Comment on WordPress SEO Theme Developer by SEO Dave.

WordPress SEO Stallion bugs first :-)

Google Translation Widget : well spotted (I missed that one), looks like the Google translation CSS file (hosted by Google) is overriding the Stallion CSS code for the gradients versions, will see if I can find a fix for the next update. Had a quick look and seems it’s not going to be an easy fix.

Submit Comment Shadowing : what you are seeing is intended, it’s deliberately offset so you get a shadow/animated effect. Funnily enough it was an accident while coding the Coraline CSS (which is based on Delicate CSS) that it works as it does, liked it so kept it and updated the old Stallion colours that lacked button styling with the code :-) Didn’t use it on Delicate though, so if you don’t like it the Delicate code is the original without the shadowing.

Gravatars : I don’t plan to add a link to the Gravatar signup page, easy to do though without wasting link benefit. Drag and drop a new text widget below the recent comments widget and add a cloaked link. I used the same technique minus the cloaked code for the “Latest 25 Comment Discussions” link underneath the Recent Comments widget on the right menu. This is the code to use to have a centered link that’s cloaked, don’t forget to turn link cloaking on:

<p class="align-center"><span class="affst" title="tests" id="http://en.gravatar.com/site/signup">Signup for a Free Avatar</span></p>

Custom Gravatars : I’ve looked into custom Gravatars (there are WordPress plugin Gravatar sets available), but what I discovered is they can be quite server resource intensive, so decided against adding any. You could replace the Mystery Man Gravatar relatively easily. The Mysteryman Gravatar image is actually hard coded which makes it possible to change it.

Hard coded Mysteryman image code : http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/ad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536

Search the Stallion php files for ad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536 and replace all instances with the code of a Gravatar you’ve uploaded to Gravatar. For example if you wanted to use the Stallion Gravatar I use it would be b2a279cb56c346ae52b4c24c1c71a5e2 (you only need the unique string of characters). This Gravatar image would be used for all commenter’s who haven’t signed up for a Gravatar.

That wouldn’t give you unique custom Gravatars for each commenter though.

Had a quick look at the Mingle Plugin and the problem with that sort of plugin IMHO is it’s the equivalent of a forum which means your commenter’s have to jump through extra hoops to comment = less commenter’s.

What’s missing from WordPress compared to a forum is the ability of users to create topics on any subject. Stallion SEO Super Comments could be made forum like if you create general starter articles that are the equivalent of sub-forums. For it to work you’d need to create quite general articles and maybe seed the page with some comments to get things started.

Anymore than that and probably better with a dedicated forum plugin.

Stallion colours : I have looked at colour sets from the past, but I’m not very artistic so need more than a colour palette to work from, I’m quite good at replicating what other sites look like however, been doing it for ten years, almost every SEO clients site I’ve worked on it’s a case of rewriting the code for SEO reasons without changing the overall look. Right now I’m looking for popular WordPress themes and using them for inspiration.

The YouTube AdSense ads are run by YouTube/AdSense. If you have YouTube videos that aren’t using copyright material (like commercial music) you can have to show ads, so what you are seeing is the ads either from YouTube users who are monetizing their videos or videos that are not monetized, but YouTube are adding AdSense ads (YouTube/AdSense keep the revenue). Technically speaking you’ll have more than 3 ad units, but YouTube videos are embeded so they aren’t on your page per se, so not counted as one of the three. If it was counted one of your ad units would be blank as there will only be 3 ad units shown. Problem with this is the ad unit isn’t yours, so any clicks gets you nothing.

David