An avatar is a picture icon that you place next to your user's name so people can identify a face or image with that person.

You could go ahead and code up avatar support for your website or you can use a free service which will handle the avatar management for you.

This free avatar service is provided by www.gravatar.com and is easy to use, basing the avatar on the email address.

Besides saving you coding, the avatar follows your user around to whatever website uses the same avatar service.