Gravatar was recently acquired by Automattic and it lets you select a global avatar, which will be associated with your e-mail address. If you comment on any blog or website and use that email address, then your gravatar will be automatically displayed. I think that this is a big move and might outpower MyBlogLog soon.
Personally, I don’t use MyBlogLog much- it only acts as a journal of most recent visitors. All those links of communities, friends, fan etc. are too complicated for my understanding. I don’t think that I need another social-networking-like service.
Gravatar, on the other hand, is very easy to sign up for. I was surprised at the ease actually. You only enter your e-mail address and then Gravatar sends you a comfirmatory e-mail with a link that you click on to be re-directed to their website. Next, you choose an image (either from the web) or from your computer (in this case, they will let you crop it). And you’re done! 🙂
I’ve seen Ashish use it in his blog and never bothered much about it, until today 🙂 I’ve added the Gravatar plugin to my blog. So, your gravatar (and not your MyBlogLog picture or your WP.com avatar) will be displayed next to your comment.
If you still don’t have one, then I would recommend you to sign up for it because of the aforementioned reasons. 🙂
***
On a different note, I’ve made some more changes here. The ones that are useful to you are-
a. You can subscribe to the comments left here by checking the box “Notify me of any follow up comments by E-mail” when you respond or by using the Comments feed URL (in my sidebar).
b. You have the power to edit your comments (Yes!) for ten minutes.
c. Top commentators- the ones with the most number of comments- get displayed on my sidebar. A link to your blog is also included. So, that’s some link lurve from my side. 😉 Is that enough to make you comment?
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Tags: gravatar, blogging, wordpress, mybloglog, automattic
Time and Again 
well, I will join the commenting competition… One note Ruhi, adding more and more plugins will make your blog slow.. hmmm have you added “must” plugins ?hihih all in one seo pack and google sitemap plugin ? .. also, add wordpress stats plugin, and when you comment on wordpress.com blogs, u will get direct link here ( if you change your primary domain name ) that worked for me.. not sure.. give it a try.. . lol me advicing u of more plugnis.. hmmmm
I already have Gavtar.. hope it comes up when I post this
well, I used the edit comment plugin.. to let u know that the Gavtar worked !!
@Dinsan
Thanks for that tip on plugins. Will keep that in mind. How many plugins can I safely use? I’m not really using too many…just some frills. I just got done downloading the SEO pack and Sitemap plugin. But what exactly are their uses? I activated the SEO pack from the Plugins page. Do I need to do anything else?
About the WP.com thing, yeah I’ve done that 😉
I noticed that you’re using a Gravatar. And all the best for the commenting race. LOL.
A sitemap is an important plugin. It basically tells you about the structure or the website and where you can find what. It’s a nice thing to do but I don’t think it has much of a use on a blog because everything is very straight forward. It helps on commercial websites though.
I’ve made myself a Gravatar account, I hope it comes up here with this comment.
And nobody’s beating me in the commenting race. Booyah, I’m the man! 😀
And I believe your top commentators plugin gets reset every day. Set it to get reset less often..like maybe after a week or a month or something.
@Ish
Can’t see your gravatar 😦 Are you using the same email address for commenting that you used for the gravatar? Just double check. Ash will be pissed off now- because you registered as soon as I wrote a post on it 😉 I have awesome marketing skills.
Sitemap thing- Even I was wondering the same thing. How useful it will be for a blog. I did install the SEO thing, but I don’t know how it works.
Even I noticed the change in the Top Commentators widget. It’s set to change every week…I don’t know why it’s gotten refreshed. Probably because it’s sunday night here and it counts 12 am Monday morning as a new week? Weird. Anyway, your name and link are still there. 😉
Ruhi: Have you come across SezWho? Basab and his wife Vidya both use it. I have noticed it on JP Rangaswamy’s recently too. Similar concept I think.
Single Sign On is still a tad far from being effected I think. 🙂 I first wrote about it in 1999-2000!
