I see an variant of option #1: The libravatar server sends a HEAD request to gravatar, asking them to respond with a 404 if the image does not exist. In that case, libravatar redirects to the default URL. Otherwise it redirects to gravatar.
This way, we'd keep the possibility to use publically unreachable default images, for example in intranets.
I see an variant of option #1: The libravatar server sends a HEAD request to gravatar, asking them to respond with a 404 if the image does not exist. In that case, libravatar redirects to the default URL. Otherwise it redirects to gravatar.
This way, we'd keep the possibility to use publically unreachable default images, for example in intranets.