A small update on the "changing your avatar" issue

I know most of our Forum members couldn't care less about this, but since a few of us were discussing it a couple of days ago . . .

I've just been browsing around the Net and found my way to some WordPress forums (our new Forum format is a WordPress "plugin").

Lots of complaints about avatar updates not working, or taking a long time, or sometimes working and sometimes not.

 -  I have updated my gravatar days ago, but the old picture still displays on wordpress publicly (not gravatar); the blog picture/icon under settings-general allows me to upload and says it has saved, but then does not actually save and display the correct photo; my profile picture under users-my profile appears correct, but does not display publicly. I have cleared the cache. The correct pic is a color version.

 -  My users and I are having issues changing our avatar after the first time. It's like once the avatar is changed it can't be undone. Now I've tried testing it, and sometimes I can get it to change, but not consistently, and maybe only once out of 20 times. I have tried deleting caches and everything. Is there something I and my users are both missing? Is there a code I can put in functions.php to rectify this issue? 

 -  Hi,
I have a similar problem. I have changed my gravatar photo and when I´m logged in the new photo is shown but after logging out the profile shows my old photo that I already removed from the profile. Cleaned the cache memory but it didn´t help.

Administrator's answer:

Gravatar images are cached and frequently take several days to display after a change. Do not keep uploading! The first place they tend to display is here in the forums and I see your Gravatar here. If several days have passed and that change is not in evidence then post here for Gravatar support > http://en.gravatar.com/site/contact-us/

("Gravatar" is the system used by WordPress for handling avatars).

Short answer - This a not a problem confined to our particular forum set-up. Slow or failed updating of an avatar is a known and widespread problem on WordPress-based sites. There are lots of nerdy technical workarounds on offer, but that's probably not something we would want to get into.

I even uncovered the bizarre fact that for avatars, only "G-rated" images are acceptable and if an image has a "PG" rating it won't be loaded! (How they work out an image's rating, heaven only knows).