Been awhile since I have made a personal post. Nice to finally have one blog for myself and another for blog development stuff .. course I need to post more here. :D

I have been so busy and haven't had much time for anything but work and family lately. Hopefully over the next month I will have some more time for other things.

I mentioned before that I had dropped out of high school which as you get older you realize was a big mistake .. but anyways this isn't really about the mistake. My current job now requires a high school diploma or GED. So a couple weeks ago I signed up at our local community college and took all five GED tests within one day and passed them all .. even without studying. :D

I was a little worried how hard it would be but once I started with the first test I noticed how basic the tests were and I hate to degrade it but I felt like I was doing my son's 5th grade homework or something. People sometimes wonder why it took me 13 years to go and get my GED and with most things in my life I need a reason for it. In this case it was for my job but after I took it there was a little self satisfaction in sort of correcting one of my biggest mistakes by dropping out of high school. Having a GED does allow me to further my education if I wished .. and some day I might but doesn't interest me and can't really do anything financially with it but it's nice knowing I can now if I want to. :)

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I noticed some drama going on in the community and usually it involves me but this time I was able to see it from the outside looking in .. and I hate to sound hypocritical but it all seems so silly and a waste of time. Of course I know from my own experiences it's not silly or meaningless to the people involved and I think people should keep that in mind.

A lot of times the reasons for the drama get lost in the chaos that soon follows. I know there was many times I felt justified in my position only to have my facts and reasons get lost by the amount of involvement from people who had little or no clue on what was going on.

The same thing goes for this recent drama. The majority of it is between two people and we should have the respect to let it be between the two people and try and keep out when we don't have all the information. Speculation and taking sides only causes more problems and hurt feelings that could be easily avoided.

Of course people are more then willing to give their opinion and I would never stop anyone from doing that.

Now I have seen some leave because of some negativity from the community and others having some concerns. I am not trying to belittle these people but the majority of the negativity that I saw was from an anonymous troll and is not even a part of this community and should just be ignored. The other negativity comes from historically deeper issues between certain individuals that we shouldn't even involve ourselves with and doesn't reflect the community as a whole.

Other then that I don't see what there is to complain about. The community is very healthy and active. As one person mentioned recently the community doesn't revolve around a few members. There is so much more within our community to be proud of and to say their is no activity or the only activity is negative is basically the same as saying other people's stuff is not worth much. I understand some people have their inner circles and they could easily be effected by problems within those circles but keep in mind this community is much bigger and more important then just a few members and will always carry on and be a positive place to call home. :)

Ah finally I have a job once again. Funny story about his job too. As I said I had an interview coming up this week but now that this other job popped up I canceled that.

Alright anyways .. so on with the story. Three years ago I was laid off from my job which was assembly work at a disposable diaper manufacturing plant. I had spent six years working there and was pretty dedicated and skilled at and was able to move up to a nice position. Then I was laid off after they did cut backs which included a ton of people. I was upset at first but got over it pretty quickly.

I really enjoyed that job a lot and I worked 12 hour shifts so my fellow co-workers were like a second family to me and I still miss most of them even to this day.

So anyways fast forward to current time. About three months ago my brother (actually brother in-law but to me he is as close as a brother) who also works for this same company let me know that the company was looking to hire more people on again. So I sent an e-mail at the time but was not able to get hired back on.

So over the past few months my brother has been slowly putting on the pressure to hire me again and finally when I was getting very discouraged and thought I would never find a job I got a phone call from my brother yesterday telling me to call the company because they want to hire me back.

Man I was so relieved and couldn't believe it. It was like everything fell into place at the exact time I needed it the most. So I took care of all the paper work today and start on Saturday night. I really appreciate my brother coming through for me when I needed it the most!

I am also happy that all those skills I worked so hard to develop won't go to waste and I will be able to continue doing something I enjoy. I love to work on machinery and the challenge of a high speed assembly work and the high stress environment. Some people hate to work like that but I live for it and love it. Something about the pressure and the fast pace to keep up production and the challenge of having a great run .. its kind of like a sport. We are divided into four different teams and there is a lot of competition to be the best.

