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I have a question and I want you to be honest. Many sites integrate a “thank you” to their sponsors, listing the sponsors and perhaps some blurb about the company, as an entry on their site. These posts most likely will remain in the archive and usually appears in the RSS feed.

My question: Do you read those entries?

Personally, I don’t read them. I asked about 15 people I see online if they read them – they don’t. I don’t read them because they have zero value to me. I’d more likely click on an ad than pay attention to the “thank you” articles. Why? Because they usually aren’t tailored to be of any benefit to the reader. They are tailored more to fulfill an obligation to the advertiser.

As a blog owner, if you do that…why? Wouldn’t it be a win/win situation if the reader paid attention to content and clicked on it? Wouldn’t that make the blog/site more appealing to seek advertising in the future? Wouldn’t that give the site/blog an edge over others?

So tell me, do you read the thank you to our sponsor entries, particularly if they appear in your feed reader?

Reading the 9rules member feeds, I came across an article by Brajeshwar that I think everyone can benefit from. He describes how he found foreign code in the header file.

I woke up today morning to find that my site feed wasn’t validating and the XMLRPC was not responding when I tried to update MarsEdit. Upon doing a quick “View Source” I found a foreign code lodged on top of my site’s header. I knew instantly that it shouldn’t be there and that something is wrong.

Brajeshwar uses his own theme so he knew that code didn’t belong there. For the average WordPress user viewing the source code would be like trying to understand a language he or she does not speak. An example: for those that drive how many people can fix the car they drive if it breaks? Mechanics can but most people have to take the car in to be repaired. Same with a blog; many people use blogging tools but if something goes wrong are unable to diagnose and repair/resolve the issue.

Brajeshwar gives an easy to follow guide on the steps he used to secure his site, even sharing the code for an .htaccess file that prevents comment spam by denying access to no-referrer requests. Take a moment and read the article. You might learn something.

This article isn’t about WordPress being unsafe because honestly, all scripts will have vulnerabilities from time to time. Pay more attention to how quickly the company patches the security issues and informs their user base. When a patch is released, update your scripts as soon as possible.

This article is about paying more attention to your site than just posting entries. This is a situation the average user wouldn’t notice without looking for it. Just like a lawn has to be cared for in order to maintain it, your blog needs attention if your content is to remain safe, no matter what content management system you are using.

Many bloggers/writers state an opinion in their articles. Sometimes it is a formal review or it could be someone sharing an experience they had. What would you do if the company or person you were talking about contacted you and requested that you remove the article? This situation happens often. Reading Ars Technica, Atari went after a site over their negative review. The site received a copy of the game early, not via the publisher, and Atari claims the site did not respect the embargo on the game. If the site received the game via the publisher that would make sense, however, the site allegedly received the game earlier via retail. The site claims Atari pulled their advertising campaign with them in retaliation. In another example, a blogger wrote a negative restaurant review and the restaurant owner called their job to complain about it.

I know, you’re thinking that you don’t write reviews and this couldn’t or wouldn’t happen to you. What about when you have a bad experience with a company and you blog about it? What if that company contacted you and wanted to sue? Honestly, you don’t hear companies going off when they are written about in a positive light. You have a lousy flight experience, you write about your experience and a week or two later the airline is threatening you. What do you do?

That’s something to research. What are the laws in your area? Do you want to fight for your rights or do you not care and you’ll just remove the article? What are the goals of your site and how do the answers to those questions fit in with your future plans?

Many people get online and write without really thinking through the possible repercussions of what they do; until it is too late (action has already been taken against you). The longer one writes online the more experienced one becomes in these areas. Some people decide to fight it tooth and nail. Others remove the article in question (or does whatever it takes not to go to court) to resolve the issue quickly. One response isn’t “better” than the other – it depends on your goals for you site. So, to get the ball rolling:

If you received a request to remove an article where you expressed your opinion or experience about a company or service, would you fight it or would you remove the article? The sad point in situations like this, the law might be on the writer’s side but the writer would have to spend resources to have the law recognized in their favor. Some people or companies have to learn that negative criticism will come…learn from it.

This weekend TechDirt published an article about Associated Press (AP) sending Drudge Retort, a site that mocks Drudge Report, seven DMCA requests siting that the instances they specified in their DMCA requests were not fair use. In Cadenhead’s article he points out that one of the AP articles uses 18 words, a quote from Hillary Clinton, and links back to the originating article. Looking at Drudge Retort I found instances where almost 1/3 of the original article was used (non-AP content).

