Safe And Sound

Hello! I’m blogging from within my room inside of my home! After what seemed like an eternity, I have finally arrived home safe and sound from my trip to Dallas. I’ll have to tell you why it was a hellacious return trip some other day but for now, I have so much to do in regards to WordCamp Dallas follow ups that my mind is racing. I have photos to upload to Flickr, videos to YouTube, articles to write based on the event and so much more. It doesn’t help that when I opened my email in box, I was greeted with 120 messages. Thank goodness they are mostly email notifications letting me know people are following me on twitter or from various blogs letting me know of follow up comments.

At any rate, please keep an eye on this blog as you are sure to see a flurry of posts within the next few weeks. WordCamp Dallas was awesome and I’m so glad I went.

Stack Overflows Under Control

While listening to the Browns game today, I tried my hand at figuring out the stack overflow errors that were being generated by the MyAvatars plugin. No matter what I tried, the damn thing kept spitting out those errors. I tried deleting bits and pieces of the code, but each time I did so, the Gravatar function didn’t work or some part of the plugin would ruin the page.

So I opted to try out a few other Gravatar based plugins. The ones I tried are as follows:

The first one is more of a programmer’s type plugin. Unless you know how the code works with the various ARRAYS and configurable strings, you’ll have a hard time getting the block of code correct. The next two didn’t work out exactly as I wanted either. I also tried Doug’s EasyGravatars plugin. EasyGravatars worked well, except that it was hard to place it where I wanted in conjunction with everything else I have in comments.php. So after tinkering all day with this crap, I finally settled on something called MBLA.

MBLA stands for MyBlogLogAvatars. This is a newer version of the MyAvatars code base which hasn’t been updatd for over a year.

Use avatars from services like Gravatar and MyBlogLog in your posts, comments and pingbacks. Remember to change options at Options -> MBLA. By Jan Olsen.

After a bit of configuring, I’ve finally managed to display the Gravatar for anyone that has one. If you don’t have a Gravatar assigned to your email address you use to comment on the blog, head to http://www.gravatar.com and make one. It’s quick, easy and free. I’m gonna support Gravatars at the very least. Not sure about MyBlogLog avatars.

10 Bucks To The First Person Who

Tells me which magazine, Jeffro2pt0.com was sort of but not quite featured. The article in question was highlighting a particular web site/service. To compliment the text, there was a small screenshot of the front page of this particular web site. That website actually had a banner that displayed JEFFRO2pt0 on their front page. So in essence, I was sort of but not really featured in a magazine.

The first person who tells me, which magazine along with the site they wrote about in the article will receive $10.00 via PayPal. If you are the first one to provide a photograph or screenshot depicting the article and associated screenshot, I will send $15.00 your way via PayPal.

Let the games begin!

If you have any questions regarding this little contest, leave them in the commenting area.

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.

A Big Heart Felt Thanks To YOU

Thanks To You

I’d like to say thank you to my sponsors. Just kidding. No sponsor has been dumb enough to give me money so instead, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank my readers. This blog was started back at the end of May as a one year project to see where I could take it. So after four months into the project, let’s take a look at some statistics.

Subscribers:

This site now has a total of 103 Subscribers according to Feedburner. This number varies day to day but is steadily showing over 100 subscribers. Thanks to all of you who have subscribed either by email or by RSS. I truly do appreciate it as it tells me that what I’m writing is important or at the very least informative.

Conversations:

At the time of this writing, this site has a total of 348 comments on 227 posts contained within 13 categories and 1,147 tags. Some of the comments within this specific stat are actually trackbacks or pingbacks but for the most part, the comments were made by real people. One of the major goals that I am trying to achieve with this site is building a COMMUNITY. A social community at that. A community that contributes intelligently to the conversations that I start with each post.

Any time I publish a post on this site, I always look forward to checking my email to see if and who has contributed to the conversation. I realize that as a blogger, comments are hard to come by. That is why I try to thank everyone who leaves a comment as I’m appreciative of the time you took out of your day to stop by and say hello. So I’ll end this by saying THANK YOU to each and everyone of you who have left a comment on this blog since it’s inception. It’s nice to know that I’m not blogging within an empty room.

Akismet The Time Saver:

Every blogger seems to toot their own horn when they reach a milestone with spam such as Darren Rowse. I’ll be no different except to let you know that so far, Akismet has blocked 1,377 spam messages. Although a far cry from two million, Akismet has been one hell of a time saver for me. I will say however that, Akismet is not perfect and in recent weeks, Akismet has been missing spam but overall, it’s the best anti spam solution I’ve ever seen other than disconnecting from the net. So here is a big thank you to everyone involved with Akismet.

In Closing:

According to the logs, each month has shown a steady increase in traffic, an increase in subscribers and more importantly, an increase in user interaction. In the past four months, I’ve managed to develop virtual relationships with various people across various blogs. The next four months will be interesting as I continue to experiment with this blog and continue with my writing. I’ll write up another post like this when we hit the eight month mark to see where we have progressed. Rest assured that I appreciate every comment, trackback, pingback, linkback, bookmark, stumble, digg ect. that is given to me. It would be great if I could get paid to do this sort of work, but as it stands, this blog is advertisement and sponsor free. So in the mean time, what I mentioned above is what I consider blogging currency. From what I’ve seen so far, I’m no longer a blogging bum, thanks to you of course.

Readers First

Unlike most other sites or blogs, I don’t mind thanking those who have helped me reach this point. So in no particular order, I’d like to thank the following people. I apologize if you don’t see your name on this list.

Last but not least, thanks to all of you who have joined my MyBlogLog community, added me to Twitter and to everyone that I have associated with on TalkShoe.If you want to be removed from this list or if you would like for me to change the site your link is pointing to, let me know by leaving a comment.

What Is The Purpose Of This Site?

Web 2.0 is the biggest thing on the web right now. Sites and services are being created and launched every day of the week. Many people still don’t have a clue as to what Web 2.0 actually is not to mention what the purpose is behind most of the Web 2.0 sites and services that exist on the web today. Quite often, the ABOUT PAGE is simply not enough. That is why I have decided to become the guinea pig of Web 2.0.

I will throw myself into each and every Web 2.0 service that I can find and provide a detailed review of what the service is, what the site or service does, and the benefits and drawbacks to using the particular site or service. Many people simply don’t have the time to invest in all of these different sites and services which is where jeffro2pt0.com steps in.

Asides from doing in-depth reviews, jeffro2pt0.com will also be covering Web 2.0 in general including news, applications that tie into web services, web 2.0 education and much more.

My goal, is to provide the ins and outs of every web 2.0 site/service I can register an account with so you don’t have to.