So anyways yeah thats the funny part about the story .. after all this time I have come full circle back to where I was three years ago. Guess you could call it an extra long lunch break. The pay is also very decent which makes me happy. I would hate to have to start over pay wise. The only bad part about starting a new job is the wait for that first paycheck which won't come for some time .. especially when I need the money bad right now. :(

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Alright now some more stuff. I had to take the bus all around today because I didn't have a ride. Man you meet the most interesting people when riding the bus. I was waiting at the bus stop and this deaf man came up to me and was also waiting for the bus and tried to communicate with me. At first I had a hard time understanding him so he brought out a pen and a pad of paper.

He wrote down that he remembered me from a bathroom yesterday. So I was like I never even left my house yesterday but he couldn't read my lips. So I used his pen and pad of paper and explained that I never left my house yesterday. Then he wrote that he never forgets people and knows it was me. So I wrote again that it wasn't me.

This went on for about 10 minutes debating with this deaf guy on a pad of paper .. haha there is something I never imagine happening. :D

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I mean no offense to anyone that might work at the post office but is it a requirement to be a complete and total "dick" to work at the post office? I have gone to our local post office a few times and they are always assholes and completely rude. Is being a postal worker that bad? Is it that hard to crack a smile once in awhile and acknowledge someone when they say thanks after a transaction. Sheesh. :D

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I have some sad news that kind of put a damper on my good day. I live in an apartment complex that has a swimming pool and my oldest son the other day told me that there was a bunch of cop cars an ambulance and a firetruck because a kid got hurt by the pool.

Then today I find out that the kid died that day .. apparently drowned and it had been on the local news but I haven't watched much TV this summer. There is an older lady where I live that I always come across that told me today and I was shocked and a little sad to find that out. Now I won't let my kids swim in the pool anymore .. not because I don't trust them I just get the scary feeling that it could have been my kid. :/

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Anyways thats a bunch of stuff I have been wanting to post but have been so low lately with the money problems and not being able to find a job .. just haven't been in the mood. Now I am rejuvenated and happy once again knowing I finally have a job again.

So I will try and get some stuff done on the site over the next couple days before heading back to work.

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For all those that donated I wanted to give a HUGE THANKS. It's so amazing to have such a wonderful and generous community that I can be a part of! I will get everyone situated and send out personal thank yous once I get some free time tomorrow. I will also setup your ad free and hopefully once things are settled again here I can start giving back what you guys have donated to me. :D

Hey guys I feel really shameful for asking for the communities help but I am going through some financial troubles right now and still trying to find a job. Normally I would never ask for the communities help but if anyone could donate that would help so much.

I know I haven't been that involved with the development of the site lately and I promise to get back to that as soon as this weekend. For those that help me out I will of course put it towards the ad removal and if you need anything custom for your blog be sure to ask and I will do my best to help you out in return.

As I said I hate to ask the community for help but I am getting a little desperate as the end of the month comes closer. I have an interview this week coming up but even if I do get the job the pay may not come in time.

Again sorry for asking for help .. thanks for all the support. :)

Hello everyone. Only one more month to go and EFx2Blogs will be 4 years old. During the month of August we are celebrating EFx2Blogs and showing our appreciation for the site and community.

During the month of August the donation for ad removal will be lowered to $15 for a year of ad removal. I will be extending 3 months to the people that have already donated and will be listing everyone who has donated so far .. so give these great people a visit and maybe give a shout out while you are there.

You can donate by using the button below. You can use your paypal account or any major credit card. If you would like to donate another way feel free to send me a message and I will give you my contact information.

As I said before it's only $15 for a year during the month of August all the way up to our birthday September 10th 2007. Feel free to donate more if you want and the extra will be put towards more months of ad free.

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I also wanted to have a month long celebration with different things that members can do which include EFx2Blogs logos, EFx2Blogs wallpapers, EFx2Blogs poems or even stories with members of our community as the main players.

If you create something to celebrate EFx2Blogs send me a message and I will collect all the creations everyday and make a post so everyone can visit your blogs to check them out. Even a nice story about your time here at EFx2Blogs would be very cool to read. :)

Also if someone can come up with a good EFx2Blogs Meme that would be very cool. Then we can all do it and I will also link those with the other creations. :)

Thanks for all the support and here is to another great year here at EFx2Blogs!

