Big news! We’re migrating our avatar system over to Gravatar! We’re all part of the Automattic family and Gravatar has it down, so as the saying goes, “why recreate the wheel?” This is going to be a gradual process so don’t panic.

What is a gravatar?

A gravatar, or globally recognized avatar, is quite simply an image that follows you from site to site appearing beside your name when you do things. Avatars help identify your posts on blogs and web forums, so why not on any site?

We’ve rolled out the first steps of this process. We now check to see if you have a gravatar and if you do, we’ll automatically use it. If you are using an IntenseDebate avatar instead of your gravatar then you’ll notice a change (unless your gravatar and IntenseDebate avatar are the same!). Our apologies for the inconvenience.

Next up, you might have noticed the blue message in your IntenseDebate account prompting you to verify your email address. This is to make sure you are who you say you are. 😉 If you haven’t verified your email address yet, please go ahead and do so.

We’ll keep you posted on the next phases of this project. If you haven’t discovered Gravatar yet, check it out and create your own!

Posted by Michael Koenig in features

We’re excited to introduce two new plugins: AddToAny Share Buttons for both your comments and your posts!  Enabling AddToAny Share Buttons lets your readers share, save, bookmark, and email comments using any service, such as Delicious, Digg, Facebook, Twitter, and over 100 more social bookmarking and sharing sites.

Enable AddToAny Share Buttons on your blog by visiting your Plugins page and select the Activate link next to the plugin.  And don’t forget to check out our other plugins like PollDaddy polls, Seesmic video comments, YouTube, and Smileys.  The AddToAny Share Buttons plugins were developed by our friend Pat, who helps run AddToAny blog share buttons.

Interested in flexing your own coding muscles and developing a super-sweet plugin?  Check out our Plugin Resources and documentation.  You can also check out our Plugins blog post to find out more information.

Many thanks to Pat and his team for their phenomenal work and addition to IntenseDebate!

Posted by Michael Koenig in features