Tag Archives: webmasters

Housekeeping

On Sunday afternoon (7 February) I did some housekeeping. Not the kind entailing vacuuming floors and dusting furniture, no I went through the links on my “About” page and deleted those which no longer function. I had meant to perform this task for a while now but had never quite got round to doing so.
One blogger who has hosted guest posts by me had deleted their site, while another webmaster removed all guest posts (including mine). In both instances anyone clicking on “dead” links would have received an error message informing them that the resource in question could not be found. Having removed the non functioning links, visitors to my “About” page should now find that all links work (please do let me know if this is not the case by emailing me at newauthoronline (at) gmail dot com) putting “broken link” in the subject line.
As bloggers we have no control over links to external sites (unless, of course we happen to own the resource in question). It is therefore in my view good practice to periodically check whether external links work. This makes for a better “visitor experience” (how I hate that term but I can not at this early hour think of a better one)!

Happy housekeeping!

Kevin

Anyone Fancy Spam For Lunch?

One of the chores of maintaining a blog is going through the spam folder. All those kind individuals wishing to sell you products, such as Viagra which you didn’t even know you needed until their sales pitch ended up in your spam folder. Actually even after it arrived in your spam queue you aren’t exactly convinced that you have a burning desire for whatever product the spammer happens to be hawking!

Going through the spam can be a real pain in the neck. However I do, on occasions derive some humour from the comments which end up there. Take for example this comment which I discovered lurking in my spam this morning:

“Thanks so considerably for this! I have not been this thrilled by a blog post for fairly some time! You have received it, whatsoever that means in running

a blog. In any case, Youa??re definitely a person that has anything to say that individuals should listen to.”

I haven’t got a clue what the spammer is talking about but it did bring a smile to my face!

On a serious point I can not, for the life of me make out what spammers hope to achieve by comments such as that quoted above. OK the people hawking Viagra (fake or otherwise) constitute a right royal pain. I can, however understand their motivation (I.E. the desire to make money) but what possesses someone to write utter gibberish such as the example given above? It beats me, it really does!