Author: Jeffro

Jeffrohttp://jeffc.meEnjoy writing about, talking about, and helping others with WordPress
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Gravatar Has A New Home – WordPress

Gravatar Acquired By AutomatticI’m pretty happy to see that Gravatar has been picked up by the WordPress guys. Gravatar is a neat concept in that when you upload an avatar to their service, any website or forum that supports Gravatar would be able to display your image. It was a concept that if it would of taken off like it was supposed to, chances are, we would of had the ability to use one service for avatar management instead of relying on individual sites and forums.

Within the past three days, Automattic has moved the Gravatar Rails application into their own WordPress infrastructure. This has allowed Gravatars to display three times faster as well as making the site load each time you browse to it. This was a problem I was experiencing with Gravatar a week ago where the damn site wouldn’t load. Glad to see thats fixed. Last but not least, Gravatar was running on the Mephisto CMS and has since been moved over to WordPress. Imagine that!

The most exciting portion of this acquisition are the plans that Matt and company have for the service:

  • All of the Premium features will be free, and refund anyone who bought them in the last 60 days.
  • Move the gravatar serving to a Content Delivery Network so not only will they be fast, it’ll be low latency and not slow down a page load.
  • Take the million or so avatars we have on WordPress.com and make them available through the Gravatar API, to compliment the 115k already here.
  • From Gravatar, integrate them into all WordPress.com templates and bring features like multiple avatars over.
  • From WordPress.com, bring the bigger sizes (128px) over and make that available for any Gravatar. Currently Gravatars are only available up to 80px.
  • Allow Gravatar profile pages with Microformat support for things like XFN rel="me" and hCard.
  • Develop a new API that has cleaner URLs and allows Gravatars to be addressed by things like URL in addition to (or instead of) email addresses.
  • Rewrite the application itself (site.gravatar.com) to fit directly into our WordPress.com grid, for internet-scale performance and reliability.

I’m pretty excited to see the implementation of Gravatar into WordPress as a whole. The two services compliment each other and it’s only natural that they become ONE. I’ve used Gravatar for a few years now but it’s been awhile since I’ve messed with my account. Looks like I should blow the dust off as I’ll be using it again in the near future.

What do you think of this acquisition? Do you use Gravatar? Go ahead and leave some feedback.

WordPress Comment Reply Plugin

East Reply Plugin

One of the greatest things about blogging, especially on your own blog is the discussion that takes place through comments. Here at Jeffro2pt0.com we have taken the approach of manually typing in <strong>@CommentAuthorName</strong> as our means of typing out a reply. After typing this in time and time again, it begins to become irritating.

While searching the plugin database on WordPress.org, I came across WP-EasyReply. This plugin when activated presents a REPLYNEW link near the commenting text area. When you click this link, all of the comments that came before yours are automatically entered into the comment form along with a blockquoted version of their comment. This is similar in how a forum works when you want to reply to specific person and it automatically quotes their comment.

WP EasyReply In Action

I thought this was great. However, I didn’t see the need of appending the same comment over and over again throughout the discussion so I went inside the plugin code and deleted a few things. Now when you click the link, it automatically outputs the @AuthorName in bold which is what the user’s of this blog and myself have been doing for quite some time now.

The only problem with this plugin is that the link only appears for me and no one else. I am currently working with the plugin author to see if the reply link can be manipulated so that it is displayed for the general public to use. I’m also trying to talk the plugin author into wrapping up his plugin into a one line php function like so many other plugins. This way, users would be able to place that line of code anywhere they wanted to within the comments.php file giving blog owners the chance to display the REPLY NEW link anywhere they see fit.

If you want the same results here is the code change:
Original Code:
$posters.="@$com->comment_author - < blockquote >".htmlentities(@$com->comment_content)."< /blockquote >$lf$lf";

Changed Code:
$posters.="< strong >@$com->comment_author < /strong >

WordPress 2.3 And Fantastico

WordPress Fantastico Script

I’ve noticed that this site is receiving quite a bit of search engine traffic from people looking for information in regards to WordPress 2.3 and Fantastico. Fantastico is an auto installer for popular scripts such as content management systems, forums and the like. WordPress is one of the scripts supported by Fantastico that will auto install if you choose to go that route however, your then left at the mercy of Netenberg. Until Netenberg updates the Fantastico auto installer to include the upgrade to 2.3, your stuck at 2.2.

