In another tutorial, I showed how the Gravatar link in the Revolution templates was losing me site visitors.  Watch the Google Analytics Click Map tutorial.  In general, that link is losing me around 10% of my visitors on the sites using the Revolution templates.  It is important to either remove this link, or at least set it to open in a new window.  I’ll show you how in this tutorial.

You will need to edit the templates for your theme, and I recommend you use Notepad++, as it ha syntax highlighting for a number of programming languages including php.

The file you need to edit is called comments.php in the Revolution templates I have checked.  Once you load that file into your text editor, search for “gravatar”.  You might want to turn word wrap on in your editor to help find the code responsible.  Here Notepad++ has found the code:

Open the Gravatar link in a new window

To make the Gravatar link open in a new window (which means you keep the visitor on your site, but give them the option of exploring Gravatars, add the following code:

target=”_blank”

.. into to your template, and upload the modified comments.php template file:

Now the link will open in a new window.

Remove the Gravatar link altogether

To remove the link to the Gravatar altogether, simply delete everything highlighted in the following screenshot:

This will then just show the following on your site posts:

Notice the offending Gravatar link has been completely removed.

Remove or Open in a new window?

Think of it this way.  If your visitor clicks the Gravatar link, will they get distracted from your site?  IMO, yes.  It is therefore better to remove the Gravatar link altogether so that your visitors don’t go off on a tangent (something the Internet makes very easy), and keeps them focused on your message.