I have been reading about this gravatar thing, but I like to have the same identity when i comment on wp blogs and outside. That’s the reason why I have avoided gravatar. if my wp identity can become the identity for all blogs and websites then I am find with it, otherise not.
your new blog is cool ruhi. I wish I was as adventerous, but the fact is that i am a scaredy cat!
ofcourse reading you becomes more difficult this way as I hardly check my google reader and am not so responsive to emails. I depend on my blog surfer a lot to keep in touch…but will keep in touch here!
Aha .. so to get to the top of your side bar .. just keep spamming you 🙂
@Nita: If you upload the same avatar as you use on WP.com on gravatar, you will automatically have the same identity as on WP.com
I double checked the e-mail ID. I believe it’ll take some time before the avatars start updating and appearing. And yea, you’re probably right. Since the week ended yesterday the widget got refreshed. Fair enough.
Jay ! I’m already on the sidebar. Now people stop commenting and let me enjoy the feeling ..
well,i will have my gravtar soon..editing our comments ..thats something new,.. 🙂
and for ur top commentator people just die to comment on ur blog so i am out of that contest how hard i try.. 😛
itni jaldi ish ka 4 comment ho gaya..
no wonder he won the top commentor award…
there are no such limits.. it depends on how much resources those plugins use.. hmm sitemap generator takes you to google faster.. coz it creates an xml site map and pings google and gives indexing of your posts. You can go to the options tab and you will get the option to manage the plguin. ( whenever you activate plugin, it will add a tab either under options or under manage, which lets you manage that plugin ) SEO plugin lets you make important changes to the structure, from the SEO point of view. If you see wordpress.org’s most popular plugins list, you should see those 3 I suggested. I haven’t experimented much with SEO plugin though
You see, you still get most of your regular visitors and comments ? those search engine hits, you will gain them back gradually !!!
@Shefaly:
I took a look at SezWho, but I couldn’t really understand that concept. It seems to be driven towards and generating and spreading quality content?
Gravatar just aims at creating a global “visual” identity with the help of your email address. Single Sign On might be quite far, yes. The OpenID thing is quite cool, but it can be improved in lots of ways. For example- at WP.com or even on a self-hosted blog, people still need to fill in their names/email addresses/websites etc. This is quite a hassle in my opinion. It’s another thing that I use a greasemonkey script to store such values in my browser 😉
@Nita
Like Ish mentions, you can put your WP.com picture in your gravatar account. In this way, even if you were to comment on another website and if you use the same email address, then your WP.com identity is carried along with you. And Gravatar is from the house of Automattic (after the acquisition), the same company behind WP. Thanks for following me here. 🙂 Probably it’s easier for me to keep in touch with people who are not on WP.com because I use a feed reader and read lots of non-WP.com blog too. 🙂
@Swen
Very astute observation! 😐 But I’m a very good anti-spam measure, in addition to Akismet.
@Ish
Really? Hmm…I would think that something went wrong, because mine appeared almost instantaneously.
@Arvind
Great! Another one who got wooed because of my marketing 😉
You’re embarrassing me now 😐 I guess I’ll remove that widget. I don’t want a literal competition here. LOL.
@dinsan:
In that case, I’ll install it. Thanks for the explanation. 🙂
Yeah, I installed it and made some minor changes from the Options tab. Is there anything else I need to do for the SEO plugin?
I saw that both of them are there in the top 3 plugins. If it really helps my blog, then I certainly don’t mind. 🙂
//You see, you still get most of your regular visitors and comments ? those search engine hits, you will gain them back gradually !!!
Yeah! It’s not been that bad..really…I thought that it would be much worse.
P.S- You can still reply to my email 😉 I’m still looking for a good web host as I’m planning to change very soon. Thanks.
testing to see if it works
Ruhi:
I think SezWho is about creating ‘authority’ rather than ‘identity’ but the latter is a de facto prerequisite for the former to be ascribed appropriately. In that respect it has a greater purpose than OpenID, for instance. OpenID definitely is a pain in its present form. Most of my details now remain saved in the browser.
