Month: June 2006

Update on the avatar situation. After considering the responses, we have installed the avatar system. HOW TO GET AN AVATAR: Step 1: make at least 2 comments using the same email. Step 2: After you make the comment, click the link below the comment box that says “As a frequent comment author you are allowed to register your own avatar.” Step 3: Choose an avatar. DONE. IF you want to pick an avatar you made, you need to email it to me and I will add it to the choices. Good luck, let me know if that is confusing.

Instructions on how to make your own avatar with the avatar maker: Pick your options, when you get it the way you want it you need to capture your screen. On the PC hit the print screen key on your keyboard, open a photo editor/email editor and paste your screen shot. Send it to me. On a mac hit shift-open apple-3 to capture the screen, a .jpg will show up on your desktop, email me that file.

I’m still playing with the idea of having avatars for the site. First, for those with no idea what I’m talking about, an avatar is an 80px x 80px (or anysize) picture that appears next to your name when posting, or commenting (an example). I’ve found a cool plugin that allows for each comment to be assigned an avatar set by us, then when the person commenting makes a certain number of comments they can pick their own avatar, and that picture stays with all of your comments thereafter, each person having their own. The concerns I have are, ONE: too many pictures on the blog. We’ve had some posts with 40 plus comments, if a small picture was on each of those.. sheesh. TWO: I can’t seem to motivate the dozens of readers of McBlog who don’t comment, to comment.. so I’m scared if avatars were displayed it would scare away anyone on the verge of commenting to never comment…Aunt Melissa! On the flip side, I think it would be fun to have them.. and that’s about it, b/c they don’t serve any purpose beisdes fun, oh and it might get a few more people to register…?

So I want to hear from you, the faithful readers of McBlog, what would having a small picture next to your name as your id badge do/or not do for you? Increase/Decrease Comments? Scare/Entertain?

P.S. Check out this avatar maker to see some of the options you will have if we do avatars.

McBlog New feature allows for comments to be made in quickview area. Don’t know if it works in Internet Explorer… but you really shouldn’t be surfing the internet with that crap anyway.. switch to Mozilla Firefox. (well I just checked in IE and interestingly/oddly enough, the comments don’t show, but the submit a new comment box does…)

We also added the feature to register for the blog… on the left column in the Additional section there is a register link. You can sign up for this blog, which will allow you to… well as far as I can tell it just lets you sign up as a profile so that each time you visit you can just login and make comments and you don’t have to type your name and email and stuff, and I think you’ll be able to edit your own comments too… well any way you want to make comments is fine with us, registered or non registered. (Cotton and Tyler you are already authors, so you would just login of course)

Well, it’s finally ready to be released. McPhotos has come up to par with the rest of the site and we feel it is worth everyone checking out. If you want to stay on top of the latest pics or just see if you are on there, McPhotos is a great place to bookmark.(we also added a link on the left sidebar under the voting poll) Flash 8 is required Pick an album, and the show will auto play, or feel free to browse at your own speed. If you like a picture, just click on it and a new window will open in higher resolution for download… yes we aim to please here at McBlog. So grandparents, parents, friends, everyone, gather round McPhotos!