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Gravatar Adds MonsterIDs and Identicons

ScottS-M — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 02:32:54 +0000

It looks like Gravatar has added Identicons and MonsterIDs to their system. I’d been wondering when they would add something like this since it seems like such a simple and useful addition. I was thinking my plugins wouldn’t get much use now but it seems like they’ve gotten quite a few hits in the last few days. Not sure if that’s related to Gravatar or just random but I guess some people are still finding them useful.

So I guess I’ll keep maintaining the plugins since unfortunately Gravatar doesn’t really give you all the configuration possibilities of WP_Identicon or the hand drawn monsters of WP_MonsterID.

Speaking of hand drawn, Lemm, the kind illustrator that drew up the new monsters, has (re?)started No More Tangerines, a blog showing off some of her art. It’s pretty cool to see the progression her drawings go through.

WP_Texticon

ScottS-M — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 04:56:23 +0000

I realize I’m getting in the dead horse beating side of automatic avatar creation plugins but brainsolid asked for a plugin to generate binary avatars that looked like the text from the matrix and I figured it wouldn’t take too long to change WP_Identicon over to it. Of course, then other things came up and I managed to take quite a while to get around to it but it’s done now so here is WP_Texticon. It generates avatars with an array of colored characters. It’s sort of hard to describe so it’s probably easier to just show a few examples.

So I guess it’s mostly for anyone that likes that text in the Matrix, writing about code (with 0 and 1′s or 0-9 and A-E if you want to get fancy) or biologists (give every commenter their own DNA sequence with ATCG) or maybe general literature (with some random letters and a white background).

Features

Dynamically generated avatars for each commenter
Matrix/DNA/Binary-like text array icons
Customizable character selection
Gravatar support
No theme edits necessary

Current Version:

WP_Texticon

Installation instructions:

Unzip wp_texticon.zip. Upload wp_texticon.php and the texticon folder. Make sure the texticon folder is writable. If your unzipping program creates a wp_texticon folder please only upload the contents (wp_texticon.php and the texticon folder). That should be it. Texticons should now appear next to your commenter’s names.

You can adjust the background colors, the type and number of characters making up the Texticons and CSS in the Texticon Control Panel. If you’d like to change the fonts used for the characters, add or remove any Truetype Fonts (files that end in .ttf) you’d like to the texticon/fonts folder. You can also clear the Texticon image cache in the control panel.

For Advanced Users:

For even more control, you can disable the automatic placement in the Texticon Control Panel and add an Texticon to any comment with texticon_build($comment->comment_author_email, $comment->comment_author);. For example, find the comments.php of your current theme (it should be in the folder wp-content/themes/[currentThemeName]/). Open it up and look for something similar to foreach ($comments as $comment). Inside this loop there should be code that displays the comment author’s name or metadata like

. Just before all this enter:
comment_author_email, $comment->comment_author); ?>
If you would prefer to base the Texticons on the commentor’s IP address instead of the commentor’s email just replace $comment->comment_author_email in the above with $comment->comment_author_IP.

Change Log:

v0.52 3-27-2007:
- Fixed missing gravatar bug
v0.51 3-27-2007:
- First Public Version

Alternative WordPress Avatar Plugin

ScottS-M — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 14:44:04 +0000

Shamus (of DM of the Rings fame) has made his own avatar generating WordPress plugin called Wavatars. They do look pretty good. I like the gradients he uses and the artwork looks pretty nice (almost as good as say monsters or geometric shapes ;) ).

He has some good ideas with automatically adding the icon to the user’s name (I had thought this would mess up the html but now that I think about it should be ok for most blogs) and gravatar support (I suppose they’ll be catching on now that they were bought by the WordPress guy) that I think I’ll implement in my plugins in the near future.

Hopefully we’ll see more automatic avatar generating plugins as they catch on.

WP_Identicon

ScottS-M — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 15:11:53 +0000

A couple weeks ago I made a WordPress plugin to generate unique monsters for each commenter. Don Park came up with the original idea for representing users with geometric shapes. Since I already had the framework in place I thought I’d make a WordPress plugin for the original geometric Identicons. If you want to visually represent users (but maybe you don’t like monsters so much?) then this plugin is for you.

