Google Search, Right on Your Blog…

Sometimes, especially with blogs, you want to give your readers

the opportunity to search your site with a “Google style” search.  Well, in the interest of sharing, Google will allow you to configure a search widget that will search only your site.  Go to Google.com>more>even more then custom search.  It will allow you to configure a search bar however you would like.

Keep in mind that studies have shown that people prefer to browse your site for information and that if they did find you via a search engine search, they’ll want to see what they were looking for within about 2-3 clicks.  If they are using the custom search, you may need better navigation.

Happy Holidays!
Rob the Tech Guy

WordPress 101: Dashboard basics

My Word(press)! Is it Monday already? Then it must be time for the next installment of our WordPress tutorial series “WordPress 101″, the special series of articles helping you, the beginner blogger, set up your first self-hosted WordPress site! This week, let’s kick* a ball around the WordPress equivalent of the back yard and learn all about the Dashboard.

But first, we need to tidy up a couple of loose ends left over from last week’s WordPress 101: Installation article. This is important, so please pay attention! :-)

Do this: Cleaning up the Install

Hopefully all went well with your WordPress installation and you have a lovely, shiny new site ready for action. However, before we can forget all about installation and get on with the really fun stuff, we need to do the following to help keep our new site safe from nasty hacker types…

Open up your FTP client, and delete (yes, I said DELETE) these two files from your WP installation:

../wp-admin/install.php
../wp-admin/upgrade.php

You don’t need them anymore (any subsequent upgrade of Wordpress will automatically load new versions), and you don’t need them lying around where they could be misused by hackers (unlikely, but you never know).

Do this: Change your admin password

Unless you have the memory power of a super-computer it is unlikely that you will remember the admin password created for you during the WordPress installation. So let’s change it!

Login to your WordPress site in your favourite web browser using the username admin and the password provided to you by WordPress during installation. You did write down that password, didn’t you? For future reference it’s a good idea to bookmark the link to the login screen which, typically, will be:

http://mydomain.com/wp-login.php

Look for the menu item called “Users”, click on it and you should see this:

Click on the User admin and you will see the profile page for the admin user. Change the password to something “strong”, ie a mix of letters, numbers and characters, but memorable. Once finished, click Save and your new password will be set.

Ok. All done? Let’s get on with this week’s tutorial!

The Dashboard

Think of this as the nerve-centre of your site. The Dashboard is where you access all of Wordpress’ administrative tasks, be it writing/editing posts, managing plugins, approving comments, or even editing your template theme files. You will be spending a lot of time working in the Dashboard, and although it won’t be long before you can zoom around it like an expert, as it’s still all new to you (and perhaps a little daunting), let’s take a quick look around and see what’s what.

So, login to your Dashboard using your admin username and (new) password. You should see something like this:

I am not going to go into detail describing every single menu item, for two simple reasons. Firstly, “doing something” is often better than “reading about something”, so take a look around, open up some menu items and see what’s there. Don’t worry, you won’t break anything - just don’t click “Save” or “Update” or “Delete” unless you mean it! Secondly, a brand new version of WordPress, version 2.7, is just about to be released. Whilst the basic functionality and organization of the new-look Dashboard is very similar to today’s version, the layout and look and feel of the Dashboard is radically different. No doubt this will be the subject of a future WordPress 101 article.

Here’s a brief run-down of the key menu items:

Write

This is where you write new Posts and Pages. You can also create new Links here, for example for your “blogroll”, should you choose to have one. We’ll look at the differences between Posts and Pages in more detail in a later instalment of this series.

Manage

This is an important section of the Dashboard and you will spend a fair amount of time here once your site has some content. Basically speaking, this is where you edit content you have already added via the Write menu. Editing Posts, Pages, Links, Tags and so on, is all handled here.

Additionally, the Manage menu gives you access to two important features - though perhaps not used very frequently - and these are Import and Export, very useful tools which enable you to download or upload a copy of your database in XML format. Don’t worry too much about what “XML” means, other than it is a way of formatting data by organizing it into a text document using XML markup, not dissimilar to HTML, so that it can be easily “read” by software that understands XML, for example your web browser or text editor. Import and Export are very useful because they enable us to move the contents of one WordPress database to another WordPress site, or even import the contents of a database from another blogging platform such as Blogger, Typepad, etc.

