All Ping

Not many people besides website owners and bloggers world know what a gravatar is. But having one can make all the difference to a blogger. 

Let us today discuss what a gravatar is and why every blogger must have one. 

It is flattering for any blogger to see intelligent people visits his/ her blog. Seeing that people have actually bothered to spend a few minutes and leaving behind a comment is gratifying, to see the least.

It is indeed painful to see some people putting up highly intelligent remarks (not the regular “great post”, “Thanks for sharing” types) and not having a Gravatar or a picture accompanying their comments.

Not having a gravatar is one of the biggest blogging mistakes you are doing!

Let us today talk at length about what a gravatar is, how to get one and WHY you need to get one!

What is a Gravatar?

For all newbies out there (I was one of you till a few months back ), Gravatar is a free site where you can sign up- it is easy to do that, and takes about 2 minutes to do so.

You are required to add a picture to your account when you sign up to this site. Once you have added a picture, it will appear next to your comments on other blogs, your guest posts, the various online discussion forums where you participate and almost all the places where you sign in with the same email id with which you have signed up at gravatar.com.

Now, you might be wondering how having a picture will help you?

Why Bloggers Need a Gravatar

• Whether you are a newbie or an established blogger, you would want to be known in the blogging community. Of course, I know people who are reluctant to reveal their identities. But I don’t see any reason to do so. And if you do wish to be known to the entire community, this could be your best and easiest chance to do so.
• Having a picture lets everyone know that you are a real person and not a fake id.
• Whenever you leave a comment on another blog, post in forum threads or comment on an existing thread, people would want to know who wrote it. When you have a gravatar, you are likely to be recognized instantly. At times, before they can even read your name.
• This instant recognition helps in more ways than one. It helps know other bloggers and webmasters on a personal level. If you have a gravatar and comment on my blog frequently, I am likely to accept a Guest post from you in future, retweet your message or even comment on your blog.
• There are some regular commenters on my bog whose comments I approve the moment I see their picture in that tiny box there. At times, even before bothering to read it- if I am in a hurry. And then reply to each of them later. See, having one really helps!
• You will see that having a gravatar helps improve your traffic too.
• Besides that, some high PR sites like basicblogtips, commentluv and bloggingtips make it mandatory for every one wishing to do a Guest post with them to have a gravatar. So, if you don’t want your request for a Guest post to be turned down, you’ll need one too!

How to Get a Gravatar?

After having read about all those advantages associated with having a gravatar, I am sure many of you cannot wait enough to create one for themselves too.

Getting a gravatar is easy!

Just sign in to Gravatar.com.

Create an account on their site and upload your picture. In case you represent your company or a business, you could even use your company logo, an image of one of your popular products or your letterhead instead.

Anything that is ONLY yours!

Make sure to use a picture which is good high resolution and very clear.

It would be worth the effort to tweak it a bit using Photoshop to make your icon or picture most presentable and appealing. After all, a cool logo or a pretty face does help you get attention! So just make sure you put your best foot forward.

The majority of bloggers and website owners probably know that WordPress has become the most widely used content management systems today.

With its great features and wonderful plugins to use for optimizing your site, you can say that you already have the best CMS platform to use for building a website.

While WordPress has become the most popular content management platform among bloggers and website owners, there are still many people who want to know more alternatives for website building.

If you are looking for something different and unique and want to take a different direction in the kind of CMS platforms to use for making your website, here are alternatives to WordPress that you can use instead.

 Joomla

Joomla offers its users thousands of websites and themes to download and to use for building their website. This content management system has some powerful features to use instantly out of the box, among which include a good user management system, language and media manager, banner manager, web link management as among many others.

You can easily syndicate the contents of your site. This makes it easier for your readers to subscribe from your website feeds.

 Text Pattern

Text Pattern is a flexible CMS platform that you can use as an alternative to WordPress that is best for blogging although it has features that are optimized for building full sites as well.

The user has more freedom to control the basic elements with a browser based template and CSS editing feature.

Just like WordPress, the platform is also supported with many plugins. It uses a simple syntax that will give your content a nudge from designing a plain text for more stylish effects.

It comes with cascading style sheets (CSS) rich features that make customization of fonts, color and sizes easier to manage.

 Drupal

This open source content management platform provides tools for building websites for simple blogging to more corporate and enterprise websites.

It has many applications that one can use in order to create any kind of website imaginable to its users.

Drupal features include a UI and API that integrates components of the different modules to make them exportable in order to become available in a single module.

There are about 22,175 modules available for your customization options.

 Movable Type

This alternative CMS platform allows its users to create a professional looking website for publication on the web.

Movable Type comes with flexible themes and plugins to help its users enjoy more features to use on their website. It has easy to use dashboard and several custom fields to use to suit the kind of website design you have in mind.

You can manage your page designs using the WYSIWYG editor and universal templates which are great for standalone sites. It also has engaging tools to help you create interactive websites.

