*insert drumroll here*

*smack a cymbal here*

*stub your toe & poke your eye out here*

….

Use private plurks to tell us “good morning” or that your goldfish ‘fluffy’, may he rest in watery peace, has kicked the proverbial bucket and you *gasps* flushed him down the potty.

Unless it’s a secret or some juicy tidbit of breaking news that you only want your near and dear to read…

Don’t fucking spam my timeline with your bullshit non-private content filled, private plurks.

You’d think that this would be common sense but it’s a never-ending, new-age, plague that has us ‘normal’ plurkers ripping our hair out at the roots.. provided we have hair that is, I’m fully aware that bald plurkers exist, I shant exclude you.

Another quick way to lose your fans and friends on plurk.. or anywhere else for that matter, is to plurk, tweet, facebase, mybook, goggledegook the shortest, stupidest snippets you find around the web and expect us to give a damn.

We don’t care if you just ate a cracker. We don’t care if you have runny farts leaking out of your underpants to seep down to your ankles in a semi-opaque chocolaty smear. We don’t care that your spinach is green (no shit Sherlock!) and we do NOT care when, where or if you pluck out your nose hair.

Talking about eating a cracker is fine but you better put more than that. That godforsaken cracker better have teeth and bite back. If we’re lucky it’ll gnaw the tips of your fingers off so you can’t fucking type about it!

And for god’s sake, would you people realize that you don’t need to post a lolcat photo to us every 2.5 seconds?! They aren’t even that fucking funny! That goes for all images and videos. You think you’re sharing when in reality you’re just pissing the rest of us off because our fingers are getting too much of a workout muting your ass.

Mute, mute, mute. I am the mute-o-nator, hear me roar!… or at least read about it in this blog post.

Just in case you’re one of the superturds that pull these stunts, I’mma lay it out in a simple list for ya. Spell this shit out so maybe, just maybe you / they will take the hint and KNOCK IT OFF ALREADY!

Superturd Breakdown:

• Only use private plurks when a message needs to be private.
• Don’t post useless snippets. ‘I just ate a cracker’ should be: ‘i just ate a ___ blank ___ cracker, it was delicious, have ya’ll tried them?!’
• Don’t abuse the post button. Sharing is caring but it’s murder when you post photos & videos every 2.5 seconds.
• Quit spamming our timelines!

*snickers* evil lil bastids….

[/end rant]

No related posts.

© Melissa for Comotized.Com, 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us

Sadly, it appears that these new subscribers are really just people who’ve followed us on friendfeed.

While I don’t discredit their subscription on friendfeed (every person counts!) it really isn’t valid to place them into our feedburner count as these people didn’t click an RSS button on our site/s to sign on for our feeds.

Not to mention friendfeed is more of a social network than anything and most users return follow anyone who follows them… I know I’m guilty of doing that so have no doubts that others do as well.

Hopefully google fixes this issue soon because it really is an issue.

I want to know how many people sign up for my RSS feed; not how many people sign up for my RSS feed AND how many people follow me on friendfriend mashed into a group pile.

I like my statistics simple, please revert and give me my correct numbers again. *shakes fist*

No related posts.

© Melissa for Comotized.Com, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us

You might think it’s a nice gesture on the part of your host but it really isn’t.

The only time you should use a favicon for your website is when you have an icon that is unique to your site. Otherwise it just defeats the purpose of using it in the first place.

Bluehost is a prime example of a host that places a default favicon on new user accounts. The problem is that no matter how good your site is that icon will always be associated with bluehost and a lot of people remember sites solely by their icons, especially in the current days and craze of rss feeds.

Do you think rss is going to go anywhere? I don’t think so. Do you want your readers to remember who you are and keep reading you? Do you want to stand out of the crowd and say “here I am, read me!”? Then change your favicon or don’t use one at all.

No favicon is better than using a favicon tailored for another site.

I can’t tell you how many people leave default icons in place. I can tell you that those who do are generally lost in feed readers and are very easy to be removed from feed readers because a reader doesn’t recognize anything but that icon and *gasp* that icon doesn’t represent what they signed up to read.

