How to Insert Your Picture/Avatar into Your WordPress Blog

By Lisa Sabin-Wilson from WordPress For Dummies, 5th Edition

When setting up your WordPress profile, you're given the opportunity to insert your picture. The picture/avatar that you insert into your WordPress blog is used in several ways:

The WordPress Blogs of the Day page: This page lists the top posts from the top blogs of the day. If your blog is included in this list, a smaller version of the picture you’ve uploaded to your profile appears next to the listing.
*The Freshly Pressed: Also called a “fresh” post, this appears on the main WordPress.com page under the Freshly Pressed tab. If the WordPress spotlight shines in your direction, your picture is displayed here for your own 15 minutes of WordPress fame.
The WordPress directory (by topic) of its community blogs: This directory is called the Tags page. Bloggers on WordPress can tag their posts with keywords that help define the topics of their posts; WordPress collects all those tagged posts and sorts them by name on the Tags page.
On Tag pages: This blogging page allows you to find the most recent posts that WordPress bloggers have made on the topic of blogging. If your blog appears in this directory, a thumbnail of your picture appears, as well.

Follow these steps to insert a picture or avatar into your profile:

Choose the image you want to attach to your profile and save it to your computer.

Upload an image that’s at least 128 pixels wide and 128 pixels tall. Later in these steps, you see how you can crop a larger image to the perfect size.
In the Current Gravatar section of the My Public Profile page, click the Change Your Gravatar link.

The Gravatar.com window appears. Click the Upload a New Image from Your Computer link. The Select File from Your Computer window opens.
Click the Browse button and select an image from your computer.
Click the Next button.

No matter what size image you chose, the Gravatar.com page allows you to crop your image to the correct size and lets you decide which part of your image to use for your picture display. When you click the Next button, the Crop Your Photo page appears, and you can crop your chosen picture to the desired size.
Use the crop tool to highlight the area of the picture that you want to remain after cropping.

The box with a dotted line outlines the part of the image. This dotted outline indicates the size the picture will be when you're done cropping it. You can move that dotted box around to choose the area of the image you want to use as your avatar.

The Gravatar.com crop tool gives you two previews of your cropped image on the right side of the window: Small Preview and Large Preview.
Click the Crop and Finish! button.

The Choose a Rating page opens, where you can choose a rating for your new Gravatar.
Choose a rating.

The rating system works very much like the movie rating system you're familiar with: G, PG, R, and X. A G rating means that your Gravatar is suitable for all ages, whereas an X rating means that your Gravatar contains some unmentionables that you would not want any kids to see.
Choose an e-mail address.

If you have more than one e-mail address associated with your WordPress account, you can assign your Gravatar to a particular e-mail address so that your Gravatar images appear on any blog you comment on, provided that you use your assigned e-mail address to do so.

When you’re done, you get a message from Gravatar.com that says Your new Gravatar is now being applied.
Click the X in the upper-right corner of the window to return to the Profile page on your WordPress Dashboard.

The My Public Profile page now displays your newly uploaded Gravatar. Visit this page again, anytime, to change your Gravatar.