Gravatar, a common thing that we are seeing implemented in many blog designs. While I am working on the free theme for you guys, I thought maybe it is better to brand the theme with a custom gravatar for the users as well. Customized gravatars help you brand your site even more. Well I personally did not know of any way to change this, so I looked on the web for tutorials. I found two different tutorials, and they both work. There are advantages to use both, so I will share them with you.

First Method: By editing the Comments.php File

Michael at Problogdesign came up with this tutorial.

First you need to open up your comments.php file, or legacy.comments.php file if you are using that.

Find this code:

<?php echo get_avatar( $comment, 60 ); ?>

Note: You might not have the 60 because different themes come with different sizes for the gravatar.

You need to replace this code with your own created image code as follow:

<?php echo get_avatar( $comment, 60, ‘http://www.balkhis.com/wp-content/themes/yourthemename/images/youravatar.png’); ?>

Remember to change the url to the correct path. Now if you want to understand the code basically it is calling this image as you default avatar when you put that link unless a user already have a gravatar.

And the 60 represent the size in pixels which is why I said it won’t be the same in each theme. You may change the size of it to fit your theme.

Now this is for people who like to have raw codes, but if you are releasing this theme out for free, then it won’t be the best choice because people can really screw with the codes if they mess things up accidently.

Step 2: Editing the Functions File

This is another tutorial that I found on the web which is basically a plugin in a non-plugin form. I found this code at Build Internet. Basically in this plugin you are editing your functions.php file

add_filter( ‘avatar_defaults’, ‘newgravatar’ );

function newgravatar ($avatar_defaults) {
$myavatar = get_bloginfo(‘template_directory’) . ‘/images/buildinternet-gravatar.jpg’;
$avatar_defaults[$myavatar] = "Build Internet";
return $avatar_defaults;
}

By adding these codes you are telling wordpress that there is another image that you like to be seen. So once you add this code, you will see an image in your admin panel.

You can even have more than one default gravatars if you want to give more options. Just simply duplicate the $myavatar variable multiple times, and you will have it.

The advantage of this code is that it is easier for users who are not coders because they don’t have to look a whole lot to change.

I will let you make the pick.

Now you should be able to change the default mystery man avatar to your personal branded new avatar logo. Thanks to these two fellas for providing us with the options.

Spam Comments are becoming a major issue now a days because more and more people are leaning towards spamming to get backlinks. Heck people are even paying spammers to spam with their url. Well are you tired of these spammers? I know I am. Over the past year, I dealt with tons of spam troubles because it seemed that a few spam comments would bypass the security anyways. So I thought I should compile a list of wordpress plugins, and tricks that I have learnt over the past to fight against spam comments in wordpress.

Wordpress Tools to Fight Spam

1. Akismet

This is the dual sword that everyone should have in their possession. Each wordpress copy comes with this plugin by default. All what you have to do is get an API key from wordpress.com. Once you get the API, you are equipped with this weapon. Akismet really gets the job done. It catches over 350+ Spam / day on average for Balkhis. Without it, I don’t think I would be able to monitor the comments.

2. Defensio

Defensio is like an automated bow and arrow that is bound to hit the bull’s eye everytime in your fight against spam. Defensio have your comment traffic route through it’s system where it analyzes each comment for the level of spam, and assigns a grade. If the grade is of an adequate value then the comment is published, if the comment seems suspicious it will be held for your review. Defensio provides you with good stats and gives you RSS Feed for both good and spam comments.

3. Simple Captcha

Simple captcha does exactly what it sounds like. It adds a random image in your comment box which every user is required to enter. It fools the spammers. This is one of the most efficient ways to prevent spam, but this makes all of your users enter the captcha as well which might reduce your total comments on the site as well because most users get annoyed with the captcha system.

4. Simple Trackback Validation

Simple Trackback Validation filters through your trackbacks and only show you the ones that are not spam. Not a long while ago, this technique started to get alot of buzz and it is now being used by alot of spammers. They make you think like they are linking to your post, but mostly either they are copying your entire post, or have a short link to your post in a porn page or something spammy like that.

5. Bad Behavior

Bad Behavior analyzes the HTTP headers, IP address, and other metadata regarding the request to determine if the comments are spammy or not. This is also very effective if you have Akismet installed. This is probably one of the better combos. Not to mention, this works on almost all php-based sites like drupal, and anything else.

