Simple User Avatar WordPress Plugin – Features & Review | WPWizzy

Verify the avatar was correctly saved by going back to the user profile after uploading and confirming the image is still shown. Clear all caches. If the avatar still does not show, check whether your theme uses a custom avatar function rather than the standard WordPress get_avatar — Simple User Avatar only intercepts calls through the standard function. Themes with custom avatar display may need a small code adjustment to use get_avatar.

Simple User Avatar replaces Gravatar only for users who have uploaded a local avatar. Users without a local avatar still fall back to Gravatar. If you want to prevent all Gravatar requests, you need a plugin that offers a disable Gravatar option such as Simple Local Avatars. Simple User Avatar does not include a Gravatar disable setting.

Verify Simple User Avatar is active in the Plugins screen. If active, check whether another user profile plugin is replacing the standard WordPress profile screen — some membership and user management plugins use a fully custom profile screen that removes sections added by other plugins. Also confirm you are looking at the standard WordPress user profile at Users, then your Profile, not a front-end profile page added by another plugin.

Simple User Avatar does not include bulk avatar management. Each avatar must be set individually on each user profile. If you need to set avatars for many users at once, WP User Avatar or a user management plugin with bulk profile editing is more appropriate. For small teams where avatars are set once and rarely changed, the per-profile approach of Simple User Avatar is not a significant burden.

Simple User Avatar does not include a Gravatar disable option. To disable Gravatar entirely, add a filter to your child theme functions.php that returns an empty string or a local default image when no local avatar is set, overriding the Gravatar fallback. Alternatively, switch to Simple Local Avatars which includes a dedicated option to disable all Gravatar lookups and replace them with a default local image.

Simple User Avatar is a minimal plugin that does one thing: adds an avatar upload field to user profiles. Simple Local Avatars is developed by 10up and includes additional features such as role-based upload restrictions, a setting to disable all Gravatar requests, and a custom default avatar option. If you need only the basic upload functionality, Simple User Avatar is sufficient. If you need more control over Gravatar fallback and access restrictions, Simple Local Avatars is more complete.

Simple User Avatar can be activated per site or network-activated on Multisite. When network-activated, the avatar upload field appears on user profiles across the network. Avatars are stored per-site in the respective site media library. Users on multiple sites in a network would need to upload an avatar separately on each site if the plugin is site-activated rather than network-activated.

Simple User Avatar adds the upload field to the WordPress admin user profile screen. Front-end profile pages require a separate user profile plugin that outputs a profile editing form on the front end. If you use a plugin like ProfilePress or Ultimate Member for front-end profiles, check whether those plugins have their own avatar upload functionality built in, which they typically do independently of Simple User Avatar.

The uploaded images themselves remain in the WordPress media library regardless of which plugin is active. The user meta entry that links a user to their avatar image is stored in the database. If you switch to another avatar plugin that uses a different meta key to store the avatar reference, the new plugin will not automatically recognise the images set by Simple User Avatar. You may need to re-assign avatars after switching plugins.