I also think the inability of OpenID to ping your blog to verify identity etc also serves to foster individual communities say within WP or Blogger because if one is logged into WP, I can comment on WP blogs easier than on Blogger blogs and so on. Therefore I do not think any of WP/ Blogger etc would be too keen to change the status quo anytime soon.
hey i got my self a gravtar hope you could see the image..
i could not see my image… 😦
@Arvind: You’re not alone dude. I can’t see my gravatar as of yet either.
@Ruhi: Don’t you even think about removing the top commentators plugin. Ladies and Gentlemen, this is war! 😀
@Shefaly:
In that case, I need to take a closer look at SezWho. Do you know that there is another organization called “Sez Who” that focuses on the slaughter of the English langauage (mostly done in the US)? 😉
I agree about the OpenID thing. Blogging needs to over come these restrictions. But with Google owning Blogger…I’m not sure how this will proceed. I find it really harrowing to comment on Blogger blogs. It’s easier to save the form information in the browser cache instead of using OpenID, which is kind of a hindrance.
@Ish:
OK! Won’t remove it 🙂
@Ish and Arvind:
Regarding the avatar thing, I can see that Ankur tried to register and he was successful (monkey avatar 😉 ). Make sure that after you uploaded the pic, you logged back in and CHOSE it as your gravatar. I didn’t do that the first time!
So,
you’ve finally decided to take the plunge! Nice! Give this space a thorough work-over!
Btw, I joined your worthy cause to boycott blogger! 😀
ok i will try that.. adn will be right back…:P one more comment wating 😀
ok done ..let see whether my avtar comes or not…
i cant see it yet.. 😦
is it that tought ??
help me guys ??
@Nikhil:
Yeah! 🙂 Have been working on this since the past two days.
And the movement is over now! 😛 I think you didn’t read my update.
@Arvind
That’s very weird indeed. If you want, then email me your id and password and I’ll see what’s happening. It should have taken only a minute. Are you using the same email address to comment here that you used to sign up for gravatar?
hey i refreshed it and it suddenly popped from somewhere..
i could see my gravtar now.. 😀
yes i am using the same one..
actually we need to refresh after selecting the gravtar i guess
@ ISH
YES ,,the war is ON now 😛
@Arvind
Great! I can’t see it still. 😦 Let me refresh this page and see.
Edit: All right!! Can see it now 🙂 Congratulations. All the ‘hard’ work paid off.
thanks ..and i am leading now..can you see that 😀 ..
hope ISH is busy somewhere.. 😛
Ah, I hadn’t selected the avatar. I guess it’ll appear now.
Be Happy Arvind, you might get to be on the top more often because I’m planning to go into study mode. But hey, you never know with me, I’m a comment wh*re after all. 😛
@ish
well, i ma in the contest only for today as i have bunked by college…
from tomorrow i would be away till weekend …
busy in college, OK not so busy ..but will be away from net as always.
so want to take full advantage
@Ish:
Great! I can see it finally 🙂
comment wh*re?! 😮 that was funny! LOL.
@Arvind
That explains it! Did you bunk it for the match stuff happening? 😉
PS- Looks like the DNS propagation is still taking place and even though you people were commenting, I couldn’t see your comments on my blog!! So, I freaked out and made a post asking all of you not to comment; still, you guys were commenting. And now, I did a dns flush on my laptop and can miraculously see your comments again. I will ask you people to be careful and if you something weird, then please don’t comment. I don’t want to lose any conversation here.
Being able to edit my comments for 10 minutes in new good thing. Did hear about it before.
I think what I don’t like about the theme is the lack of clearly defined lines. It seems very busy.
Still, any primarily white theme is good. 🙂
@Poonam
It’s a simple plugin 🙂 I can increase the time limit too.
@Cat
I know what you mean…even I found that a little weird. But I really like those tabs on the left (the ones that you find irritating 😉 ). I’ll see if I can find anything else. Let me know if you like something.
I guess it’s that things seem a little out of place. Like the small header which doesn’t reach all the way to the right.