Oh yeah .. and the first post on EFx2Blogs :D

Well guys I won't be on too much. It's time to get back out into the work force and find a job. It's been nice being a stay at home dad, but it doesn't always work financially. So I am off to find a job and most of my free time will be dedicated to that .. and once I start working it will be even less free time. I will continue to work on the blogs when I can and will still try to post on a regular basis. :D

Hey which one of you wants to hire me? :laugh:

Haha I was watching videos over at www.killsometime.com and came across this one that cracked me up.

http://www.killsometime.com/video/vi...asp?ID=969

Probably not work appropriate so beware. :)

Well not actual updates for the service just an update on whats been going on. I have been really busy lately so I haven't had much time to work on anything recently. I still have some stuff on my to do list which include the smilies and other image uploading features like favicons. I will probably get back to work on this next weekend when I get a chance.

I also want to work on the main site some more .. got part way done then was to busy to finish it up so there is a few sections still missing.

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I also wanted to send out a reminder that a few people are coming up to their renewal time for ad removal donations.

If anyone else wants ad removal by helping out the server and giving a donation you can check out the donation information here.

Giving a donation is a great way to support the site and to give something back to this great service. :)

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Alright one last thing .. if you have any friends or know someone looking for a blog then send them our way. The best way to get new people is by spreading the word about EFx2Blogs. :)

I noticed some people were wondering what happened to cause the downtime and to be honest I have no clue. I haven't been on for a few days and never even knew it was down until I saw a few comments about it.

I know it's been said many times before .. but I feel it needs to be said again. EFx2Blogs is not the only site on this server and a lot of times is not the cause of the downtime or slow periods. I am also not the main person that runs the server. That is Martin who actually pays for the server and runs the whole network.

I read over at one of the other sites that an admin sent Martin an SMS about the downtime. Martin is currently on vacation and eventually found a computer to fix the server. So I for one am very grateful that Martin went out of his way on his vacation to get the server back up and going again. :)

Also keep in mind that this is not a professional service and there is absolutely no guarantees of the server not going down from time to time. I noticed people want to know why it goes down and to be honest a lot of times I am not going to know why and also feel it doesn't need to be explained each and every time there is some sort of outage.

The community leaders are just bloggers like the rest of you guys. When the server goes down they don't know what happened just like you don't know what happened. So it's wrong to expect them to know what happened or expect them to be able to fix it.

A number of people have my e-mail address but nobody e-mailed me about it (even though I wasn't here to read it). If you need it .. you can use my new one for EFx2Blogs .. efx2blogs at gmail.com .. or my older one .. emufanatics at gmail.com

I also noticed some people joked that I pulled the plug or something on the site .. if I was going to close the site down I would have the decency to let everyone know a head of time. So if the server goes down then take it as the server being down and know that it's going to come back up eventually.

Also does every little thing have to be a comparison to modblog when the server or service experiences a problem? It doesn't bug me too much but after awhile it gets pretty old. ;)

I have added the buddy, subscriptions and blocked users controls back into the control panel. They are located under the Settings section. If you click the settings icon you will see some tabs for the different areas.

Alright there has been some changes ..

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- As mentioned before ReStyle was created to make things easier and now adding new buddies, subscriptions and blocked users is a whole lot easier.

I have added some AJAX auto suggestion for adding these things. When you go to your different areas you will see a text area where you can enter a name.

Let's use the buddies as an example. Ok you go to your buddies section and you want to add a new buddy. So you start to type in their user name a list of the users that match what you have typed in so far will be shown. This list is pulled from the user database. Now all you need to do is either type in more of their user name to make the list smaller or find their name and click it. This will add their name to text field. Now just click add buddy and they will be added to your list.

The auto suggest works in all browsers except Safari beta 3 for Windows that I have tested, but you can still enter the users name and it will work like normal.

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- You can now remove subscriptions and subscribers as well as buddies and people that have you on their buddy list.