Design

The Design menu is where you select the Theme to be used by your site. Upon installation, WordPress loads 2 basic themes but it is unlikely that you will want to use one of these given the vast number of Themes available, generally free to download and use. This section of the Dashboard also gives you access to setting up and displaying Widgets and, depending on the current Theme being used, access to any Theme Options that may be available.

Wotsa Widget? A Widget is a small predefined piece of code that you can easily configure and add to your theme sidebar, for example. They are very user-friendly, generally self-explanatory to configure, and enable you to add many of the typical things found in a sidebar: category lists, recent posts, calendars and more.

Comments

Comments are postings made by visitors to your site in response to the articles you have written and published on your site. This section of the Dashboard is where you manage comments, specifically whether to “approve” them or not, or mark them as spam.

Sadly, comment spam is inevitable. You will receive comment spam. End of story. For example, at the time of writing, this very site has already received almost 2000 spam comments since its re-design a few months ago. Luckily, WordPress provides an excellent anti-spam system called Akismet, a plugin automatically installed with WordPress and which is, generally, very good at catching comment spam. We’ll look more closely at this in a future article.

Settings

As you can see, the Settings menu gives access to several sub menus, all of which control various aspects of the configuration of your WordPress installation. As a rule, you will set these up once and then forget about them. The default Settings are perfectly fine for the moment and, for now, I recommend that you leave them as they are. Again, we shall come back to this in a future installment of this series and adjust some of the settings to fit specific site requirements.

Plugins

Plugins are an essential part of any WordPress installation. Whilst the basic WordPress installation provides most of the functionality we need to run our site, Plugins provide additional functionality or make an existing process easier to use. I shall be devoting an entire article to Plugins. Yes, they are that important. In the meantime (and in a shameless plug) I’ve assembled a brief list of what I consider to be “essential” plugins, which you can see here.

Coming up next…

In next weeks’ WordPress 101 article I shall be running through some important Dashboard Settings and explaining what they mean and how to use them.

Until then… Happy web developing!

This article is syndicated from Studiograsshopper.

Footnote: * That’s what we do with footballs’ in my part of the world. :-)

Wordpress 101: Installation and setup

Welcome to the next instalment of “WORDPRESS 101″, the series aimed at you - the beginner Wordpress blogger - to help you set up your own self-hosted Wordpress powered blog!

In last week’s article, Wordpress 101: Introduction, we covered the important first steps of choosing hosting and installing useful web development tools on your PC (or Mac). Hopefully you were able to follow these steps and are now ready to get on with the exciting stuff!

Coming up:

• Downloading Wordpress to your PC/Mac
• Create a database and associated username and password
• Configuring the wp-config.php file
• Uploading and installing Wordpress

As a companion to this article I heartily recommend that you read the detailed installation instructions provided on the Wordpress site, specifically Installing Wordpress. The Wordpress Codex contains a wealth of information on how Wordpress works and how to use it, and the instructions provided in this link are comprehensive and cover a number of different hosting environments.

Decide where to install Wordpress

“On my web-host, of course!”, I hear you ask. And you are right! But before we do any installation a decision needs to be made about where to install Wordpress within your hosting. You have two choices:

• If your web site will be entirely Wordpress powered, you should install Wordpress in the root directory of your web-hosting. Different hosts identify/name the root directory differently, eg httpdocs, home, web etc. Refer to the instructions provided to you when you signed up with your web-host. These will tell you where your public files (ie those visible to someone browsing your web site) should go.
• If you have an existing non-Wordpress web site and wish to add a Wordpress blog alongside the existing site, you should create a new sub-directory within your existing root directory eg mydomain.com/blog, and install Wordpress in the new /blog directory.

A number of web-hosts offer Wordpress “pre-installed”. If this is the case, take a break, make yourself a refreshing cup of tea and come back to the later sections of this article…

So, for the rest of this article I shall assume that you are starting from scratch, without an existing site, and that you be installing Wordpress in your hosting’s root directory. Let’s begin!

Download the latest version of Wordpress

Download the latest version of Wordpress, which is version 2.6.3 at the time of writing, from Wordpress.org.

This is the official home of Wordpress and the ONLY place you should ever download Wordpress from. Never download Wordpress from any other site. There are some bad people out there who do nasty things like hiding spyware, redirects, and all manner of other web-nastiness in download files. Download it only from the official Wordpress site. Understood? Ok, end of lecture…

Once you have downloaded the Wordpress zip file, unzip the file into a folder on your desktop, ready for the next stage. The contents of the folder created after unzipping should look something like this:

Ignore the funny foreign language!