6. Spam Karma

Spam Karma assigns a score to each comment using a specific rating system which includes the age of the post, email, their link and more. The developer has stopped developing this plugin and will not provide future support, so don’t expect any updates. Although I was told that this plugin works well.

7. WP Spam Hitman

This plugin lets you set a list of words that are in spam comments. But you must remember that these words are often used by your normal visitors also, so you can’t just blacklist these words. WP Hitman takes these words and analyze how many times they have been used, and if they have been used alot then it triggers it as spam. This might put your users comment in danger also, but sometimes to avoid spam, you have to this method for a shortwhile.

Wordpress Tips to Fight Spam

Ok I have tried just about all of the below tricks that I am about to tell you, so you can use it. I will tell you the pros and cons of each, so you can make the judgement by yourself.

8. Comment Moderation and Blacklist

Moderating comments is a default function with wordpress. You can find it if you go in your admin panel if you click Settings tab and then discussion. I suggest you leave the url level to default. Use this feature only, if you find a certain person suspicious, you can put their IP in this list otherwise don’t add anything because you will be increasing the work load on yourself.

Blacklist option is right below the moderation area in Settings ~ Discussion. In this if you put down any email, IPs, or domains it would be blacklisted. You can blacklist a certain email, IP Address, or domain. The sad part is that they always find a way around. By adding more and more into this list you will hurt your loyal readers because their comment will go in Spam as well. I had this happen with me. So I try to avoid making the list bigger. Use with caution.

9. Nofollow Comments

Spammers target blogs that are dofollow. It was a big thing a while back. People would comment on every do follow blog, so bloggers would make their blog do follow in the hope of increasing the comments. Well, you will increase the amount of comments. But half of them would be spam. So the choice is yours. Most popular sites use nofollow. The reason for that is because it really doesn’t matter. Your comments get indexed anyways in the search engine and it counts as a backlink. You just don’t get the PR Juice (or some says).

Well here is how you can add a no follow to your comments.

Open this file: /wp-includes/comment-template.php

Look for the word External, and just add a no follow tag after it.

Some people might say that you are not being fair to your loyal users because you are no following their comments. That is why there is a top commentators widget which you can use to reward your top commentators by giving them a follow link from your site

I am sure most of you guys are already familiar with these tactics hopefully I added some more news. This is for starters or those who are still looking for more options. Believe me guys you get Akismet and add any one of these extra layers. You should be set.

Twitter is getting alot of exposure in the media, and recently posted a news that it has attracted over 14 million users this past month. Twitter is HOT, and if you are not on it, you are missing the free lemonade in a hot sunny day. Well, I was kinda ticked off at twitter for a while, but I recently decided to restart my way into twitter. I am making more contacts getting to know more people and enjoying the benefits. Well I think it is so important at this point, that I am making a whole category devoted to twitter which I plan to write on for a few weeks at least, so you will be seeing alot of articles related to twitter on Balkhis. I asked all of my followers and friends to tell me why someone should join twitter, and I have picked some good responses which you will see in the post.

1. It helps to make Connections

Twitter is one tool that will help you make connections with users that you will never have known before existed. You can get to know a whole different side of a person. You can know more about me by following me on twitter rather than just reading my blog post. Twitter is the key to make another door of connection. You might not be able to ever get to know me or have me link to your post because I don’t know you, but twitter lets you do that. Twitter lets you talk to people. I can ramble on and on, but I hope you get my point. If you don’t then Andrew Chuang puts it best.

“You should join Twitter to strengthen existing bonds, and make new ones.” ~ @Tsuyomaru

2. Quick Support

With the speed twitter is growing, more and more businesses are creating their user accounts. They are even hiring a person who is on their twitter account tweeting back at their customers. So sometimes you might not even get a response through your email, but you will be able to hear back a response through twitter. This works if you want to connect with top bloggers and marketers as well. These guys have insane amount of emails to go through daily, so your email will be ignored, but tweets since they are only 140 characters, they will respond because it doesn’t take them very long. You can get quick support if you join twitter.

“Twitter is a valuable and underestimated research tool; u can increase your “web of influence” & exchange with thought leaders” ~ @blogbrevity

3. Good Learning Tool

You can never have too much knowledge. Specially if you are a designer like me. Half of the people that I am following are designers. I see so many great articles and resources that help me improve designing skills daily. No matter what your niche is there is always someone there for your niche, and there is always resources for you. And if there is not, then man you are lucky because you can capitalize the zone, and take full benefit from the newcomers.

