Blogicon.org – a self hosted avatar for your blog

by Patrick Altoft on / 15 responses

Favicons have been around for years and almost every website uses them. Why? Because they are easy. Webmasters just upload the favicon.ico file to their root directory and anybody can use the image as they wish.

Avatars are a more complicated business. Some sites pull them from MyBlogLog or Gravatar and some make you upload your own. Blogicon is a new system whereby webmasters simply upload their avatar to their website in the same way as a favatar.

The benefit is that you don’t have to sign up with any third party systems to use Blogicon, just add the image to your site and carry on using the web as normal, other people do the rest.

Specifications

The Blogicon image is a gif file 80 pixels by 80 pixels and is stored at www.yourblog.com/blogicon.gif so that any applications can find it. Add your Blogicon to your website and it will show up whenever you comment on Blogstorm and other participating blogs.

Applications

Initially I’m using Blogicon to pull peoples avatars into their comments on BlogStorm but the potential applications are huge.

  • Blog directories can pull avatars alongside listings
  • RSS readers such as Netvibes or Google Reader could use the system
  • Aggregators such as Techmeme might want to show blogicons next to stories

Blogicon

Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Branded3, a Leeds SEO & Digital Agency specialising in SEO, Web Design, Development & Social Media.

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Comments

Read the 13 comments below, or add your own!

January 4, 2008 at 10:50am

Sounds like a winner! Can’t wait to explore it further and integrate it with all my blogs!

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January 5, 2008 at 4:30am

I’ve added a blogicon to my blog. Great idea.

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January 5, 2008 at 6:05am

I added mine too:)

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January 5, 2008 at 9:34am

Just added one myself.

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January 8, 2008 at 12:57am

Good idea! :)

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January 8, 2008 at 2:12am

Great idea.

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January 9, 2008 at 1:10am

just test it

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January 9, 2008 at 3:06am

Let me see how my Blogicon looks like :)

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January 9, 2008 at 7:22am

How will this affect the gravatar/mybloglog plugin we already use?

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January 9, 2008 at 9:37am

Mike, at the moment this is an alternative solution for blog owners like me who didn’t want to sign up with gravatar/mybloglog. Hopefully I will be able to make a plugin that is compatible with both systems.

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January 19, 2008 at 4:53am

Just testing this out – I was not totally sure where to add the code in comments.php as I have threaded comments enabled which adds a lot of extra code to the file.

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inf@ectio.us
January 23, 2008 at 8:33pm

Is it based on website url or email address?

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January 24, 2008 at 5:48am

It is based on website address.

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