Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Connecting to 1.gravatar.com

Recently I've noticed WordPress blogs taking a long time to load, or stalling before loading completely, while Firefox displays the message Connecting to 1.gravatar.com. The delay is minutes rather than seconds, so this is a serious inconvenience.

The problem seems to be with the Gravatar service, which supplies an avatar to comments added to a blog post.

WordPress Comments Slow Down Page Speed.
Gravatars Can Slow-Down Your WordPress Blog.

Update: Adding an AdBlock filter for Gravatar fixes this. Simply right click on any Gravatar avatar and  select AdBlock Plus: Block image.

Update 2: Not quite. Add a custom filter for http://*.gravatar.com/avatar/* to block all of Gravatar's servers.

s*.wp.com is also causing delays.
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3 comments:

  1. AnonymousJanuary 14, 2013 at 6:57 AM

    Use : Settings - Discussion - Avatars
    Uncheck Show Avatars..Done

    ReplyDelete
  2. FreewheelinFrankJanuary 14, 2013 at 9:07 AM

    Umm... settings in what?

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousOctober 31, 2013 at 10:26 AM

    @ Anonymous that only stops showing them, your site still connects to gravatr

    ReplyDelete

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