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- While looking at the database I noticed a lot of people had their blocked users wrong or entered people's URLs instead of users names and stuff like that. I suggest everyone delete and enter their blocked users back in with the new auto suggest feature. This way it works correctly and you know you are blocking the members you want to block.

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Alright thats all for now ... enjoy!

Edit: Oh yeah and on the subscription page it no longer shows the users last post. This was an old feature that was added prior to us having blog alerts. It's not very server friendly especially if you have a ton of subscriptions and was causing some peoples subscription lists from working.

I am currently in the progress of converting my older design over. I still have a few areas that I need to finish and I still need to add the rest of my menus.

Should be done sometime later tonight. :)

I had a nice few days away from working on the site. Had a lot of fund watching the NBA draft last night where my team the Portland Trailblazers had the 1st pick .. but that's not really blog related so let me move on.

Recently I purchased efx2blogs.com and was originally planning on starting a new service but with the change to ReStyle that idea has been scrapped. I still want to use the domain so my plan is to make efx2blogs.com the new homepage for EFx2Blogs.

We will be launching a new main site and I will be giving access to the community leaders so they can upload images and other things for the new site. I plan on adding a support area that is going to be much easier to use then the current blog solution. We need something that users can search for information they need and also something that can be organized much better.

So the new domain (efx2blogs.com) will be the home to EFx2Blogs main site, support and other site related information.

The actual blog subdomain (yourusername.efx2.com) will continue to use the efx2.com name and the same with the forums.

So no worries about URL changes for your blogs. This is just for the main site and new support stuff.

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I never really got around to post about the recent downtime we had. There was an issue with the server that made the httpd to crash and both times this happened I was away and didn't know about it until I checked the site. I know sometimes people wonder why it was down for 3 hours but I just wanted to assure people that it was something that was fixed within minutes (Thanks to Martin) and the only reason it was down for so long was because nobody who could do something about it knew it was down. I didn't see any complaints but sometimes people get upset about it or get a little paranoid and just wanted to let you know it had nothing to do with the site and was a server issue that has been fixed. :)

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Alright I plan on doing the smilies next. Just wanted to let you know that the default smilies will be located with the design stuff and are now design specific rather then user specific like before. So now each design can have their own default colored smilies. I also want to get more default smiley options so I will be making a request once this section is open.

The custom smilies will be user specific as usual and will be located with the other features stuff. The only major changes here will be the mass management stuff like with the galleries.

I also will be doing some control panel stuff like converting the buddies, subscriptions and stuff over to the new control panel look.

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I also upgraded our forums to the latest version from vBulletin. Also if you are bored you should head on over to our forums arcade .. :)

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Well thats about it for now. :)

Well I am going to be taking a few days off from working on ReStyle. When I get back to it I will finish up the Profile and other small areas around the Control Panel.

I hope everyone is enjoying the changes so far. It's a lot easier to see the improvements now that most of the features have been added back in. It's not taking as long as I expected. I do appreciate everyone's support during this change. Thanks :)

Performance has been a million times better and I am glad I made the switch. It seems most people are getting their blogs in order with their own personalities again. Nice to see most people getting settled back into their comfort zones. :D

I was asked recently if there was a way to give back for my hard work with the ReStyle and a way to support EFx2Blogs. The best way to give back or support EFx2Blogs is by making a donation or donate for ad removal. You can find these links within your control panel.

Donate For Ad Removal.
Regular Donation.

Thanks again everyone for all your support and understanding during the changes. Look forward to more cool stuff to come. :)

Ahh finally done with the Gallery Feature. Took a little longer then I planned because I didn't work on it yesterday. Alright lets dive into the new stuff for the Gallery Feature.

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Off Site Image Support - As mentioned in my previous post about the gallery feature you can now add links to images from other sites and they will function on your gallery just like uploaded images. The images must be direct links and PNG, GIF or JPG format in order for the thumbnail to be created. Currently there is no limit on how many off site images you can have for your gallery.

Note: Off Site Images are not uploaded to the server so if they are removed from the original source they will no longer work on your gallery. Also be aware of hotlinking .. basically don't link to images that don't belong to you.

