I have finally debugged a long-standing Gravatar problem. This is a service owned by WordPress that helps you maintain an up-to-date photo, across the many web sites that subscribe to it.
When I registered with any new web site using an email address, it picked up the wrong photo. I once set up a WordPress blog for someone else, using my email and the other person’s photo then transferred it. This is the photo I’ve been getting. The only problem is that she doesn’t look like me.
Whenever I went to Gravatar, there was no sign of the photo. I discovered today that I must have set my gravatar up with one email address then changed to another and deleted the original. Some ghost in the machine had remembered the old email address and the photo that I could no longer see (worrying in itself?)
The hack was to re-add the old address and confirm the addition, when I received an email. At this point the photo appeared out of the shadows and I could delete it and choose a new default. My photo then automatically got updated on the new web account I created today. I don’t know what you would do if you didn’t still have access to the old email address.
You’d lose access to all your Tesco vouchers, I guess. But that’s a problem for another day. For now I return to being “like a girl”, as normal.
On The Outside 