Comotized.Com

All of us are burdened with our own personal pet peeves, and the internet is no exception.

With more than a gazillion (I’m guessing, I’m not a mathematician) websites floating around the interwebs there’s a countless number of small things that can turn us away from a website, piss us off or otherwise annoy the shit out of us.

Internet peeves are known as ‘net peeves‘ and you can find my list of personal peeves below.

Chances are if you’re partaking in one or more of the following list items I’m either avoiding your site like the black plague has been reborn or only visiting when I need to leave a comment then hastily back tailing.

Melissa’s personal list of net peeves

The list below is my personal top 10 net peeves list though the list isn’t in any particular order.

• mini layouts

  » Your monitor is big for a reason, make use of it and stop blinding us with all of your un-needed white space. All you’re doing is squishing your sites content which suggests to me that it really isn’t as important as you claim it to be.

• minuscule font sizes

  » Not everyone has your resolution or your 20/20 vision. If I can’t read it, it’s worthless information.

• clashing colors

  » owning a website does not give you a license to ruin my eye-sight.

• bad site navigation

  » Numbering your site’s navigation or giving it names that only make sense to you is the best way to help your visitors get lost. Literally.

• splash pages

  » Unless your site has a system requirement list (flash, special fonts, things a visitor needs to view your site) a splash page is useless and a waste of time. No, affiliate buttons, vote buttons and no stealing! tags do not count as site requirements.

• auto playing background music

  » Not everyone has the same taste in music and a wide majority of web surfers listen to music during their surfing time, putting auto play music on your site not only slows down page load time but it kills the ears of headphone wearers and if the user doesn’t dig your song it’s red ‘x’ time. Always tag your player with the song title and artist name and leave it up to your visitors to push the play button.

• regurgitated content

  » Copying and pasting javascript snippets, quiz results and other content is not ‘cool‘ it’s useless and annoying and it certainly won’t keep your visitors returning for more. Content is only as good as the effort put forth in creating said content. Want more return visitors? Post your own content and stop copyright infringing left, right and center.

• image overload

  » This slows down page load time immensely and is sheer hell to dial up users not to mention it makes your site look cluttered, tacky and as if a 3 month old chimpanzee was set loose with a collage project in mind. This includes slicing layout images, too many slices and your page will load slower than it did before you used the knife.

• ad takeover

  » contextual, banner and other forms of advertisements are okay but only in moderation. Too many and your site looks bad on top of making you look like a money grubber. Also in this area is the pop-up and pop-under adverts, steer clear of these at all costs!

• l33t sp34k

  » Either type in your proper language with proper letters and capitalization or shut the fuck up. It strains the eyes, it’s hard to decipher, it’s ugly and it’s just plain stupid.

• Bonus

  unresponsive webmasters

  » Unless you’re on vacation, having server/host trouble or are otherwise unable to check on your website you should always return email and comments from your visitors. If they can take the time to contact you or leave feedback on your site you can damn well take the time to acknowledge them. Visitors are what make your site the least you can do is show a little appreciation. Ignoring spam and otherwise pointless/irrelevant messages is fine but if it’s a valid comment or email they deserve at least two minutes of your time.

1. If you’re choking on an ice cube, pour a cup of boiling water down your throat. The blockage will instantly remove itself.

2. Avoid cutting yourself when slicing vegetables by getting someone else to hold the vegetables while you chop.

3. Avoid arguments about the toilet seat – use the sink.

4. For high blood pressure cut yourself and bleed for a few minutes, thus reducing the pressure on your veins. Remember to use a timer.

5. A mouse trap placed on top of your alarm clock will prevent you from rolling over and going back to sleep after you hit the snooze button.

6. If you have a bad cough, take a large dose of laxatives. Then you’ll be afraid to cough.

7. You only need two tools in life – wd-40 and duct tape. If it doesn’t move and should, use the wd-40. If it shouldn’t move and does, use the duct tape.

8. Remember, everyone seems normal until you get to know them.

9. If you can’t fix it with a hammer, you’ve got an electrical problem.

Puffin died in her sleep a few weeks ago (she was 3+ years old) so I decided to use the gift card my mo’s got me for Christmas to get a new one.

Not a russian dwarf hamster like puffin, as my goal wasn’t to replace her but more to ease my mind from staring at her empty cage. So I chose a chinese dwarf hamster whom I named MingMei.

Sadly MingMei didn’t work out. No matter how long and how hard I tried I just couldn’t get her to warm up and be comfortable with me.

If you so much as glanced wrong in her direction she’d freak out and I felt that I was causing her more stress than she needed so I returned her to the store after interrogating the personnel about what would happen to her once I officially returned her.

After a long conversation of her well being I was finally comfortable enough to let her go. I just had to know for sure that she’d be okay.

She’s now with a group of her peers and seems much calmer and happier so I’m happy for her and hope she finds a master she’s more comfortable with, we just weren’t a match.

I used the money from her return to get a more suitable hamster, non-chinese this time. It’s quite apparent that them and I don’t mix very well. So I chose a roborovskii dwarf hamster to be my faithful pet.

Robos are the smallest in the dwarf family, only reaching 2 to 2 1/2 inches in length but their mannerisms and attitudes are most similar to that of the russian which is what puffin was.

So far she’s acting as expected, super curious, cautious but not skittish or scared.

Right now I’m at the stage where I place my hand in her cage and talk softly to her for 20 to 30 minutes a day to let her learn my voice and scent.

On the third day I’ll move to petting her gently on the head and offering her treats from my hand then on day 9 we’ll start picking her up and holding her for about 5 minutes at a time with the reward being time to play in her kritter crawler.

I’ll miss MingMei and I’m deeply saddened that I had to return her. If the situation wasn’t causing her stress i would have kept her but it was vastly apparent that my mere presence scared her to pieces. If she’s happy then I’m okay so I’ll just have to leave it at that for now. My returning her was the best thing I could do for her.

New Robo Hami Photograph

This is just a quick post to give props to Neil Simon, the author of the wonderful DandyID Services WordPress plugin that you can catch a glimpse of in my sidebar in the “message center’ section.

I was having issues with the plugin widget tearing apart my bottom sidebars and couldn’t figure out the proper php snippet to pull it into my normal sidebar.

Normally when a plugin doesn’t work or breaks something in this manner I chuck it because it’s been my experience in the past that plugin authors ignore their users email questions, but I liked this plugin and wanted to use it on comotized, so I took a chance.

Low and behold good ole’ Neil responded, a response I wasn’t used to so I was utterly ecstatic.

After passing emails back and forth he finally got the plugin working for me. Not a huge gesture in some books but due to my past experiences it’s a big one for me.

If you run a WordPress blog and are a member of multiple social sites like last.fm, plurk, twitter, flickr, myspace and the like you should definitely check this plugin out. It works wonderfully and the author kicks ass, what’s not to like?

Again, kudos to Neil Simon and many thanks to him for working with me. I appreciate it a great deal!

Edit: the php snippet for the DandyID Services plugin is below:


< ?php dandyIDServices_buildTable(); ?>