I was talking to someone online and I mentioned this situation. Their response was that they didn’t use AP articles so there was no need for concern. It didn’t cross their mind that Yahoo articles might be an AP article. One of the DMCA requests was for this article syndicated via Yahoo. This could cause a blurred sense of perception. A writer or blogger could be thinking “Yahoo is safe” when that doesn’t seem to be the case, does it? It’s not Yahoo’s content, it’s AP’s.

The bottom line is that there seems to be a disconnect on what is considered fair use. Content creators have different requirements on how their content should be used. Some writers do not mind if their articles are redistributed in full and on the flip side, others prefer permission be granted for any use but cannot get around fair use.

There are quite a few people talking about this. One cannot deny it does bring up the question, as writers, how our content should be used and just as important: how much outside content should be used on our sites.

Do you have clear policies in place on your site that lets people know how your content can be used?

This is the last update before launch. I left this entry for the end because the message is more important than the others…but often overlooked. As I mentioned earlier this is the age of socializing. As wonderful as that is, unfortunately there is a lot of “noise” online, content being generated with no real purpose, goal, etc. It’s just “there”. If you’ve had a blog for awhile (let’s say over 6 months), you have no traffic or commenters, yet you’ve submitted your site to Digg, Reddit, etc. and comment on other people’s blogs, why don’t you have a growing audience? It’s time to take an objective look at your blog.

Do you suck?

A lot of people ask themselves this question and respond no simply because he or she felt they worked “hard”.

Wrong answer.

There is a limited amount of time in a day, meaning there is a limited amount of time people can spend online. Some have more than others but in the end the user/reader has to make a choice on what satisfied them the most (where he or she will spend their time). Obviously, it is not your site. When you submit your site to Digg, Reddit, put a link up on Twitter, slice it in Facebook, etc. and no one is reading – the writing is on the wall. Face it because that is the only way you can improve.

Focus, focus, focus….

I read blogs off and on all day. A good percentage of them ramble. They start off with one point, end up at another, hit others in between and none of the points go together. The only time that will work is when a person is talking about what happened during the day on their personal blog and unless the delivery is good, the entry ends up being incredibly boring.

Think about what you are writing, jot some notes down, but most important make sure you are focused on your topic. Rambling entries tend to be longer than necessary and the reader will not make it to the end of the article.

Speaking of focus…

Many people want to write about whatever they want to write about and trust me, I’ve been in the same position. Let’s look at an example: in World of Warcraft there are toons that have specific purposes (Rogue and Mage for damage, Warrior for tanking, etc.) and there are toons that have the option to play dual roles (Priests can heal as holy or damage as shadow or a Druid can heal, tank or be like a rogue). Matter of fact, this is what Blizzard says on the Druid page:

Strength: Can transform into various animal forms which provide unique abilities
Weakness: Animal forms are not as powerful as their counterpart classes

That is one of the reasons why I couldn’t excel in the game, I wanted to do it all and in the end, ended up not doing very well until I changed my mode of thinking. If you want to write about food, cars, the stars and shoes by all means you have that choice but unless a reader becomes interested in your opinions on those topics, you are competing with sites that are focused on food, cars, the stars and shoes. You can’t possibly compete and that’s why your blog remains dormant. I know, you aren’t trying to compete but as I said above, there is limited time in a day and people are making choices about how they spend their time online.

And some common sense things….

Let’s say you’re talking about sports and the blog has a bunch of flowers on it. Well, unless the person reading your blog likes flowers the flowers would be a deterrent. If you write about design and your design looks like you’re warped back to 1999, then the user will be left with the impression you don’t know what you’re talking about. If you write opinions yet never backup or prove your points it becomes chatter and food for trolls. If your site advertises daily content make it quality daily content or get rid of the daily. Have you titled yourself a diva, king, or heaven help us all, an expert? Those titles mean nothing until your peers bestow them on you.

Is your content management system upgraded with all the security fixes? No? Why? A feature was add you don’t like? Let me get this straight – a new feature is more important than keeping your content safe? Your host can’t keep your site safe if you aren’t willing to cooperate. That’s how serious you’re taking your site/content and you expect anyone to take you seriously as a writer? When you drive you have to take care of the car, when you have a house you have to maintain it – same with your blog. Of course if your site is hacked, don’t whine, moan or complain. You had it coming.

So um…good luck?

Well, that’s it for now. Launch is on Wed, and you have some tools to whip your blog into shape (if necessary) for the next week. For many of these you won’t be able to fix them by May 7th but you should be in good shape for the round in August.

As always, if you have any questions – don’t hesitate to ask them.

Good luck!