Tired of your generic digital snowflake? Want a custom commenter avatar like the cool kids? It’s easy! Easy if you’re a geek, anyway. For the rest of you, burn some incense and pay close attention.

What you need to know before we get started is your email address — specifically, the email address you used to set up your CP commenter account. Our avatars are provided by an offsite service called Gravatar, and a coded version of your email address is used to match your commenter name with the image you’ll be uploading there. If the email address doesn’t match, you’ll be stuck with a snowflake and everyone will laugh at you behind your back, even though we’ll all pretend to be concerned to your face. We’re cynics, after all. Abject misery only encourages us.

So pour yourself your favorite beverage, have a seat, and let’s get started:

1. Go to the Gravatar website and click the signup link to create a new account.

2. Enter your email address — the same address you used to sign up for your CP commenter account — and click the Signup button.

3. Gravatar will send you a confirmation email. Click the link in the email to continue the signup process, where you’ll create a Gravatar username and password. (Doesn’t matter what these are — they don’t affect your CP account.)

4. Now for your image. See where it says “Add one by clicking here”? Click that, and follow the instructions for uploading an image from your hard drive, or stealing one off the Web.

5. When you reach the “rating” selection, click G, just to be safe. While CP doesn’t censor avatars, we don’t specifically ask for the dirty ones, either.

6. Your new image should now appear below the big gray box with your email address. Click the image, click Confirm, and after a moment your image should also appear next to your address.

And that’s it!

Unless it doesn’t work…

Bear in mind that it might take five or ten minutes for your new avatar to be fully absorbed into Gravatar’s system. Bear in mind as well that your browser caches website graphics — your new avatar might actually be live, but you’re seeing the old one because your browser has it stored on your hard drive for more efficient browsing. Be patient. Or throw your drink against the wall. Whatever’s your style.

If somehow your avatar still doesn’t work, and you’ve double-checked all these steps, plead your case in the comments. We’ll try to help. After we’re done laughing at you behind your back.