The image displayed up above is from Fantastico through my own webhosting account. It’s been three weeks since the release of 2.3 but I imagine its taking them some time as WordPress 2.3 was a major upgrade and Fantastico is wildly popular. Most webhosting providers use CPANEL as their user control panel verse any other control panel.

According to their official forum, WordPress 2.3 support will be part of their next release. So hang in there!

Tumblr Awakes From Its Slumbr

Tumblr.com Logo

Back in August, I wrote an article that speculated the fact that Tumblr may have been on its way out (Is Tumblr Dead?) but apparently, November 1st will be a big day for both Tumblr, and its users. According to Mark Rizzn on Mashable,  Tumblepedia has been updated to describe new features, optimizations and bug fixes.

Looks like Tumblr is still alive and kicking. Hopefully, Tumblr will add all sorts of features that make this service just shy of being a killer.

What Do You Want?

Its time I asked you, the readers what is it you would like to see written about on this website? For the most part, I write short news blurbs, lengthy reviews, post videos that are related to my niche along with some comedic relief. Out of all of the content that I write on this blog, which pieces of writing are the most valuable to you?

Would you rather I discontinue writing short news blurbs as their are 1,000,000 other sites out their that do the same thing, or would you like me to continue writing those? What about the reviews? My reviews are generally in-depth and contain quite a bit of information. Would you like to see me write more or less of those reviews?

What about the topics I write about? Would you like to continue to see posts dealing with free icon sets that are available, online generators, WordPress news or bits of software?

Perhaps I should turn this entire domain into a forum? That way, everyone who joins in the community can take an active role in creating and continuing discussions?

These are just some of the questions that are on my mind that I would love to hear you guys and gals answer.

StartupSchwag Looking For Model

StartupSchwag Girl Of The Month

StartupSchwag is holding a contest for any females that consider themselves sexy who have an account on Digg.com. SS is now accepting biographies and photo submissions. The top 20 submissions will be placed on the StartupSchwag website for visitors to vote on. The winner will receive an iPhone as well as a photo shoot and will be the tshirt model for the December startup.

Click here to read more information in regards to the contest as well as checking out Cindee, a Digg.com Tshirt demo. She’s not the official schwag girl but she is definitely Digg worthy.

Zooomr Finalizes Social Stream

Zooomr.com LogoZooomr has put the final touches on their Social Stream. The Zooomr social stream gives you one stop access to follow activity on your photographs.

The social stream can be organized to sort the activity by the last day, week or month and has a number of different views to choose from, including a list view and a time line view.

Zooomr Social stream

Zooomr’s Social stream is just the beginning of allowing Zooomr users to know what is going on with their photos in real-time. Unfortunately, Zooomr Social Stream is a Pro only feature.

Digg Labs ScreenSaver

Digg.com LogoDigg has turned their popular Digg Labs applications into desktop screensavers. The applications can be downloaded from their respective pages:

The screensavers are available for Mac and Windows users and include Adobe Flash 9 if you don’t have it installed. On the Mac you’ll need at least OSX 10.4 and on Windows you need either Windows XP or Vista. I personally enjoy watching the STACK as it looks like it’s raining Diggs.

DIGG THIS PLEASE I’m Begging You

Over the last month or so, I have noticed a sharp increase in what has become known as DIGG BEGGING. These are people who post their links on Twitter, forums and wherever else asking sometimes begging people to Digg their article. The question I ask is, WHY? I understand the importance of the Digg front page which sends a torrent of traffic your way if your lucky but why resort to begging or using Digg exchanges? For us common users, Digg used to be a place which was ruled my the majority, also known as the wisdom of crowds. It seems as if the Digg system has finally broke down to the point where there is more trash within the Digg system than there are nuggets of gold.

If your page or content is front page worthiness, I’m sure it would reach the front page without the need of begging or purchasing Diggs. As DigitalSpammer suggests, please make this stop.

Social Networking Baby Boomers

According to this NBC report, every 7 and a half seconds, someone in the U.S. turns 50 years old. That is quite a lot of people. These baby boomers are being looked at as seasoned surfers. There are now social networking sites that are catering to this generation such as BOOMJ, BOOMERTOWN, and EONS. Looks like all of this social stuff isn’t just for 20 somethings anymore.