Better Recent Comments vs Advanced User Avatar | Custom Profile Picture Uploader for WordPress, WooCommerce, and BuddyPress

The default Recent Comments widget is somewhat limited. Better Recent Comments improves on this by providing a more flexible widget with options to show the user’s actual comment, as well as show avatars and the ability to show or hide the comment date. As well as the widget, there’s a handy shortcode you can use to display your recent comments. This is useful if you need to display comments somewhere other than your sidebar or footer, such as on your homepage. Simply add the shortcode [better_recent_comments]. That’s not all! The plugin is also WPML compatible, which means that the comments will be restricted to those in the current language. The default WordPress widget will list all recent comments, regardless of language, so you might end up with comments for German-language posts in the sidebar of your English site. Better Recent Comments solves this and makes sure the comments are for the current language only. Translations currently provided in Spanish, French and Italian. View the full plugin documentation in our Knowledge Base. Options available with the shortcode: format – the format of each recent comment. This option uses ‘placeholders’ which are substituted with the actual data when the comments are displayed. See the FAQs for details. number – the number of comments to display. Default: 5 comments date_format – the date and time format to use. Like WordPress, this uses a PHP date format. It defaults to ‘M j, H:i’. See this cheat sheet for a full list of date and time options. avatar_size – the size of the avatar in pixels. Only used if you have included {avatar} in your comment format (see ‘format’ option). Default: 50 post_status – the status of posts to retrieve comments for. Defaults to ‘publish’. Can be a single status or a comma-separated list, or ‘any’ to show comments for all post statuses. post_type – the post type to retrieve comments for. Accepts a single or multiple post types (e.g. ‘post’ or ‘post, dlp_document’) or ‘any’ to show comments for all post types. Default: ‘any’ excerpts – set to ‘true’ to show an excerpt of the comment (limited to 20 words), or ‘false’ to show the full comment. Default: true replies – set to ‘true’ to also show responses to comments, or ‘false’ to only see the top level comments. Default: true

Your WooCommerce customers are faceless. Reviews come from anonymous silhouettes, the My Account dashboard greets returning shoppers with a generic placeholder, and every account in your store feels like a transaction instead of a person. Faceless reviews are trusted less, and anonymous accounts give your customers no reason to feel connected to your brand. Advanced User Avatar gives every WooCommerce customer a real profile photo, uploaded from their device in seconds. The avatar appears in the WooCommerce My Account dashboard and on the Account Details page automatically. For BuddyPress communities, it replaces the default avatar uploader with a faster, friendlier flow. For any other WordPress site, drop the avatar uploader anywhere using a shortcode or the Gutenberg block. Features WooCommerce integration My Account Dashboard avatar — customer’s profile photo displays on the dashboard the moment they log in Account Details upload field — customers update their photo from the same page they manage their account Page builder compatible — works alongside Bricks Builder and other builders without duplicate template rendering Product review avatars — coming in version 2, so reviewers show as real people on product pages BuddyPress integration Replaces the default BuddyPress avatar uploader with the same upload, crop, and webcam flow used across your site Displays on member profile pages and the member directory so communities feel populated by people, not placeholders Better Messages integration Custom avatars appear in the Better Messages chat interface automatically, replacing the default Gravatar with the user’s uploaded photo Upload experience Crop interface — customers position and size their photo before saving Webcam capture — take a photo directly in the browser, no file needed EXIF orientation handling — phone photos stay upright after cropping File type validation — admin chooses which of JPG, PNG, and GIF are allowed Max file size control — set the upload ceiling from settings Auto-generated image sizes — multiple thumbnails created on upload for fast display everywhere Placement options for developers and site builders Shortcode: [wpmake_advance_user_avatar_upload] renders the full upload form on any page Shortcode: [wpmake_advance_user_avatar] outputs the current user’s avatar Gutenberg block for drag-and-drop placement in the block editor No Gravatar, no external data sharing Gravatar sends a hash of every visitor’s email address to an external server to fetch their photo. For EU stores and any site under GDPR scope, that third-party request is a compliance question your legal team would rather not answer. Advanced User Avatar stores every photo on your own server. No outbound requests, no hashed emails leaving your site, no third-party dependency. Install the plugin and give your customers a face on your store.