[This post is being written as a continuation of the discussion happening in the comments of Rhys' post, which among other things discusses which avatars plugin to use.] 

There are a lot of different ways to spice up your comments on your site, but my favorite has to be the personalized touch of having an avatar appear next to each person’s comments.  If you’re a Wordpress user, you are in luck, because this is incredibly easy to do.  The benefits are numerous, but in my opinion the most important benefit is personal branding, which allows readers to easily associate your comments with you.  This is why I usually recommend that you use a picture of your site’s favicon or something memorable instead of a personal picture of yourself. 

So, does adding an avatar sound good to you?  The next step is to pick what type of avatar you want to use.  I’ve tried three different types, and in their current states I currently recommend using the MyAvatars plugin.  This plugin looks at the commentators information and matches it up with their MyBlogLog profile.  It then places their MyBlogLog avatar next to their comment, allowing users to easily indentify the comments with the person writing them.  The reason I prefer this plugin is because it seems to cause the fewest problems with my sites load time and also seems to get the fewest number of blank avatars.  If for some reason you don’t like MyAvatars, their are two other good choices. 

The first alternative option is Favatars, which is a favicon plugin that will look at the URL used in your comment and add the favicon from that site next to your comments.  This is nice, but there are many sites that don’t have a favicon.

Your second alternative option is the Gravatar plugin, which works just like MyAvatars, except it uses your Globally Recognized Avatar (Gravatar).  I originally ran this plugin for a few months and it was very rare that someone actually had a Gravatar, so I quickly replaced it.  If this plugin interests you, here is a review I did before switching to MyAvatars.  A quick Google search will also show a few other versions of Gravatar plugins available if you like have gravatars on your site. 

No matter which plugin you end up choosing, I definitely recommend having some sort of avatar with your comments.  Which one do you prefer?