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Multiple Uploads - You can now upload up to 5 images at a time (or link 5 images using the off site images).

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Buddy View Permission - I have added a new view permission for your buddies only. Now you can have it so only people you have selected as your buddies can view images set with this permission. The older permissions are still there as well which include all, registered and private.

These permissions are for both gallery categories and images.

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View Category Images In Control Panel - You can now view the images within the categories.

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Mass Manage Gallery Images - You can now mass move images to a new category, mass change permissions for views and comments, mass change the post image feature and mass delete images.

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Image Commenting With Alerts - The gallery now has commenting for the images. This was something only the old legacy had with the old system. I used the same data for the comments so if you had comments from using legacy in your gallery then they will still be there.

The comments will also send alerts just like the blog posts.

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Sort Gallery Categories - You can sort your gallery categories the same way you can sort your link categories.

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HTML and CSS Stuff - You can find the CSS and HTML stuff in the Features CSS and Features HTML sections. For most people the HTML should be fine without needing to change anything. You will most likely want to the change the CSS though. The background color for the index and category boxes as well as the border for those boxes.

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Post Gallery Feature - As mentioned in my previous post about the gallery you can now easily post your gallery images using this new feature. When making a post just look right above the area where you enter your post text and click the "Show Gallery Images" to see the thumbnails of your gallery images. Click on the thumbnail and the code will be added for you.

There is a new Configuration Setting .. which is the choice between using thumbnails or no thumbnails on your blog posts when using this new feature.

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I think thats everything .. might some other things but not major differences.

Enjoy!

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Edit: Oh forgot to add that if you want to the top navigation so it links to your gallery you can do this to the Body HTML.

Go to the design area and then click the modify button for the design you want to modify. Now click on the Manage Body HTML link.

Within the text area find this text ..



after that text add this text for the gallery link ..



Click the Save HTML and thats it. :)

Hey guys I am still working on the gallery. I should be done some time tonight on it. Here is a few things to look forward to.

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- Off Site Images - You can now add off site images to your gallery. This means if you have an image at photobucket or other place you can add the URL to your gallery. When you add an off site image it will create the thumbnail for the image .. but it will not store the actual image. So if that image is deleted from it's original source it will no longer function on your gallery. Only the URL to the image is stored on the server.

This feature comes in handy if you have an image hosting account with photobucket or fickr and you want all your images viewable from one source on your blog's gallery. Also if you run out of space on your gallery you can use the off site images because they won't count against the storage limits for the gallery.

You can see an example of this here .. http://keith.efx2.com/my/gallery/0/

The ReStyle logo there is actually hosted on my photobucket account. It looks and function no different then images uploaded to EFx2Blogs.

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- Add Gallery Image When Posting - This is a cool new feature. You will now have the ability to add gallery images to your blog posts just by clicking the thumbnail image when making a blog post.

There will be a new link when making a blog post right below the "Show Custom Smilies" link. The new link will be called "Show Gallery Images"

You can see an example here ..

Gallery Post Image 1

When you click the link it will drop down an area with your gallery images. There will also be an option on your gallery images where you can mark them for posting. If you mark them not for posting then they will not show up in the blog posting area.

Here is an example of what the gallery images look like when you click the Show Gallery Images

Gallery Post Image 2

When you click the gallery image thumbnail it will add the image code to your blog post. I will also be adding a blog configuration option where you can select to use thumbnails or not use thumbnails when using this new feature.

Here is the code for no thumbnails where it will post the image as normal.

Gallery Post Image 3

Here is where it posts the thumbnail code and will post it using the lightbox option.

Gallery Post Image 4

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Alright back to work :)

lazyboy requested the ability to hide custom menus from being seen when viewing other pages on your blog. So I just wrote up a new option that you can select that will make the custom menu only show up on your main blog page and single post view (where the post comments are). When the hide option is selected the custom menu will not be viewable on your Extra pages, Gallery, Profile, Archive, Categories and other pages.

This new option really comes in handy if you have an introduction on your blog that you only want viewed from the main blog page and single post view. For example the request came from lazyboy because of the big custom menu on the Community Leaders blog which shows information about the blogger of week.

