Removing the Gravatar Link from Revolution Template Themes

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.

Related Articles

• Wordpress Template Hierarchy - Wordpress template system is confusing for those new to Wordpress. There is a simple hierarchy of templates that explains why some templates have certain files, while others do not. Share and Enjoy:
• Choosing a Wordpress Theme - Changing your Wordpress theme is very easy, so you can have some fun downloading and changing the look and feel of your site.  There are a few things you should look out for when choosing a theme. Ideally you should have some posts already on your blog, as well as a static page, some comments e.t.c.
• Wordpress Tutorial - Adding Similar Posts - Its a great idea to add similar posts to your Wordpress sites, as it encourages site stickiness, as well as giving pages on your site an SEO boost. Not only is the page then linking to other related content on your site, but the pages it links to now have inbound links from relevant
• Adding Video to your Wordpress Blog posts - There are a few plugins that can help with adding video to your blog posts, and I’ll show you one of these in a future tutorial, because for most popular video sites, adding video is as simple as grabbing the embed code and pasting it into your Wordpress post. Let’s look at an example: If you find
• Creating a homepage in Wordpress - If you have installed Wordpress  and the plugins recommended in my Top 10 Wordpress Plugins article, you ‘ll currently have a blog that looks like the generic Wordpress blog, containing a hello world post, and an about page. Note: You can click images to enlarge them. We still have a fair bit of customizing to