So what is an Identicon? It’s a randomly generated assortment of shapes that is specific to a commenter’s email (or if you prefer IP address). Identicons allow visual representations of commenters without requiring any external sites or user interactions. With 40 possible shapes (about 70 with inversions) in 3 possible positions, around 8000 distinguishable colors and four different rotations for each part, there should be several billion possible shape combinations which, even with the increasing chance of overlap with each additional user, should be quite enough for almost any blog.

Features

Dynamically generated avatars for each commenter
Consistently themed geometric icons
Consistent on any blog
Gravatar support
Theme edits no longer necessary

Current Version:

WP_Identicon v1.02

Installation instructions:

Unzip wp_identicon.zip. Upload wp_identicon.php and the identicon folder. Make sure the identicon folder is writable. If your unzipping program creates a wp_identicon folder please only upload the contents (wp_identicon.php and the identicon folder). That should be it. Identicons should now appear next to your commenter’s names.

You can adjust the background and foreground colors, the number of squares in and the size of the identicons in the Identicon Control Panel. You can also clear the Identicon image cache in the control panel.

Configuration:

Identicon Size in Pixels: How many pixels high and wide you want your Identicons. 35 by 35 seems like a decent compromise between compactness and clarity but they should remain mostly clear at any reasonable size.
Number of Squares: Number of shape blocks to build Identicon out of. Don Parks uses 3 by 3. I kind of like 4 by 4 myself. More than 4 starts to get a bit cluttered but can be interesting.
Background colors: The color of the background (empty part) of the Identicon. Personally I really like when the background matches the surroundings and the identicon appears to blend into it. Setting this to 0,0,0 makes the background transparent (what I’m using here) but IE6 does not like transparency in PNG’s and just fills the background with grey. If you know the R,G,B values of your background then you could set them directly here or you can put in a range of colors (like 1-255,255,255 to get backgrounds ranging from blue to light blue to white).
Foreground colors: The color of the foreground (colored part) of the Identicon. If this is 1-255,1-255,1-255 you will get Identicons of all the possible R,G,B colors. If you want only a certain color you could set the R,G,B values here (like 255,0,0 for only red Identicons) or you can put in a range of colors (like 1-255,255,255 to get Identicons ranging from blue to light blue to white).
CSS Styling: This is not in the Options menu. You can edit the CSS styling by adjusting the style.css file of your current theme. Identicons can be selected by img.identicon. A good start might be to add img.identicon{float:left; margin-right:3px;} to the bottom of your style.css.

For Advanced Users:

You can add CSS for img.identicon in your theme’s style.css. For even more control, you can disable the automatic placement in the Identicon Control Panel and add an identicon to any comment with identicon_build($comment->comment_author_email, $comment->comment_author);. For example, find the comments.php of your current theme (it should be in the folder wp-content/themes/[currentThemeName]/). Open it up and look for something similar to foreach ($comments as $comment). Inside this loop there should be code that displays the comment author’s name or metadata like

. Just before all this enter:
comment_author_email, $comment->comment_author); ?>

If you would prefer to base the Identicons on the commentor’s IP address instead of the commentor’s email just replace $comment->comment_author_email in the above with $comment->comment_author_IP.

icoguo has kindly translated the install instructions to Chinese and Tai has translated them to Japanese although these are a bit outdated since version 0.51.

If any of this is unclear just let me know in the comments and I’ll do my best to guide you through it.