You can find this new option when adding or editing a custom menu. Select yes to hide and no to make it viewable all the time. All current custom menus are already defaulted to no so they are normal so no need to update your custom menus if you want them the same way they are now.

I have noticed some designs are currently not compatible with Firefox and other browsers. This problem does not occur for some Internet Explorer browsers which is probably why some people never notice it.

In the General CSS there is two different areas labeled "Header CSS" and "Header Title CSS"

In those areas within the "Extra CSS Stuff" there is a height element and in the Header Title there is a height and line-height element.

Note: The height and line-height elements are only there so the header area doesn't look squished when using a Text Title/Logo.

!Important! If you use an image logo you should remove the height and line height from the "Extra CSS Stuff" for BOTH "Header CSS" and "Header Title CSS".

PLEASE READ - If you do not remove the heights or adjust the height to fit your image logo it will look messed up on Firefox and other browsers.

For example if you have a logo with a 200 pixel height and you do not remove the heights and line-height it will cover 50 pixels of your content below the logo area which include your top navigation bar, the side menus and sometimes the top of your blog posts!

In older Internet Explorers it will stretch to fit the logo but this is not the natural behavior because IE doesn't recognize some standards. So if your visitor is using Firefox it is going to look messed up.

This is a very easy fix and if you have some questions please don't hesitate to ask.

I have added Update 3 for ReStyle. This update includes the following ..

- Extra Pages: You can edit the extra pages html within the new "Features HTML" section. The extra pages uses the Post CSS/Colors so no new CSS/Colors to worry about for extra pages. The control panel section for Extra Pages can be found in the Features section.

- Extra Pages Menu Widget: A menu for your extra pages labled PageMenu in the widget layout area. You can sort your extra pages the same way you sort your favorites.

- Tag Cloud Menu: This is only useful if you use tags for your blog posts. It will show the tags used the most in larget text size and the tags used the least in smaller text size. Each tag on the menu links to the page that lists posts for that tag.

- RSS Button Menu: Just an RSS button that links to your RSS feed.

As usual you can find the update on the main Control Panel page.

Enjoy!

Some people were asking about avatars for blog comments and it has always been there I just never put out the info about the variable and stuff. :D

I am not really a big fan of the avatars but I put them on my blog for a demo.

If you want avatars you will need to edit the "Comment CSS" and "Comment HTML" sections as well as add a new CSS class to "General CSS".

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Step 1.

Go to your design area in the control panel. Click the modify button for the design you want to modify. Do a backup of the design just in case you don't like it or mess up.

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Step 2.

Go to "General CSS" and enter this into the first text area option labeled "General CSS".



This is for the actual image CSS. You can add more to the CSS class to style up your avatar images. For example on mine I put a 2 pixel border around them with a 2 pixel padding and also shrank the avatars to a 50 pixel width so they are not so big. Here is what mine looks like.



avatarcss is for your visitors comments and avatarownercss is for your own avatar on your own blog comments.

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Step 3.

Now go to your "Comment CSS" area and find "Normal Comment Background CSS" and "Owner Comment Background CSS". At the end of the "Extra CSS Stuff" add this to it.



The min height is 105 but you should adjust it depending on your width. For example the max height and width of an avatar is 100 pixels so I set it 5 pixels bigger just for breathing room. On mine I have the width set to 50 pixels which also makes the max height 50 pixels so I set my min height to 55.

Make sure to do the above to both the "Normal Comment Background CSS" and "Owner Comment Background CSS".

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Step 4.

Ok on the same "Comment CSS" page scroll down a bit until you find "Comment Body CSS" and "Owner Comment Body CSS" and then add this to the "Extra CSS Stuff" at the end.



Do this for both "Comment Body CSS" and "Owner Comment Body CSS". Same as above if you adjust the avatar width you will need to adjust it here too. For example my avatar width had a set width of 50 pixels so I set this to 55 pixels for the margin left. This is what provides the spacing needed for the avatar.

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Step 5.

Ok the final step .. this one is pretty easy you just need to add the avatar variable to the "Comment HTML". So go to the "Comment HTML" section and add the following variable right below first div. For example most people's comments area looks like this.