Well… I just added a Gravatar picture… you’ll notice that it is a … couple of years older… that is because I don’t like the new digital cameras… they make me look “larger” then I really am. (Bless me Father, for I have fibbed!)
Happy Birthday to the Church! Pentecost Sunday we celebrate the day when the Holy Spirit came down on the Apostles and THEY GOT IT! THEY GOT IS BIG! The peace that Jesus offered them finally manifested itself and they we no longer concerned about the things in the their lives that had held them in spiritual and emotional paralysis. They were liberated to tell everyone about the great gift availlable to all who accept Jesus into their hearts and their lives. What used to consume them evaporated … All was good… peace was with them!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO US!
As you click around various posts you might notice the photos and images associated with the authors of blog posts and comments.
These images automatically appear because Church Chat is “gravatar enabled” thus if you have a gravatar associated with your email address, voila – that image automatically appears with your posts and comments.
If you do not have a gravatar, then our system is set to use “identicons” which are geometric designs that are unique to your email address.
You can get a free gravatar here -> http://gravatar.com
Make sure you register your gravatar with an email address you plan to use when posting and commenting on gravatar enabled blogs like Church Chat. And yes, your gravatar will also appear on other blogs when you post and comment provided those blogs are gravatar enabled.
This gets a bit into personal branding and I thoroughly recommend getting a gravatar if you have not already done so. And no, you don’t have to use a picture of you – can be any image – a favorite pet, cartoon, etc but it is gonna be small (e.g., 32×32 pixels or 16×16 pixels) so details get crunched.
The important thing is to pick an image that reflects you, your personality, taste, style, good sense, et al. 
So you see these fun Smileys around the web and wonder, “Hey – how can I add happy faces, sad faces, eek faces, shock faces, cool faces, etc. faces to my Church Chat posts ..??..”
Short answer = easy
All you have to do is type two or three keys on your keyboard to represent the graphic smiley icon you want to appear when your blog post is displayed and voila – smiley of your choice appears in your post!
e.g., if you want a happy face to appear at end of a paragraph, then end your paragraph with a blank space and type a colon followed by a parentheses -> save -> voila -> 
… technically this face s/b ->
Smiles are fun to use but like many things – best used in moderation and akin to exclamation marks (e.g., too many over states) ….
So you ask, “Hey Chuck, how do I know what letters to type to get a cool face or any other smiley face in my Church Chat posts?”
Great question – here is official site with letters and corresponding Smiley faces:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Smilies
Smileys are also known as emoticons and you can read more here ->
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoticon
ps – Automatically make your Church Chat links clickable … just type in full url – e.g., h t t p bla bla bla … vs starting with w w w bla bla bla …
thus gotta have fully qualified url -> h t t p : / / -> in order for it to be hot linked automatically …
hey jane – really liked the carrot medley you dished up – yummo
ps – this is an example of threaded comments that get nested … go ahead, add a reply and see how this works … besides, it’s fun to reply
pss – after Easter Dinner with Jane and my inlaws, technically i made her do it – create this originating post so i could comment but did so after desert and wanted to test Church Chat on her father’s new laptop with latest IE browser … oh how i long for a world when IE will be ancient relic in museums and the world will run free with Firefox browsers … long live, oh never mind 
The question of whether or not to allow image uploads was something that became evident when testing Church Chat functionality and I uploaded the photo below …
Originally I had uploaded it and glossed over the image align setting thus the image was right aligned by default which broke the entire theme as it pushed certain items off page and allowed other posts to run into each other – ugh!
After a bunch of debugging and further testing, we decided that since all MyStJoe members have author access (e.g., create your own posts) – all of whom with varying degrees of computer literacy, we felt it best to remove the file upload feature with Church Chat posts.
Splish Splash
Now I can appreciate why Twitter limits their posts to 140 characters and text only – keeps it fast and simple – aka chat friendly 
I should also point out the various social media icons that accompany each of post hence making it easy for you (and others) to share Church Chat posts on various social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Digg, plus …
Okay – if I had to pick a favorite hymn, I guess it would be Amazing Grace … partly because of the history which you can hear about in video below by Wintley Phipps -
The other point about this post is how easy it is to embed your favorite videos into your posts by merely cutting and pasting a url …
For instance, even though you see the Youtube video above, Church Chat is leveraging the oEmbed Standard that makes it easy to add a video right in your post by just typing:
h t t p : / / w w w dot youtube.com/watch?v=DMF_24cQqT0&
Just removed the blank spaces in my example and voila – a full Youtube url to the Wintley Phipps video – and the video player and video are automatically embedded into your post!
Pretty cool, eh … or is it amazing 
… 
…
Amazing Grace is truly ‘amazing’. No matter how many times I hear it, it always brings a tear to my eyes. I think that we can all ‘put ourselves’ in those lyrics. ‘How sweet the sound’.
Welcome to StJosephBrookfield.com Network and our new Church Chat site on this network.
Technically we created Church Chat to be a fun area for MyStJoe Members to blog about:
These were just some initial ideas and subjects but feel free to blog about as you see fit and we hope you enjoy Church Chat
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We should also mention that one of the cool features of Church Chat is that you can subscribe to an email thread you enjoy – thus get an email whenever somebody posts a new comment to that thread.
This way you don’t have to keep coming back and checking to see if there are any new comments.
You can also just as easily unsubscribe to a thread to stop receiving emails 24×7.
this is just another comment that shows threaded comments that cascade …
Andrea Woronick is discussing. 
Jane Petreycik, and 
Father Chip 3:03 PM on June 2, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
This my first venture into ChurchChat and it is the Solemnity of the Ascension of Our Lord into Heaven… The final words of Jesus as he returned to the Father were… “Behold I will be with you, even till the end of time.” THAT should give us all great peace and solace.
Welcome to ChurchChat! In this forum we hope to enlighten, encourage and inspire each other so that His Will may be done through us in our lives.
Ad marjoram Dei gloriam!
(All for the greater glory of God!)