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Think Twice Before you post
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Are you a blogger? I am. The popularity of social networking sites, such as Myspace, YouTube, Facebook, etc., is continuing to grow. Blogging allows us to express ourselves in new ways. Oftentimes it may be easier to write what we are feeling for total strangers to read than to verbally express ourselves to someone that is close to us. The end product, people are posting content and pictures that may be embarrassing, inappropriate, upsetting to others, etc. Until recently, the general public was generally unaware of the real consequences of what they write or portray – even if it’s done simply in the spirit of fun or as a joke.
The December 10th CNN article, “Young women drink, party, post” (http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH
So, here is the straight and narrow. Blogging has real consequences. There are legal liabilities. Yes, you can be sued for such acts as releasing confidential or proprietary information (deliberate or not) or defamation of character. You may be admitting to illegal activities on your blog, such as drinking underage, illegal drug use, fraudulent activity, shop-lifting, etc.
Another thing you may not realize is that corporate employers are checking! They are requesting your blogger profile, just as they do background or reference checks. And guess what, they will not hire you if you reveal undesirable activities online – this can be anywhere from inappropriate behavior to not portraying the corporate image they wish to project to simply appearing irresponsible or immature. And even after you are employed… Yes, they can fire you for your blog content! The substitute teacher that was fired not once but twice for his band/video content is only one such case. There have been cases in all walks of life that have resulted in termination of employment or serious fines; and in some countries, individuals have been imprisoned for openly sharing their online views!
The bottom line, think twice before you post. Think about your professional image, not just your personal one. You may think your personal life is not your employers business, but then you would be wrong – according to numerous corporate actions, court cases, convictions, etc.
Remove all Wordpress posts or Comments with Commit Suicide plugin
So lets say that you start a blog, but one day loose interest. Your interest comes back but when you come to visit your abandoned site you find that the spammers and link litterers have taken over your once clean posts. What do you do when you have 2932 spam comments to remove? I suppose you could just delete your Wordpress installation and start over but there is an easier way. You could commit suicide, yep you heard that right there is a plug-in for Wordpress called “Commit Suicide” that can remove posts, comments, links, users, and custom fields from your Wordpress installing. Install the plugin and you can just start over without all that spam.
WordPress 2.4 is coming!
Big news for Wordpress users, the blue and white admin page you are used to is about to go away! Wordpress 2.4 is on its way and part of the update is a redesigned admin page. The Wordpress team is redesigning each part of the panel page, by page. They aren’t going to make any drastic changes though because they don’t want us old Wordpress users to get lost. Many of the changes are to make navigation and using the software easier for new bloggers, stupid noobs, unless you’re a noob (then you’re not stupid). Well anyway, something that will affect us advanced users is the new color scheme of the administration panel. They have made it so that it is much lighter on the eyes and they have added some contrast to the blue by throwing some earthy orange on there as well. Well, I guess looking at would give you a better idea than me blabbing about it.
Mobilize your WordPress Blog with WordPress Plugin
The web is everywhere, even on your cell phone, but if you’ve ever tried to view your typical blog on a cell phone you would find that even your own site may be difficult if not impossible to view. So how do you know if your site or blog is ready for the mobile web? The first thing to do is to go to a emulator site such as the one over at dotMobi and view your site there. No its not a iPhone interface but you will be treated with the lowest common denominator when it comes to web browsing which will help you design your site to work well on a mobile’s screen. Do you have a WordPress blog and want to make it mobile compatible? Any Moore has a great little plugin called the “Wordpress Mobile Plugin” which will automatically detect your mobile browser and convert your site to a mobile site for viewing. Whats more is that you can add admob advertising and make a little coin from your new mobile readers.
Start the year off with a new Wordpress theme, Digg Style
And we’re back…Happy New Year Noheat readers! I know many of you have been feening for some NoHeat article goodness over the break and now your wait is over.
First up is WpThemez, picture Digg for free WordPress themes and you get a pretty good picture. WpThemez uses pligg to help you rate which theme is the best. This is a pretty good idea of using community members to vet out whether a theme is worthy or not as a screenshot or demo may not always be enough. They seem to be a fairly new community but already they are finding some great new themes. So if you are planning on changing your blog’s theme to start the new year you may want to check them out.
Add an announcement plugin for your WordPress Blog
This site gets tons of Google traffic, usually from someone searching for a solution to a problem and they are rightfully have a one track mind not really wanting to preuse the site. I’ve tried all sorts of ways to alert readers to other articles on this site but one of the most effective is with a WordPress Plugin called “Easy Announcement”. It allows you to add a announcement to the top of your page without hacking at your theme. Need to tell your readers something important, and want to get their attention WP Easy Announcement can do the job. Right now I am using Easy Announcement for banners but when I run a contest, want to alert my Google Searchers to something of value on my site, or just want a welcome message its really easy to type it out in text or html and show it at the top of the page. One note, read the directions and do everything the author says in exactly the order he tells you as you could temporarily fubar your site. Don’t let that scare you though as its a super valueable tool controling a super important space, the space your readers see first.
