Gravatar avatars are small images that represent an email address. Their purpose is to allow for global recognition of commenters and persons on the Internet. Rather than having a different avatar for different sites, people can register an avatar at Gravatar.com and associate it with their own unique email address.
Blog posts in WordPress that have commenting enabled typically require an email address to submit a comment. Once a comment has been submitted with the email field filled in, WordPress sends the email address as a data string to Gravatar.com; if Gravatar.com has an avatar for that email address, the avatar will be used. Often times Gravatar.com does not have an avatar associated with an email address, in which case a default avatar is used.
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An article by Ben Vershow from futureofthebook.org. Does blogging restructure consciousness? The following story suggests that it does. Last month, Chris Bowers of the progressive political blog MyDD, underwent a small existential crisis brought on by a ham-fisted report on public television about political blogging that bungled a number of basic facts, including Bowers’ very [...]
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I’ve already mentioned that blogs can be used as powerful tools to decry a social issue or start a Bolivarian revolution. This week Hugo Chavez, controversial socialist president of Venezuela, took to the blogosphere with a Twitter account called chavezcandanga. “Candanga” roughly translates to “devil.” With only two tweets so far, he doesn’t have as many followers [...]
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Yesterday I spent a few hours writing a PHP script for a commenter that would generate an HTML element based on the condition that the visitor was either on the home page or not. The idea was to create a custom background only for the frontpage with a div layer that wrapped around everything within [...]
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With the Custom Post Background, WordPress users can change individual post or page backgrounds in the admin control panel. But what if you want to change the background of the front or mainpage of your WordPress blog? Unfortunately there is not a plugin that will allow you to do that. That is why I have taken the [...]
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It’s no secret that major companies have embraced blogging as a way to boost PR and keep employees and shareholders in the know on company news and activity. Because of this, vaguely described job postings for journalist-blogger-style-new-media-specialists populate the job boards at places like Mashable, Problogger and JournalismJobs.com. But according to a recent study at [...]
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Blogging is a means of self-expression that extends to nearly every social sphere — moms, entrepreneurs, soldiers, athletes – bloggers can be found in every walk of life, every niche, profession and people group. Everyone has something to learn or share in a blog community. It is that idea that makes blogging such an ideal [...]
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A guest post from the Idea Lady, Cathy Stucker. Get free ideas for small business and sign up for her IdeaLady Insider newsletter at http://IdeaLady.com/. Do you find it hard to come with things to blog about? A few years ago, I had a weekly newspaper column. I had to turn in 500 words every Friday [...]
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Still believe all that hogwash about quality over quantity? According to a study presented at the British Psychological Society’s Annual Conference last Wednesday, bloggers who post frequently are much more “attractive” than infrequent posters, regardless of post quality.
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At this year’s Chirp, the official Twitter developer conference, COO Dick Costolo announced plans to implement Twitter’s “monetization engine” which will allow twitterers to pay to promote their tweets. This from CNET News: The company insists that “promoted tweets” aren’t ads, but tweets, which in a sense is just Silicon Valley futurist-speak. But in a [...]
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Feast your eyes upon the fabulous Dirty Blue Theme for WordPress 2.5+. Some of the features include: Simple two column layout Ghastly blue background glow Dazzling dark blue color theme with high and moderate contrast colors Cross-browser compatibility Valid HTML Transitional 1.0 This eye-catching theme is only blue in the dirty sense. The Dirty Blue [...]
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I know what you’re thinking. Television advertisements are too expensive and require a lot of industry know-how: only the big boys advertise on television. Not according to a report by Seth Stevenson of Slate who ran a television ad during The Glenn Beck Show on The Fox News Channel. The advertisement cost less than $1,500 [...]
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