Create a database

Before uploading Wordpress, you need to create the database in your hosting. Web-hosts vary in how they let you do this, therefore what follows can only be a general guide, so follow their instructions and do the following:

• Create an actual database and give it a name.
• Create a database user and password.

The database name, user and password can be whatever you want them to be but, to be as secure as possible, don’t choose anything memorable. Certainly the database user name and password should be long and complex, with a mix of upper and lower case characters. The database password user and password are particularly important for your site’s future security - don’t make them easily guessable. In case you ever add other web applications to your site that use their own database, there is no harm in prefixing your database name and user with “wp”. This will help you in the future to remember the purpose of the database and username.

To avoid confusion, the database user and password we’ve been taking about have nothing to do with your web-host or FTP usernames/passwords. The database username and password are specific to using mySQL databases.

Once you have created the database itself, the database user and password, write down these details and keep them safe. We will need them in order to continue the Wordpress installation, and you will need them in the event (hopefully not) you ever have database or Wordpress installation problems in the future.

Configuring the wp-config.php file

Let’s go back to our Wordpress files, which we left sitting patiently in a folder on your desktop…

Open up the file called wp-config-sample.php using your text editor. Then immediately “Save As” and give it a new name of wp-config.php. If you followed my advice here you will remember that you should only ever edit PHP, HTML and CSS files with a plain text editor - never MS Word or similar.

Making sure that you are working on your newly created wp.config.php file, you simply fill in the database, database user name and password in the spaces provided in the file. Take care when editing this file, as even a missing quote mark will stop Wordpress running properly!

For the sake of demonstration purposes, let’s say you have created a database, user and password as follows (note that I’ve added “wp” to the beginning of the database name and database username):

database name: wpTqvi86Fg
database user: wpdDK5Tz
database user password: sJ65rFgpL3Edw

Find these three lines of code near the top of the file and insert your details as shown below:

define('DB_NAME', 'putyourdbnamehere'); Replace ‘putyourdbnamehere’ with ‘wpTqvi86Fg’.

define('DB_USER', 'usernamehere'); Replace ‘usernamehere’ with ‘wpdDK5Tz’.

define('DB_PASSWORD', 'yourpasswordhere'); Replace ‘yourpasswordhere’ with ’sJ65rFgpL3Edw’.

Do not use the examples I have given you - they are just for demonstration purposes - use your own database details!

You also need to enter unique phrases in these lines:

define('AUTH_KEY', 'put your unique phrase here');

define('SECURE_AUTH_KEY', 'put your unique phrase here');

define('LOGGED_IN_KEY', 'put your unique phrase here');

Choose anything you like for these phrases - random characters, bizarre word combinations, a mix of the two, it really doesn’t matter provided they are long (say 20 characters or more), and are not memorable. For information, these phrases are used internally by Wordpress and you NEVER need to remember them in order to use Wordpress.

The final step in configuring the wp-config.php file is an important one for security. Look for this line of code:

$table_prefix = 'wp_';

Change “wp_” to something else - whatever you like, for example “rt3_” or “iudw_”. The reason for this is that every hacker out there knows that the default Wordpress database table prefix is “wp_”, and therefore can exploit server security loopholes to gain access to your database. Therefore, it is strongly recommended that you change the prefix to something that is harder to guess.

Finally, save your file. That’s it! Your basic configuration is completed.

Upload Wordpress to your server

Open up your FTP client programme and connect to your web-host. You need a username and password to access your site via FTP and your web-host should have provided you with a default FTP username and password or, at the very least, instructions on how to create these from within your web-host’s Administration (eg cpanel, etc).

Once connected, upload all of the files to the root of your hosting. As mentioned previously, exactly how your folder structure looks like in your hosting will vary from host to host. For example, if your web host has told you that the folder “httpdocs” is your root directory, upload the folders and files shown in the screenshot (shown further above on this page), to the httpdocs directory.

Don’t forget to upload your new wp.config.php file too! It goes in your root directory.

The FTP upload may take several minutes. Check that all files and folders have been updated. If you are using Filezilla, you can easily confirm this by checking that there are no “Failed Transfers” in the FTP queue.

Installing Wordpress

“Er, haven’t I just done this?” Well, no, you haven’t quite - yet. At the moment all we’ve done is to upload the Wordpress files to the server. We now need to “install” Wordpress, during which Wordpress will automatically configure our previously created database (based on the settings we’ve provided in wp-config.php), create an “admin” user for Wordpress itself, and set up some default settings for your site.

