A Jekyll plugin for rendering GitHub avatars

Jekyll Avatar makes it easy to add GitHub avatars to your Jekyll site by specifying a username. If performance is a concern, Jekyll Avatar is deeply integrated with the GitHub avatar API, ensuring avatars are cached and load in parallel. It even automatically upgrades users to Retina images, when supported.

Add the following to your site's Gemfile:

gem 'jekyll-avatar'

And add the following to your site's _config.yml file:

plugins:
  - jekyll-avatar

Note: If you are using a Jekyll version less than 3.5.0, use the gems key instead of plugins.

Simply add the following, anywhere you'd like a user's avatar to appear:

{% avatar [USERNAME] %}

With [USERNAME] being the user's GitHub username:

{% avatar hubot %}

That will output:

<img class="avatar avatar-small" src="https://avatars3.githubusercontent.com/hubot?v=3&amp;s=40" alt="hubot" srcset="https://avatars3.githubusercontent.com/hubot?v=3&amp;s=40 1x, https://avatars3.githubusercontent.com/hubot?v=3&amp;s=80 2x, https://avatars3.githubusercontent.com/hubot?v=3&amp;s=120 3x, https://avatars3.githubusercontent.com/hubot?v=3&amp;s=160 4x" width="40" height="40" />

You can customize the size of the resulting avatar by passing the size argument:

{% avatar hubot size=50 %}

That will output:

<img class="avatar" src="https://avatars3.githubusercontent.com/hubot?v=3&amp;s=50" alt="hubot" srcset="https://avatars3.githubusercontent.com/hubot?v=3&amp;s=50 1x, https://avatars3.githubusercontent.com/hubot?v=3&amp;s=100 2x, https://avatars3.githubusercontent.com/hubot?v=3&amp;s=150 3x, https://avatars3.githubusercontent.com/hubot?v=3&amp;s=200 4x" width="50" height="50" />

You can also pass the username as a variable, like this:

{% assign user="hubot" %}
{% avatar {{ user }} %}

Or, if the variable is someplace a bit more complex, like a loop:

{% assign employees = "alice|bob" | split:"|" %}
{% for employee in employees %}
  {% avatar user=employee %}
{% endfor %}

For pages showing a large number of avatars, you may want to load the images lazily.

{% avatar hubot lazy=true %}

This will set the data-src and data-srcset attributes on the <img> tag, which is compatible with many lazy load JavaScript plugins, such as:

• https://www.andreaverlicchi.eu/lazyload/
• https://appelsiini.net/projects/lazyload/

To use Jekyll Avatars with GitHub Enterprise, you must set the PAGES_AVATARS_URL environmental variable.

This should be the full URL to the avatars subdomain or subpath. For example:

• With subdomain isolation: PAGES_AVATARS_URL="https://avatars.github.example.com"
• Without subdomain isolation: PAGES_AVATARS_URL="https://github.example.com/avatars"