5. Get Simple CMS

The simple to use interface of this CMS platform is a great feature enjoyed by its users.

It comes with several theme design options and with simple CMS documentations to use for website building. It is easy to setup your website with its website building tools.

Get Simple CMS is an XML based and standalone content management system in order to promote simplicity in managing your website content.

You can also easily undo the actions that you do in order to spare yourself against making costly mistakes.

 ExpressionEngine

Flexibility is the best feature of this open source platform. Whatever kind of a website you want to build, ExpressionEngine has easy to use features to accomplish your goals.

It also has an analytic tool to track down your website performance with spam prevention features to prevent spam attack on your site.

This CMS offers flexible templates to address your customization needs and it has CodeIgniter which is a PHP framework that most PHP developers prefer when creating websites.

There are also add-ons that you can use in order to expand your website designs further.

 Frog CMS

This platform has flexible templates to use for building your website with a simple user management system that saves the user against time consuming tasks of creating their website design.

Frog CMS is PHP based therefore one need not use other scripting for their templates. There are customizable divisions that allow you to create a summary for your articles or use the extended text for your news content.

Each page also comes with customizable layout which you can reuse for other web pages.

 FlatPress

FlatPress allows their users to save their content or posts as simple text files. It has themes that you can easily customize according to your desired design.

It also has a plugin support with a backup system that is easy to use. You need not have to use SQL because PHP can make everything simplified.

You can easily backup your website contents and design simply by copying a single directory. It has a widget support and with several plugins too.

 Habari

This is a well rounded solution for your content management system needs that supports multiple sites and users. If you already have a WordPress site and wants to transfer your content to Habari, you can always use its WordPress importer feature.

You can create static pages, use plugins, and comes with a developer community to interact with. The platform runs on the servers of Apachi and CGI and supports MySQL, SQLite and PosgreSQL that are written in PHP.

You can also re-write the URL with other features like chat, blog, content approval and page caching.

 SquareSpace

The most appealing features of SquareSpace are the LayoutEngine application for editing your website.

You can easily edit or resize your image with a grid based layout that helps you to easily find a balance when aligning your images.

 Blog.com

There are numerous themes that you can choose for your website design. The site offers a free sub domain that you can use for your website and can upgrade to premium if you like.

Blog.com also supports multiple authors and you can easily monetize your blog site by posting ads to your content. You can create your own domain name that will be appearing as yourname.blog.com.

Its other integration features include tools to connect with social media sites like Facebook to share your posts and to track down your website statistics.

 Silver Stripe

This is an open source software for helping you to build great looking websites with easy to use CMS editor. It is most commonly used for making government sites, business sites and websites for non-profit organizations.

Silver Stripe has numerous applications that help one to create stunning designs for websites with interactive social features.

The platform uses code instead of a graphical user interface (GUIs) which is a good feature for beginners. There are also modules that you can in customizing your blog, web forms and forums.

It also gives you more control in approving contents that are posted on your site.

The CMS also observes open standards and not merely just an open source. It uses PHP, Java Script, CSS and HTML for installation.

 Cushy CMS

To use this platform, programming is no longer required and it does not demand the installation of a software. The user can easily edit their content and one can build their content even without a technical know-how.

Its website building tools are convenient and easy to use, allowing you to design the web page exactly the way you want with simplicity in mind. You can build 5 free sites on its free package in 20 languages with unlimited site editors.

Cushy CMS has a WYSIWYG editor, a secure FTP support and receives Microsoft based FTP and Internet Information Servers support.

 Tomato CMS

Tomato CMS offers a modern blogging platform and CMS open source for building websites. The platform is secured and SEO friendly.

Its simple drag and drop editor makes the management of your content easy and convenient to perform. It comes with a theme selections with support for tagging, multimedia, menu, category and comment management system.

It is supported with a plugin and hook architecture, a permission rule system based on CSL, clean HTML, visual layout editor and it is compatible with CSS 2 standards. The CMS is supported by Zend Framework, 960 grid and jQuery.

Developers have more room more designing their websites because the platform follows the MVC design patterns as well as object oriented website design principles.

 Concrete5

This free open source for content management system platform can easily be downloaded to your web host with pre-theme varieties to choose from.

Concrete5 supports eCommerce websites, image gallery, traffic and statistics management, chat feature and a Google map for your website.

It also supports Vimeo and YouTube for your website. The meta data are flexible and comes with a vanity URL for search engine optimization.

Other special features include automatic add on and theme installation, open marketplace for add on, creator editor groups and out of the box services like YouTube integration, Flash support, polls, RSS, Google maps and form generato

You will realize now that WordPress is not the only source for your content management system needs.

There are many other blogging platforms that you can use with similar and even unique features than the WordPress platform to address your website building solution needs.

Image courtesy at FreeDigitalPhotos.net