To install Wordpress, open up your favourite web browser (mine is currently Google Chrome, but that’s another story - and perhaps a subject for another article, Candace?).

Then put this address in your browser:

mydomain.com/wp-admin/install.php

Obviously, replace “mydomain.com” with your actual domain name.

If the FTP upload went OK, and the wp-config.php was created correctly, Wordpress will now lead you through a couple more steps of installation before, hopefully, confirming that Wordpress has been installed successfully.

First, you should see this:

Enter the name of your blog or site and a real email address (this isn’t my real email address, by the way!). Also, uncheck the box which says “Allow my blog to appear in search engines…”. Why? Because we don’t want Google etc to start indexing the site until the site has content and is ready to be launched. Again, this is something that we shall get back to later in this Wordpress 101 series.

Click “Install Wordpress”. Wordpress will now set up your database and do some other “behind the scenes” configurations. This may take a few minutes, so don’t panic! If all has worked as it should, you should now be greeted with this screen:

You will see that Wordpress has created a Wordpress user called “admin” and provided a password. WRITE DOWN this password! You need it in order to login to Wordpress Admin area for the first time. Don’t worry, you can change the password later - but you must use it the first time you login to Wordpress Admin.

Click “Log In” and you should now see your site’s Wordpress login screen, like this:

Finally, login to Wordpress using the username “admin” (note: all lower case) and the password that you WROTE DOWN previously, to arrive at your Wordpress administration area (also known as the Dashboard, or backend):

That’s it! Wordpress is now installed and your web development future is about to really begin!

Enjoy the moment. Feels good, doesn’t it? :-)

Oops! Wordpress didn’t install

If, during the steps described above, you get an error message during the Wordpress installation process, you will have to abort the process and check the following before trying again:

• Did you create a database and database user and password in your web-host administration?
• Did you create a wp-config.php file?
• Did you enter the correct database name, database user and password in wp-config.php?
• Did you upload the configured wp-config.php file to your server?
• Did you upload ALL the files and folders from the Wordpress download zip file eg wp-content, wp-admin and wp-includes, via FTP?

Double check these steps and then re-try the installation routine.

Next time in Wordpress 101

Well folks, that’s it for this week. And my word, that was quite an instalment! Hopefully you have managed to follow all the steps and you now have a working Wordpress installation - congratulations! Have a nice cup of tea and put your feet up for a minute or two of well-deserved rest!

Coming next time:

• Get to know the Wordpress Dashboard
• Configure some basic Settings in the Dashboard

Finally, please feel free to leave a comment or ask a question or two via our forum. Happy web developing!

This article is syndicated from Studiograsshopper.

Join the forum discussion on this post - (1) Posts

Wordpress 101: Introduction

Welcome to part one of “Wordpress 101“, a new series of articles aimed at you, the beginner Wordpress blogger, to help you set up a blog using self-hosted Wordpress. Over the next few weeks I’m going to explain what you need to do to set up your hosting, your Wordpress installation, how to install themes and plugins, and give you a basic introduction to HTML and CSS.

Although Wordpress is surprisingly (for a technical web platform) intuitive - once you get to understand how it works - it is true to say that the learning curve can appear rather steep, and the amount of information available on the web daunting, if not overwhelming. Hence this series! Step by step I shall take you through the key elements and help you get your site up and running with as few headaches as possible!

Who should read this?

This series is aimed at people you may have already tried a hosted blogging service, such as Wordpress.com, but who are now looking to have total control over their site, and wish to dive in and host Wordpress on their own web-hosting. Throughout these articles I am going to assume that you have little or no technical knowledge, but that you are comfortable using a computer for every day tasks.

You will have to learn at least a little HTML, CSS and even a smattering of PHP. But don’t be put off by this. These are simply tools to deliver our web site content and as with any tools, it is simply a matter of learning how to use them. And don’t worry, this series of articles will help you with all of this.

Before we begin, it is worth mentioning that I am not going to discuss which blogging platform is best, or the merits of self-hosting vs hosted solutions. You can find plenty of articles elsewhere on AZREBN which discuss the relative merits of the main blogging platforms. So, if you’ve read this far I am assuming that you’ve already made the decision and:

(a) you want to use Wordpress

(b) you want your site to be hosted on your own servers.