But hey, it’s your new home and you can spend many many hours making it real pretty. 🙂
Now a plug: Go get Twitter. 🙂
@Cat:
You need to blame Ish for the header 😛 It was reaching all the way till the right, but he said that it’s getting distorted in his browser. So, i made it shorter! LOL. I’ll probably just remove the header. Nobody even commented on the fact that the header displays a new pic every time you load the page. And I thought that that would be a major draw. How wrong I was.
Twitter- Yeah, I saw that post of yours fleetingly. Will comment in a bit.
Yeah, I noticed it, but the header seems so out of place. It’s too small/in a odd position.
Cat,
All right…I just made it wide again. Does it look better now? I feel too lazy and don’t feel like changing the theme now. Probably later during the day or tomorrow. 🙂
what the hell is DNS now…
??? :0
i cant see any body’s gravtar on ur page ..
Nope, it’s no more adjusting to the browser and rather screwed.
ruhi….
sorry for an off-topic comment…i was going thru ur blogroll,and i think u have given the link of “prestidigitator” under the title “SWEN”..i mean when i click “Swen” in ur blogroll i am landing in presti’s blog…
do check it out…and i cant find “Baphomet’s” blog in ur roll….
@arvind:
dNS stands for domain name server. Your web host provider will provide you with his DNS so that you can point the domain of your blog to their servers 🙂
I removed the gravatar from the comments section because the alignment didn’t seem very neat; it does show in the sidebar widget though.
@ Cat
Thanks for the screenshot; that is how it looked like when I had increased the width the last time too. I’ve reduced it a bit. The funny thing is that it looked normal in my browser. How does it look now?
@Rohan
Thanks for pointing that out. Swen’s and Presti’s links are working fine. I’d probably missed Bap’s blog while importing links. 🙂
Not quite as bad, but it’s still off the side.
Don’t use that effin’ gravatar plugin… screws up sometimes. Rather hardcode it into the template or use the myavatars plugin. 🙂
Btw, thats two plugins stolen – BrowserSniff and Welcome back! 😛 A tip would be to code the Browsersniff php withing the comment date and time with a break, will look more beautiful. 🙂
@Cat:
Awright. I’m done tweaking. If it still doesn’t look fine, then I’ll just have to wait to find a nice theme. 😛
@Ashish
I know! What Myavatars plug in are you talking about? Send me a link, will ya? I didn’t steal your Welcome Back plugin. It’s embedded in my theme, I think. 🙂 Yes, I did steal the browsersniff though. And thanks for that tip on the placement. It worked!! Yippiee!
Ruhi, you can probably find it at tankmiche.com
Also why are you using ShareThis when the share buttons are ALREADY EMBEDDED in your theme?!!
@Ashish:
All right, will take a look. 🙂
//Also why are you using ShareThis when the share buttons are ALREADY EMBEDDED in your theme?!!
Because the sharing buttons are visible only after you click on comments. how do i put it at the end of each post?
Edit: Couldn’t find the gravatar plugin in that blog…
Well it will look ugly then. Keep it as it is, but when I used the ShareThis Plugin I hardcoded it as manual and then only put it in when people viewed only the post. Thats a much better clutterfree way. Speed is what you should be aiming at. 🙂
Btw, what about a small how-to to change emoticons in that post of mine? 😀
Ruhi: Try napolux.com and search in his blog for MyAvatars plugin. 🙂
@Ashish:
Ashish: I think it’s quite clutterfree and fast, no? Of course, compared to your blog, it’s cluttered. 🙂
//Btw, what about a small how-to to change emoticons in that post of mine? 😀
Sounds good to me! I need to steal that too 😉
I did install that napolux.com thing first, but it never showed up. 😦 Anyway, I’m sick of making changes to this blog. It’s okay just the way it is. Do you also spend so much time beautifying it?
Speed’s fine once it’s cached. Faster than Ashish’s blog at times. 😉
@Cat:
Cool 😛 Now that’s something to be proud of, eh? Esp. because I haven’t even installed the WP-cache plugin yet. Ash, you hear that? 😉
I love looking through an article that will make men and women think.
Also, thank you for allowing for me to comment!