The deal on the new icons

Now you can customize how avatars show up on your blog, including some cool never-before available options:

You can find these options under Settings > Discussion.

Here’s what you can do:

• Turn avatars on and off, which applies to their display on your blog.
• Choose a rating, which right now only works for Gravatars but as we integrate WordPress.com and Gravatar avatars better will apply to both.
• Choose a default other than blank or the mystery man.
• Laugh manically as you contemplate your new-found power.

I would highly recommend trying out Identicons, which are a cool math-based image idea created by Don Park that’s unique to the commenter, so even if someone doesn’t have an avatar yet they have a consistent (and handsome) image next to their name when they comment.

We’re probably going to make Identicons the default for the dashboard instead of the mystery man, we just need to make a few tweaks to Gravatar infrastructure first. (The generated avatars are CPU-intensive to create, and it’s Sunday, a day of rest for the busy Gravatar servers.)

Also, don’t Identicons sound like something from Transformers?