Comotized.Com

I’ve been working double time trying to find all the old links from my blogroll but I still haven’t been able to find them all.

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.

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.

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(); ?>


After months upon months of waiting for our beloved whuddleworld to return to what we were told was a permanent demise (we still had hopes) whuddleworld has finally returned to 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.