February 7, 2008
Oh Webfugitive…You Need Wordpress Help
Written by: Juanchito
UPDATE: This post was completely tongue and cheek about someone who is non-technical and shouldn’t know how to do these technical things. See my comments below for further explanation on my intentions with the post.
My friend from Cambrian House decided to step into the blogging world with his blog Web Fugitive. I think he’ll actually be a really good blogger with his knowledge and writing skill. I guess time will tell.
However, his tech skills and implementation of Wordpress sucks. Sorry Web Fugitive, but there’s a reason you shouldn’t expose yourself. I’d be embarrassed to admit who I was if I’d committed so many mistakes. Here’s a few helpful hints to get you started.
1. Turn on permalinks. If you don’t know what that is, then find out. It’s easy and Google likes permalinks. Don’t be lame and link to a page with ?p=12
2. Turn comments on on all of your posts. I was about to comment on a post and comments was turned off. How lame is that. Well, I guess maybe it was a good strategy, because it motivated me to blog about you. Otherwise, I think it sucks. I bet it was just an accident, but fix it already. Comments are what makes blogs interesting.
3. Get rid of the “Uncategorized” category. Choose a topic like Web 2.0 which will encompass all your posts and then make it the default. Uncategorized just makes you look lazy and uneducated in the art of blogging. Not to mention good categorizing is liked by Google bots too.
4. I already told you this so do it already. That lame hostmonster favicon not only makes you look lame for using hostmonster, but it shows you don’t care about your website.
5. I can’t tell this for sure, but I bet you don’t even have the Wordpress stats plugin turned on and maybe not even akismet. I’d even settle for Google Analytics, but I’m confident you don’t have that. Get some stats already.
Ok, I will give you one prop. At least you have the latest version of Wordpress installed. Of course, you don’t have to listen to anything I say, but I’m sure you will since you know better than to not listen.
Welcome to blogging. It’s addicting!!
Wow, I feel smart compared to that blogger. Ya learned me good, Techie.
I am disappointed that you betray the confidence of someone who approached you for help based on your apparent knowledge and position within the Cambrian House community.
I would also like to point out that you yourself violate many of your own “rules”. I originally read this post on another of your blogs.
On that blog comments are permanently “closed” so you have violated rule #2.
The same blog I visited had a 6000+ blog posts in the “uncatagorized” catagory, a violation of rule #3.
On this blog how many Firefox ads do you need? Needs to violate the spirit of the observation you pointed out in #4.
It seems that you had one finger pointing at webfugitive ans three pointing back to you.
The biggest disappointment is that you resorted to putting someone down to capture a few more keywords. You are not obligated to help people when they ask for help. However if you do decide to help someone it is implied that you will do so in confidence and act in a professional manner.
I imagine this post will never be posted, which is fine. The person I meant to hear it has just read it.
Thanks for the comment Cambrian House. I personally don’t think that I betrayed any confidence with the Web Fugitive. In fact, his blog wouldn’t be where it is today if I hadn’t helped him. I helped direct him to get it hosted in the right place and be able to do advertising. That’s the help he requested and that’s the help I offered.
If you’ll notice throughout this post I compliment him on his writing ability and I comment that he’ll be a good blogger. The commentary on things he could improve is really said tongue and cheek, because 1. he’s not technical and 2. how would he know these things? Of course he wouldn’t know them, he’s knew to blogging. Sure I could have sent this list to him in an email or IM, but I thought that blogging about it would give me a good chance to link to his blog. In the internet market links are like currency and this post gave him some link love.
I’m not sure why you think that I did this post for my own benefit. I don’t expect this post to make a dent on my stats. In fact, I haven’t seen any specific referrals for it yet. My goal was to help Web Fugitive improve a things about his site. I think he understood it was tongue and cheek. I haven’t had a chance to really talk to him about it, but I’ll certainly find out and make sure he understands that.
I think it’s also worth pointing out that I think he can expect much worse in the future. Bloggers aren’t shy in their comments and this is a relatively calm post compared to many on the blogosphere.
As far as me following my own rules…
I don’t have any clue which blog you’re talking about. It sounds like you’re talking about some sort of splog you found online that just imports my rss feed. I don’t have any blog that has anywhere near 6000+ blog posts. In fact, I think my biggest blog has somewhere around 400-500. I’d love to see a link to the one your talking about. As far as I know, I don’t have any uncategorized and comments are turned on for all my posts (barring a post or two which had to frequent spam).
I’m glad you enjoy my firefox ads. I don’t believe it violates the spirit of #4, but illustrates the importance I think of people using firefox and not IE. Kind of ironic that you’d say that makes me look like I don’t care about my blog.
In that regards, it is funny to look back at my blogging history. A number of my blogs I haven’t really cared about. They’ve mostly been a grounds for me to experiment with blogging, blogging tools, and marketing and promoting blogs. They’ve been more about me education than my readers education. I’ve since created a few blogs which I’m quite proud of, but many of my blogs are just learning grounds for me. Does that mean I don’t care? Maybe from some perspectives, but I’m not sure that matters since sometimes my intent isn’t to have people care. I figure if people find value with what I write, then good. If they don’t, then that’s fine too.
I appreciate your comment and enjoy engaging with people on subjects. That definitely makes blogging that much more interesting. I’m a little surprised you thought I wouldn’t post your comment. That would have been a little hypocritical of me wouldn’t it? I don’t filter my comments unless they are spam, crude or otherwise vulgar. People can say whatever I want. The nice thing about a blog is that I get to respond too.
Me thinks, someone needs to get a grip. (said tongue in cheek, since apparently he/she needs that clarification pointed out) I knew you were pulling Webfugitive’s chain. Oh, let me clarify that he doesn’t really have a chain, I was only….oh forget it.