Many websites are developed with a CMS built in; many of those websites use blogging systems like WordPress. FunkyTower.Com uses WordPress.

Many of us bloggers have a comment system where readers can leave comments, but have you ever noticed that some comments seem to have the writer’s custom avatar while others do not? How do they do that? Well, it’s quite simple, really.

It’s called Gravatar (www.gravatar.com)

Gravatar is a free online avatar generator. Simply sign up with your e-mail address, upload an avatar, and you’re done. Now whenever you leave comments on a blog that has avatars enabled (with Gravatar support, which most do) your avatar will show up automatically. The way it works is Gravatar uses the e-mail address you enter when you leave a comment in conjunction to the e-mail you used to make the Gravatar account; when it finds your e-mail address in a comment post, it replaces the default avatar chosen by the blog owner with your avatar! Pretty neat, huh?

This will generally work. The few times it won’t are when the blog owner disables the support for “Gravatars” or just doesn’t have any sort of avatar system for comments. Other than that, when you leave comments here at FunkyTower.Com, or at other blogs like chris.pirillo.com (an amazing geek), you will have your very own, custom avatar.

If you have a blog, and you’re looking to share your thoughts with more people, and network with other bloggers, Technorati is supposed to be a good source – and I’m sure for many it is.  Unfortunately they have a horrible system for “claiming” a blog.

“Claiming” your blog is verifying that YOU are the owner of the blog.  It would be a good thing if you could actually claim your blog!

Many users try to claim their own blog, but Technorati’s system won’t let them.  They get an immediate error message for no real reason.  When users contact the customer service, they don’t respond with a solution or reason why the users can’t claim their own blog.  Some people made it public by posting threads on Technorati’s discussion boards mentioning Technorati’s inability to create a decent claiming system and their lack of responding to e-mails sent to customer support.  As it turns out, TONS of users are experiencing this problem.  There have been reply after reply to these thread topics.

Seems that once Technorati’s administration got word of it, they claimed their faulty customer service on a “backlog” that they’ve been experiencing - I didn’t even know this was word.  I think the only thing that would cause them to have a “backlog” is they just stopped responding to people’s e-mails.  NOW they want to go back and address the issue since it’s been made public.

The reason I say THAT is now those topics aren’t open for discussion anymore.  I guess Technorati is tired of being embarrassed on their own website.  I still see more people posting new topics about the problem though.

Technorati needs to do two things – stop disregaurding e-mails or expand your customer support so you can start responding to people’s requests, and develop a better system for claiming a blog.

I tried to submit a blog to network with other bloggers, and I can’t claim my own blog.  I sent Technorati an e-mail, but I don’t expect an e-mail back.

What Do You Think?
Do you have the same problem?  Perhapse you have a solution to this problem!  Whatever you have to say, let me know about it, I’ll be happy to respond to your e-mail   So go ahead and share your thoughts with me by leaving a comment or contacting me at david@funkytower.com

Take it easy,
David Crandall