But I use highly descriptive feed titles and each post has a superbly keyword rich title! – that won’t save you. That icon sitting beside your titles just makes your feed and posts look like pages or sections of the site the icon really belongs to.

In short, it can be damaging.

It might just be a tiny 16×16 pixel icon but it does more than you think it does. In a sense it’s a big part of your online identity and should be respected as such.

If you’re one of the people using one of these default icons go incinerate it a.s.a.p. or replace it with one that you’ve created to represent your site. If worse comes to worse and you find you can’t create one on your own you can always send a buck my way and let me create it for you.

Have an icon you want to use that isn’t in .ico format? There’s a ton of online generators that you can use at no cost to you, check out the fficial&client=firefox-a" title="Google search results for favicon generator”>google results here.

Need help installing your icon? That’s a simple and painless process, just follow the steps below:

• Upload your favicon.ico (make sure it’s 16×16 pixels!) to the root file of your site directory.
• Place < link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.ico" >(without the spaces) between the head tags in your page code.
• Save & refresh your site to view your icon.

No related posts.

© Melissa for Comotized.Com, 2009. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us

Oober cute to say the least and it’s easy as pie to participate. Simply write a blog post letting your readers know of the contest then head over to the KittyRulez contest page and leave a comment with your post url.

The only thing better than oober cute Hello Kitty gear is free Hello Kitty gear. I’ve got my fingers crossed that my number will bounce out of the hat but I wish the best of luck to all who join in.

Contest ends on April 2nd, 2009 so get your name in that hat before all the slots are filled up!

No related posts.

© Melissa for Comotized.Com, 2009. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us

Google can only help so much.

Some previous blogroll links have been returned to their rightful place but some of them I just can’t seem to find, though I have found a lot of new and interesting blogs to add into the mix these past few days so I’m happy about that but I’m really hoping to find all of my old blogging buddies.

If your link was on the list and it isn’t now please shoot an email to kawaii.chai@gmail.com and let me know. Don’t remove me simply because your link isn’t where it used to be. I lost all of my content during the host switch, that includes links so please keep that in mind.

I’m also looking for new and interesting blogs to stick into my list so if you’d like your link to appear in my blogroll leave a comment on this post and I’ll check you out.

Link exchanges are also open for personal sites, just sent me an email for exchanging and we’ll take it from there.

No related posts.

© Melissa for Comotized.Com, 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us

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.

No related posts.

© Melissa for Comotized.Com, 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us

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(); ?>


No related posts.

© Melissa for Comotized.Com, 2009. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us

Massive amounts of pre-existing members along with new users intrigued by their already membered friends ran in hoards to log in and create new accounts hoping the site would have some new and interesting things to see or at least work as well as we were used to.

But what we logged in to find was a site riddled with bugs, parts of the site that had been working prior to the fall were removed, there were no wafers, no polls and no daily trivia. Hell we couldn’t even shop or get to local places on the site and the only excuse we were given is ‘pardon our dust’.

Apparently the new management decided to open before running through and checking everything over and even after checking everything over there are still no wafers, no new items, no new locations and now we’re presented with an annoying flash banner before we can even enter the site.

Are we disappointed? Yes. Do we have the right to be? Yes. If we sat back thinking our beloved site was dead and still rushed forward to log in after such a long period of time don’t you think we should at least be able to log in to a place that’s as good as the place we were forced to leave?

The site was in full working order when the management team closed it’s doors. There are no excuses for all the bugs and missing parts. Being a new owner does not excuse stupidity for fucking things up.

I mean have you, or haven’t you, heard of the term ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’? If you haven’t then I guess you were born in a box and raised there because you royally fucked up in this area.

I know a lot of members are content and happy just with the site coming back to life but a lot more of us are pissed off and disappointed and we have every right to be. They were handed a fully working site with loving, faithful members on a gold plated platter and this is how they treat it.

It wasn’t worth the wait.

No related posts.

© Melissa for Comotized.Com, 2009. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us