(c) you already have a domain name registered.

Great! Let’s begin…

Congratulations! You’re a web developer!

It’s true! You are! From now on you are going to be hosting and developing your own site. You will be delving into template files, stylesheets, learning about Wordpress tags, and starting out on a very rewarding journey. Congratulations!

But before we get too excited (after all we haven’t done anything yet), there are some basic things we need to do before we get stuck into the nitty-gritty…

• Get web-hosting
• Get some basic development tools installed on your PC/Mac

Choosing a web-host

Excuse me! What’s a web-host? A web-host is a company which stores all of the files that make up your site, and makes them available to computers connected to the internet. Usually, but not always, your web-host is also responsible for managing your domain name - but this isn’t essential as it is possible to rent webspace from one web-host and the domain name from another.

If you’ve searched for web-hosting on Google you will know that there are thousands of companies out there offering a myriad of services and prices. Daunting, I know. There are only 2 really important things you must consider before choosing your web-host:

• Support - this is essential as it inevitable that you will need some support at some time. Do they have a telephone hotline, or an email or “ticket” system with a guaranteed response time? If not, look elsewehere.
• Technical specifications - there are some minimum technical requirements in order to run Wordpress. Clearly, if your host doesn’t meet these requirements you will have problems.

Oh, and there is a third really important thing: you get what you pay for. State of the art servers, top quality security, rapid and knowledgeable support staff all cost money to provide. So, avoid really cheap hosting plans, spend a little more with a reputable company and you shouldn’t go wrong.

Web-hosting specifications

As mentioned previously, Wordpress has some technical requirements from your web-host. Use this list when selecting a web-host.

• Apache servers run on Linux. Avoid Windows servers.
• PHP 4.3 or greater (PHP 5 is always good to have)
• MySQL 4.0 or greater
• A minimum of 5 MySQL databases. Although you only need one database for Wordpress itself, if you add a forum it will need its own database, and you might want to host more than one blog using sub-domains in the future.
• mod_rewrite module enabled on Apache. Don’t worry about what this means - but you need it.
• FTP accounts - for uploading files from your computer to your webspace.

The current requirements for running Wordpress can be found here.

Development tools that you must have

In the final section of this week’s Wordpress 101, I’m going to recommend the development tools that you should install on your local computer. These will make life easier when you are customising your site.

• Text / code editor - you will have to edit Wordpress theme files during the course of your site development. Whilst it is perfectly possible to do this with something like Notepad, a proper text editor makes life much easier, thanks to syntax colour-coding, line numbers, maybe even versioning (to help you track changes to your files). I use Homesite, which is an Adobe product, but there are others out there, many of them free to download and use. Whatever you choose, do NOT use a word processing programme like MS Word or any other “Rich Text” editor. MS Word and the like are perfect for writing a letter, but a no-no for coding as they introduce all sorts of hidden code which will mess up your beautifully crafted pages. You have been warned…
• Firefox - if you use only one browser, this is it, no question.
• Google Chrome - it is always worth testing your site in several browsers and Chrome is largely built on the same platform as Safari, the browser for Macs.
• Install the Firebug add-on for Firefox. This is a “must have” accessory and helps you diagnose CSS and HTML problems in your Firefox browser.
• Install the Web Developer add-on for Firefox. Another useful tool that enables you to “see” how your code is being dealt with by the browser. A good compliment to Firebug although, personally speaking, I find that Firebug gives me 99% of what I need.
• Install Filezilla Client - free to download and use, this is needed in order to upload files to your web-host.

That’s it! The essential list of software which you need to have on your local computer. Download them, install them, play with them and be ready to use them in the next instalment of Wordpress 101.

Coming up next…

I hope this first article has whetted your appetite for running a self-hosted Wordpress site! In the next article in this series I shall cover:

• Installing Wordpress on your server
• Customising the wp-config.php file
• Adjusting the Settings in your Wordpress Dashboard

In the meantime, feel free to leave a comment with any requests for specific topics you would like to see in Wordpress 101. Happy web developing!

This article is syndicated from Studiograsshopper.

