Blogicon Wordpress beta testers required
The Wordpress plugin for Blogicon.org is ready and I am looking for some beta testers. You can download the plugin here and see how the avatars look in action here.
This plugin will allow your readers to leave an avatar next to their comments without having to sign up with a third party site such as Gravatar or MyBlogLog.
The first 10 real blogs to beta test will get a permanent from the Blogicon.org homepage. If you haven’t already make sure you upload your blogicon.gif file so your avatar can be seen when you comment on Blogstorm and other participating blogs.
The plugin is based on the Favatars plugin by Jeff Minard. Thanks Jeff.
Categories: Blogging
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Just installed it. Now I’ll need some comments to see how it works out…
Sucker January 9, 2008 2:12 am | Reply
Patrick, I’m very intrigued by this. Avatars just add so much to the experience, and I love the thought of a standard for them.
Couple of thoughts that came to mind as I was about to install this, though:
1. Does it support multiple avatar platforms, or will I be forced to choose Blogicon over MyBlogLog, for example?
2. A bigger issue, though, is the decentralization of these images, specifically:
A. How much will this begin to drag down my site? The more I comment, the more my image gets out there, the more the requests for my image begin to hit my site. At what point will I have to add extra hosting just because of the comments I’ve left all over?
B. How much will the load time of my blog suffer as each user is forced to hit multiple sites — not all of which are the most robustly hosted — in order to download the various avatar images of people who have left comments?
C. Do the tons of bloggers at hosted platforms like Blogger, WordPress.com, etc. have the ability to do this?
I’m thinking there’s a lot to be said for the centralized hosting of someone like MyBlogLog, but then I haven’t thought this through nearly as well as you have.
Shane January 9, 2008 6:05 am | Reply
The plugin I wrote doesn’t support multiple systems but it could be extended to do that.
As long as the images are small then it won’t have an affect on bandwidth. If a post gets on Digg or something then most webmasters would be glad of the extra exposure which will outweigh the small amount of bandwidth.
Images are loaded after content in a web browser so they won’t slow down the load time like Javascript widgets can sometimes do.
I’m not sure about Blogger and Wordpress.com, maybe somebody else can answer that.
Patrick Altoft January 9, 2008 6:48 am |
ReplyNot working for me.
http://www.marketinghub.info/blogicon.gif exists and I have in my comment loop.
The icon is not being added to the comments table either so I guess this line is wrong -
$blogiconURL = $urlParts['scheme'].’://’.$urlParts['host'].’/blogicon.gif’;
Although I’m not sure of the best way to debug it.
Marketing Hub January 9, 2008 11:22 am | Reply
Did you add the bit of code to your comments loop and activate the plugin? A few other people have got it working so I don’t think there can be a major issue. Send me an email if you still have problems.
Patrick Altoft January 9, 2008 11:59 am |
ReplyI’d like to signup as a tester if still available.
Michael January 10, 2008 9:56 am | Reply
I’m currently using the MyAvatars plugin on Sciencetext.com, it pulls commenters’ MyBlogLog avatar as you probably know. I guess the big disadvantage of switching to another system is lower user numbers. Have you got a big marketing campaign planned to persuade visitors to adopt this system?
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David Bradley January 17, 2008 4:00 am | Reply