Archive of thenextweb.com
Written on 9th January 2009
7 COMMENTS 
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
There’s a new breakthrough in the battle against the blank avatars in the comments section of a Gravatar-compatible blog. Smashing Magazine asked Ricardo Sousa, a young designer with a strong passion for WordPress and Joomla!, to develop a plugin that pulled the avatar from a different service.
Have you ever heard of that micrblogging service Twitter? Supposedly, quite a lot of blog readers are active over there. Hence Sousa’s decision to compare a commenter’s email address with Twitter. If the plugin finds a similar email address, it displays the Twitter avatar. Genius, uh?
Here’s how it looks. Like it? Download the plugin from Smashing Magazine.
Add a few more services and the blank Gravatars are history. By the way, we’ll include avatars in our upcoming redesign. Stay tuned, happy blogging.
Written on 17th July 2008
2 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Chris Pearson from DIY Themes and Pearsonified has spent the last couple of months on designing and developing “a frame work that had it all”. “Frame work” refers to a Wordpress Theme. “All” refers to “killer typography, a dynamically resizable layout, intelligent code, airtight optimization, and tons of flexibility”. So, let’s discuss the result. I gave away quite a bit with the bombastic headline, so be prepared.
Serious SEO and usability for beginners
Although the XHTML is unvalid, most of the code looks clean and effective. Moreover, the typographic details are superb. Pearson has put great effort in helping his users styling their blog posts – from h3 tags to drop caps. Pearson built in several features that he describes in his “SEO for Everybody” series. Examples are image optimization for Google Images Search, a XHTML sitemap, and dynamic, descriptive title tags for each page the blog. He claims that when bloggers use his theme, their SEO strategy will only consist of “just add links”.
Oh, and did I mention the rather impressive admin panel?
Uniformity
Pearson’s loyal followers are also raving about the theme, and there are many of them. Each of Pearson’s blog posts attract a truck load of commenters – all thankful for his work. Yet I hope his group of followers doesn’t keep growing at such a speed, as the blogosphere would become pretty homogeneous.
Ok, I owe your explanation here. The problem with Thesis is that it seems hard to give the theme its own face. Maybe it’s because of the serious code work Pearson has done. I’m not sure. But when I look at the blogs from the Thesis showcase, they all appear to be the same to me. Even if they use a completely different style:
So please dear readers, do not switch to the thesis theme en masse. Give some other themes a try as well. How about the latest from Smashing Magazine? (speaking of diversity)
Written on 14th January 2008
0 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Every week we select what we consider to be the most interesting posts about the next web (or Web 2.0, whatever you like) in the blogosphere. This weeks round up:
How I Redesigned My Blog on Problogger, January 8th
Guest post on Darren Rowse’s blog by Benjamin Yoskovitz. He describes in seven steps how to create a blog that leaves a smashing first impression.
Bombshell: Google and Facebook Join DataPortability.org on ReadWriteWeb, January 8th
Last week we interviewed Chris Saad, founder of Dataportability.org, about his project. A few days later, Google and Facebook joined his initiative. Talking about spectacular developments… Yet what does the participation of these two giants actually means?
100 Excellent Free WordPress Themes on Smashing Magazine, January 8th
Blogs are an important factor in the next web. Smashing Magazine is making this medium more accessible for users by selecting 100 free and really good-looking themes. Be warned though, it will take a while for the page to load.
French Press Falls For Major Facebook Prank on TechCrunch, January 9th
A young 28 year-old French man by the name of Arash Derambarsh decided to run for the Facebook presidency. He managed to get 9k+ votes and became a star in France. The press loved him, until they found he was the biggest prank in Facebook history.
Sign Of The Times: Web 2.0 Outsourcing Humor on TechCrunch, January 9th
More and more start-ups outsource their work: Outsourcing 2.0. Sandeep Sood asked an American student who is currently studying Mandarin in China to draw some cartoons about this trend.
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show off, the future of the Web. (More info 