Care to comment on that? (Part one)

Just like real estate agents, no two blogs are alike. For instance, commercial real estate is very different than residential; Some agents are better with buyers, some with sellers. Some agents specialize in a niche or neighborhood, some feel they can be all things to all people. Blog styles, formats and specialties can be very different, as well, and no one can or should tell us how to run our blog. I want to touch on a way to “get your feet wet” in the blogging game. You see, there is still a very small percentage of agents that are really doing any blogging. Why not start out by reading interesting blogs and commenting on those blogs? Do you realize that comments can engage people in conversation? Comments can also lead people back to your blog for people to see what you have to say about things. Who knows, they might even come to your blog and leave a comment on something you wrote.

The fact is, many blogs do not get a lot of comments, especially in the beginning. Don’t feel bad and don’t feel like no on noticed your latest masterpiece just because no one says anything. The majority of readers do NOT comment on blogs. Just keep writing, start commenting, and “find your voice.” It is way too early for a beginning blogger to think they will be a “Rain City Guide” where some amazing writers routinely get dozens (sometimes hundreds) of comments on a single post. 

Many bloggers have good luck reading, writing and commenting on the Active Rain network. Heck, you even get “points” for comments on Active Rain. How cool is that!? I have seen people make a ton of friends on their network with very limited blogging and a whole lot of commenting. Again, there is not a right or wrong answer. So, feel free to leave a comment one this post, even if you just say “hi.” I promise to come take a look at your blog and return the favor.

In the future, we’ll talk about: Can/does commenting help SEO? And Getting carried away in comments.  If we are lucky, I can get some of the other AZREBN writers to chime in on this stuff. Either way, we hope you will be back for more…

What Is A Gravatar?

A gravatar, or avatar more commonly recognized, is a picture or logo that you use to brand yourself or your business.  This gravatar follows you from weblog to weblog appearing beside your name when you comment on sites.

Whenever you comment on a Gravatar enabled Wordpress blog, your gravatar will appear with your comment.  The Gravatar image is stored on the Gravatar server and is triggered by filling in your email address when you leave a comment.

Gravatar plugins are available for popular blogging software; when the user posts a comment on such a blog that requires an email address, the blogging software checks whether that e-mail address has an associated avatar at Gravatar. If so, the Gravatar is shown along with the comment.

Using gravatars helps give our AZ Real Estate Blogging Network a more friendly and personal environment and we would encourage you to set up one up for yourself.  Remember you don’t have to use a photograph it could be just a unique image that identifies you.

The main reason for wanting a gravatar is to increase brand awareness - a picture of you or your logo is going to be seen and, hopefully, remembered by everyone who reads your comments.  Even if you don’t have a business or a brand, it is still a fun way to get yourself noticed in the blogosphere.

Here at www.AZRealEstateBlogs.com we actually have enhanced the gravatars and have used them for our author pages, side bar and tabber section with all our Writers. If you click on our writers gravatar it will take you to each author page and a small bio of each writer for our AZ Real Estate Blogging Network.

Gravatars are very basic to set up.  New users can register for an account by using their email address (or several email addresses), and upload your image to be associated with the account.  All to often the incorrect email address is used in the comment field and your image will not appear once you leave a comment.

When you own a gravatar and you are an active commenter on blogs or sites (that are enabled with gravatars) it’s very important that you plan ahead on what emails you will be leaving behind in the comment field. Remember the avatar recognizes the email address in your account.  If you don’t use the correct email address, then in it’s place it will be a default image, basically Casper the ghost!

Gravatars are very easy to set-up, here are the steps to set up a gravatar:

• • Sign up for a free account at http://en.gravatar.com/
  • Verify your email address by clicking on the link in the email you are sent
  • Choose a nickname and password (only lowercase letters and numbers allowed)
  • Upload a picture to the site from your hard drive or use an online image
  • Crop your picture to suit (slide the slider to the left to shrink your picture)
  • Choose a rating
  • Click on the image to associate it with the email address, it’s that simple!

Your gravatar will show up next time you comment here since we have Gravatars enabled on our Wprdpress blog.

Trouble Shooting  -  The two main reasons for a gravatar not showing up is:

a) You used upper case letters somewhere in your email address or the incorrect email address.
b) Your gravatar is stuck in the cache - if you email me at info@azrealestateblogs.com and I will clear the cache to see if this solves the problem. The blog’s cache is periodically cleared automatically so you can also wait to see if it shows.

So, are you ready to set up your Gravatar?

What is a Blog? - in Plain English

Compliments of The Common Craft Show

If you are just discovering blogs and curious as to what all the fuss is about blogging for business or pleasure, be sure to check out our monthly blogging for business meetings on our AZ Real Estate Blogging Network monthly calender.