Change Log:

v1.02 5-6-2008:
- Fixed WP 2.5+ built-in avatars when $id_or_email not email
v1.01 5-2-2008:
- Fixed WP 2.5+ built-in avatars and gravatar support
v1.0 5-1-2008:
- Fixed automatically adding identicons to sidebar in single posts bug
- Supports WP 2.5+ built-in avatars
v0.62 2-14-2008:
- Added Recent Comment (with Identicons) Widget
- Deals with nested directories
v0.56 1-27-2007:
- Fixed manual identicon global problem (Thanks again to Anton)
v0.55 1-27-2007:
- Fixed gravatar option (Thanks Anton)
v0.51 1-9-2007:
- Added custom random number generator
- Monsters now consistent across servers
- Added greyscale option (nice for B&W themes)
- Added auto placement option
- Added gravatar support
- Obscured filenames
- Clarified options page
- Changed get_settings to get_option
- Fixed bug in random number generator seed
- Changed download link to WordPress Extends
v0.2 2-6-2007:
- Switched to heading/distance shape representation
- Added a bunch of shapes
- Added transparency
- Added option to choose number of pieces in Identicon (I’m partial to 4×4)
- Added height and width attributes to img for accessibility
v0.1 1-31-2007:
- Implemented 9 block identicon as per Don Park’s idea but using the srand() setting method of MonsterID

WP_MonsterID

ScottS-M — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 17:22:23 +0000

I was skimming Simon Willison’s blog (I know his uncle) when I came across this cool idea for automatic avatar generation. Well to tell the truth, I took one look at the title “Visual Security: 9-block IP Identification” and deleted the link from my RSS reader but the next day a link based on that idea came up for generating a unique monster avatar for each user that did catch my interest. After all if it’s got monsters, it has got to be interesting.

Anyway it turns out that Don Park decided to use a commenter’s IP address to generate a random (but persistent for each user) geometric image to associate with each user. This means that without needing external images or sites, each user can have a unique picture associated with them. Even better if several sites were to use the same algorithm for generating the image, the image would stay associated with the user across sites without any cross site communication. Andreas Gohr ran with this idea and decided to generate monsters instead of geometric images and use email addresses instead of IP addresses. So that brings the story here, since these two real programmers had already done all the hard thinking and programming, I thought I would make a quick and dirty WordPress plugin to incorporate MonsterIDs easily into other blogs. So here is WP_MonsterID. It’s my first real WordPress plugin so it may not be pretty but it seems to be working OK here (see monsters in the comments below). Edit: If monsters aren’t your thing, I have another plugin using just Don Park’s geometric shapes.

Features

Monsters
Dynamically generated avatars for each commenter
Consistent on any blog
Gravatar support
Theme edits no longer necessary

Current Version:

WP_MonsterID v2.12

Installation instructions:

Unzip monsterid.zip. Upload wp_monsterid.php and the monsterid folder. Make sure the monsterid folder is writable. That should be it. Monsters should now appear beside your commenters’ names.

You can add CSS for img.monsterid in your theme’s style.css to adjust the appearance of the images or adjust the size in the MonsterID control panel (your old monsters won’t be deleted until you clear the cache). You can also turn on Gravatar support and clear the MonsterID image cache in the Control Panel.

Tai has translated the installation instructions to Japanese, 5lineas translated them to Spanish, and Dennys has installation tips in Chinese (although these are a bit out of date as of Version 1.0).

Change Log:

v2.12 05-18-2008:
- Fixed missing WP 2.5+ builtin avatars
v2.11 05-17-2008:
- Fixed recent comment widget double monsters on single pages
- Added support for WP 2.5+ builtin avatars
v2.1 03-04-2008:
- Improved default CSS for MonsterID Recent Comments Widget
- Added custom CSS editing for widget and MonsterID’s
- Optimized artistic monsters to only loop through the square region containing the part
v2.04 2-14-2008:
- Removed smaller MonsterID option
- Added Recent Comments (with MonsterID) widget (since default Recent Comment Widget doesn’t provide commenter email)
v2.02 2-13-2008:
- Removed monsterid from admin menus when using smaller MonsterIDs
v2.01 2-12-2008:
- Add size to img attributes to avoid resizing page as loaded
- Added option for smaller MonsterIDs on non-post page (like the Recent Comment Widget on the home page)
v2.0 2-05-2008:
- Added artistic monsters (thanks to the great artwork of Lemm)
- Artistic monsters are a bit tough on the server so limited generation time to a max of 5 seconds (unless the user is an admin)
- Changed to object-oriented monsterid although not completely OOP
- Added options for greyscale artistic monsters or old fashioned monsters
v1.02 1-03-2008:
- Fixed sizing bug (thanks to Daniel)
- Added size attribute to icons so page doesn’t resize as loaded
- Removed a couple minor bugs
v1.01 12-21-2007:
- Fixed automatic placement in unwanted places (again thanks to Shamus)
- Switching download link to WordPress Extends
- Fixed version numbers in plugin file
v1.0 12-19-2007:
- Added option to use show gravatars if they exist and fallback to MonsterID
- Theme edits no longer necessary (doesn’t hurt if you already did edit it) (This and the previous thanks to Shamus’s nice Wavatar plugin)
- Cleaned up Options page and error checking
- Caught possible infinite loop if user selects really dark or light body colors
v0.61 12-12-2007:
- Changed to wiki pseudocode version of Mersenne Twister
- Changed bitshifting to mysql queries since many php versions only have 31 bit integers while Mersenne requires 32
- Sort part lists to keep things consistent on different servers
v0.6 12-11-2007:
- Changed to pure PHP version of Mersenne Twister to allow consistent random numbers across servers
v0.511-14-2007:
- Added reminder to clear cache after setting options
- Added option to switch to white outlines for dark backgrounds
- Added a few minor parts
v0.42 8-17-2007:
- Fixed unintended white background on one pair of legs
v0.41 8-1-2007:
- Fixed lower limit in monster_mt_array_rand
- Readded back.png to parts
v0.4 7-30-2007:
- MonsterID’s should now be consistent across servers (by changing rand to mt_rand)
- Now checks the lightness of body color to make sure monsters aren’t too dark
- Added some more new monster parts and changed the size slightly on a few older ones
- Minor bug and WP standards fixes
v0.3 1-25-2007:
- Added option to make background transparent. Just set the background color to 0 0 0 for Red, Green and Blue. Note that IE6 does not like transparent png and will turn the background grey.
- Changed get_bloginfo('url') to get_settings('siteurl') to avoid problems when Options > General > Blog address (URI) is not default
- Added a few new monster parts and increased the size slightly on a couple of older ones
- Fixed incorrect link in plugin information
- Increased length of email hash substring used to generate monster. Should increase possible combinations into the billions.
v0.2 1-23-2007:
- Important note: Changed base function from build_monster to monsterid_build_monster for WordPress function standards (I don’t suppose there’s any other plugins building monsters out there but better safe).
- Incorporated Adrean’s new extra monster parts and random body coloring and a few parts of my own.
- Added a random background coloring and the option to set the coloring in the MonsterID menu.
- Added a test section to the MonsterID menu.
- Monster building automatically finds monster parts now so the users can add custom monster parts or delete parts they don’t like.
- Added option to output only image url to monsterid_build_monster: monsterid_build_monster($comment->comment_author_email,$comment->comment_author,false)
v0.11 1-21-2007:
- Got off to a pretty inauspicious start with a faulty wordpress page, a couple of immediate small bugs and a faulty file name.
v0.1 1-21-2007:
- First version.

For Advanced Users

If you want more control of where MonsterID’s appear, disable the Automatically Add option and find the comments.php of your current theme (it should be in the folder wp-content/themes/[currentThemeName]/). Open it up and look for something similar to foreach ($comments as $comment). Inside this loop there should be code that displays the comment author’s name or metadata like

. Just before all this enter:
comment_author_email,$comment->comment_author); } ?>

If you would prefer to base the monsters on the commentor’s IP address instead of the commentor’s email just replace $comment->comment_author_email in the above with $comment->comment_author_IP.

Customization:

If you want to customize the monster parts used in your version of WP_MonsterID just go to the wp-contents/monsterid/parts/ folder and delete any parts you don’t like. If you’d like to add your own parts, there is a Gimp file included in that folder containing a layer for each current part which should make constructing new parts easy. Save the new parts following the same conventions bodypartname_initial(s)#.png (e.g. arms_S1.png). If you come up with any good ones, feel free to send them to me and I’ll include them in the package.