image for every request, improving response times.
Caching boosts web service performance by storing frequently requested content, easing server load. If Gravatar images aren’t updating, it could be due to caching. Resolve by clearing the cache or waiting for it to expire.
Impact of Gravatars on your WordPress Website
Check out an example of a site tested in GTMetrix making the HTTP request to load all in Leverage Bowser Caching. Most of the requests are being made from Gravatar.
As can be seen in the above list, one post has to make so many requests to load it. And those are all from the comments. Does that mean you should stop accepting comments?
Well, comments are good for your website in several ways. It is good to find an alternate solution to speed up your website.
You might be using speed optimization plugins for your WordPress site and caching the images on your site. But it won’t help out Gravatar at all. So, learn about caching gravatar images and increasing the site optimization to a further level.
Cache Gravatar Images in WordPress
Let’s jump in and see how we can cache Gravatar images for a better user experience.
- Step 1: Install and activate the FV Gravatar Cache Plugin for your WordPress website.
- Step 2: Navigate to Settings > FV Gravatar Cache from the WordPress dashboard.
It will open the FV Gravatar cache plugin settings page, which looks very simple and thankfully doesn’t have to do a lot to make the plugin work.
- Step 3: From the FV Gravatar cache settings page, click on the Run Con Now button.
The plugin will cache all the Gravatar images on your website. Results can be seen in the Cache Information section (just click on the Show link).
Note: This might take a few minutes, it all depends on the number of images that have to be cached.
- Step 4: Finally, click on the save changes button.
There are times when the users keep changing the Gravatar profile images. So it’s always good to show the updated blog commentator’s avatars on your website.
So what now, as the images are already cached on your WordPress hosting server? Considering this, the plugin that has been developed has already incorporated an option.
All you need to do is check the Daily Chron feature. That’s it. The plugin will make sure that it features the updated images, as it will sync with Gravatar at some intervals. And that will help prevent requests in real-time.
Conclusion:
It’s a great plugin to have on your WordPress website. Cache the gravatar images on your own WordPress server and be out of worry about your site loading. It will dramatically optimize and enhance the site’s performance.