“Why join twitter? B/c I learn so much from the 20 or so people I follow.” ~ @lnxwalt

4. To Keep UP

No matter what you are trying to keep up with, twitter has the latest info of it. From technology to breaking news, you can find it all on twitter. Heck the earthquake in Italy was first reported on twitter before it was on CNN. You can follow the web trends, news, special sites, and more by being on twitter. As a webmaster, or just as a normal person, you don’t want to fall behind. So to keep up you should join twitter.

“I was completely skeptical. I joined reluctantly, to keep up w. web trends. Now, I enjoy it. (Despite being a bit intimidated)” ~ @lt3design

5. It’s the Next Big Thing

I don’t know if you notice, but twitter is everywhere. It’s on the web, it’s on the news channels, it’s in commercials, it’s in paper media such as newspaper. It is taking over the world right now like facebook and myspace did at once. If you are one of those people who joins things because it is the next big thing, then this is your chance. Twitter is the next big thing that you should join because everyone is here.

“You should join Twitter because it’s the next big thing.” ~ @JohnChow

6. It Helps Your Creativity

Marketing is all about being creative. Creative campaigns are short and sticky. That is how your tweets are suppose to be also. 140 characters max. You have to get your point across and if you want others to read it, you got to make it interesting. Basically it is an ultimate practice for you to elevate your pitch. No one likes to read a whole page of boring proposals. The best proposals I have agreed to were short and they had very catchy headlines. Twitter is a practice for you to write better and creative headlines, so after a while you will be a better blogger due to twitter because it is helping your post titles.

“You get pretty damn creative saying what’s on your mind in 140 char or less!” ~ @danib3

You should read this in the full page because it is 3000 words, and I don’t want to make this page a big a scroll down.

As you guys know that Balkhis is hosted with Host Gator. Well today surfing the web, I found this coupon floating around which will let you get hosting form Host Gator for only 99 Cents for the first month.

This coupon would work for the Baby Plan on Shared Web Hosting Page.

So first you would need to go to Host Gator, and then click on Web Hosting Tab. Select the Baby Plan.

This plan offers you:

Unlimited Space
Unlimited Bandwidth
Unlimited Domains

Enjoy all other benefits such as Fantastico and unlimited everything else with this account.

Follow through the process, and when it comes to the coupon part enter the coupon: Wordpress

This would get you 99 cents for your first month, and then you can pay $9.95 / month. This is a huge saving for your hosting account if you were going to get the hosting with host gator anyways.

I just thought this post would be helpful to all new webmasters or old ones who are deciding to get hosting. Spread this coupon out if you like

Hey Balkhis Users,

Life is about to calm down here. Only one more exam to go which is Thursday then I have a week off. I am taking Summer classes at UF, so they will start soon after. Weather here in Florida was really nice this week. I went to Lake Wauburg to swim and boating, and I really enjoyed it.

Recently I was having alot of troubles with Balkhis comments and having alot of genuine comments go in the spam box. I have fixed the problem for the most part. If your comment does not show up email me right away using the contact form. Or the fastest way would be follow me on twitter, and just hit @syedbalkhi and send me a message. But for the most part, the problem is fixed now.

For the most part, the blog is doing well and so are my other projects. I am hoping to launch them as soon as I can, so I can get to the free themes for you guys. Well thats enough about me, lets see what was going on Balkhis for the past week:

10 Top Notch CSS Principles of the Experts

20 Confessions: Being a blogger influence your life and personality [True Stories] – Amanda Roberts wrote this post about me (Syed Balkhi). All stories discussed happened in real life.

15 Sites Which will make you a Mind Blowing Designer

Think Your Blog is Fine, Think Again – Melvin from Melvin Blog.com wrote a guest post at Balkhis sharing his experience in the industry. Very inspiring post which you should read.

If you guys want to ever do a Guest Post on Balkhis simply contact me using my contact form and We can work something out.

Now to my favorite reads on the web this past week.

Twitter Eats up the World – Global visitor count upto 19 Million

5 Writing Tips for Web Designers

40 Logo Design Tutorials

15 Online Background Generators

15 Firefox Add-Ons to Tame the Social Media Addicts

Remember if your link was not included here it is probably because I did not know about it. You can suggest me your articles either via email using the contact form, or you can just follow me on twitter @syedbalkhi.