I’m playing hide-and-seek

For the longest time I’ve been in a pickle¹ as to whether or not I should post my portfolio/blog/twitter/whatever link on Facebook or places where my offline friends can see it. Not that I mind them seeing my work or knowing that I can web design², but I’m not really quite sure how I feel about them reading my blog. Not that I’ve written anything mean about people I actually care about, but I’ve always treated my blog as a place where I can escape from reality and express myself without worrying about what my friends might think.

Let's play a game...I hide, you seek.

On top of that, what if potential employers stumble upon my blog and read about how I rant and bitch about just everything under the sun? I’m worried because when you search my full name in Google, my portfolio is the 4th result on the 1st page! And of course, on my portfolio are links to this blog and my Twitter, and well, let’s just say that I haven’t always put my best face forward for either one.

So as a result, I’ve converted some of the more “controversial” posts into password protected ones, and will now do so for selected future posts. Leave a comment if you’re interested in accessing these posts. One password fits all

Blogging pet peeves pt2

Off topic, but thank you all so much for the encouragements and comments to my first video I was very tempted to do another video review on my NYX products (which I love btw), but I do want to alternate between topics, so without further ado, here’s the part 2 to my blogging pet peeves:

• replying to MY comments on THEIR entries on MY site

  If you want to reply to my comments on your entries, please do so on your OWN site. And if you’re going to reply to it on my site, at least have the courtesy to comment on my entry as well? My comment form is not your personal guestbook or whatnot, so please don’t treat it like so. I don’t really care if you don’t reply to my comments, but when you reply to them on my blog, I get confused and I’m just like “wtf is this??”

• using comment forms as contact forms

  I have a contact form for a reason: it’s so you can contact me. I have a comment form for another reason: it’s so you can comment on the said blog post. All I’m asking for is that you use the forms for the appropriate purpose. Is that really too much to ask? Are you really that lazy?

• writing your entry like a college essay

  This isn’t so much a pet peeve as the rest of the ones on the list, but damn are these entries tedious to read. Maybe it’s just me, but I prefer blogs to be enjoyable and easy reads, as in, they’re NOT filled with SAT words. I guess my reading level is just not awesome like that, but seriously, why so serious?

• not hiding your sponsored posts

  As in, I don’t want them to show up on my Google Reader or when I visit your blog. Well, I’m sure most people feel the same, and the truth is, you can hide sponsored posts without breaking the rules. There are over 200 sponsored posts in my blog, but I bet you had no idea, huh?

• blogs left for dead without warning

  This makes me more sad than peeved, especially if it seemed to be an interesting/insightful blog. I either find these babies months or years after they’ve been neglected or they just suddenly disappear on me without warning. No tweets, no nothing. It’s just gone, and it’s never coming back

Please don’t take any of the above peeves personally, even if you have done one or more. I have nothing against anyone as a person, only the actions.

My fave WordPress plugins

Ok, seeing as how my head and heart is still lost on the dance floor, I really can’t be arsed to write out anything intellectual or enlightening. So uh, I’m just going to share with you all some of my favorite WordPress plugins¹, and why I think they’re awesome.

Post Snippets

Very useful if you have a lot certain codes that you use repeatedly in your posts, but you’re too lazy to type them out each time. For me, I use the <acronym> </acronym> for the people’s names in real life, and it’s a pain typing out the same description each time (as if I can remember them all), so with this plugin, I can add the code to the snippets repository and easily include it with one click when I need

Hide Posts

You can see it in action in my previous post about my crazy night out Basically, it allows you to hide a portion of your posts for registered users only. Since my private posts will usually be extremely long, this plugin gives the readers a small teaser, and they can decide if they want to register/login to view the post or not. I recommend using this plugin with Register Plus so you can get total control of who views your private posts.

Comment Reply Notification

I wrote a now obsolete post about improved comment notification via email a year ago, but this plugin does the job much better. Basically, I have it set up so that if the commenter is interested in getting an email when I reply, they can simply check the box at the end of the comment form, and they’ll receive an email with my reply when I get around to it

Platinum SEO Pack

Everyone recommends the All-in-one SEO Pack, which I also used before, but consider this plugin the All-in-one version, but on crack It has all the features of All-in-one, but a lot more. I mainly use it to hide my paid posts from search engines so I can avoid being Google bitch-slapped. If you do write paid posts, I’d highly recommend getting this plugin, and then reading my posts on how to hide paid posts from your feeds and how to hide them from your main page.

Post Avatar

No real use for this plugin, except for the fact that I like being able to include an avatar next to my posts This, and the friends only feature, are what I miss most from using LiveJournal, but with this plugin, I can have unlimited avatars! It’s easy to customize and use, no complicated coding needed.

Post Ideas+

Sometimes I’d have a bunch of ideas for posts, and other times, I’d be completely brain dead (which explains the fluctuation in my post frequencies). I use this plugin to jot down ideas for posts, and it shows up as a little widget right on my dashboard, so I can see it right away when I login. Very useful if you suffer spontaneous writer’s block like me.

What are some of your favorite, but lesser-known, WordPress plugins?

Invasion of tweens and teens

The other day when I was bloghopping, I came upon this site, which features the top 100 youngest bloggers of the world. I’m not talking about 14-year olds who have a small personal site on Blogger, but informative niche blogs with hundreds of subscribers. When I think of informative niche blogs, I think of sites like Smashing Magazine and Six Revision, with articles written by professionals with years of experience, who are actually legal to drink and vote. So you can imagine my surprise when I found out that there were so many niche blogs out there¹ written by kids who have yet to hit puberty.

Before anyone jumps down my throat, I’m not saying that tweens and teens are incompetent as bloggers or web designers, no. I know a couple 18-and-under people whose blog I frequently read and whose designs inspire me, and I’m sure the authors of the above blogs aren’t total twats either.  Heck when I was 14, my designs were mediocre at most and my blog entries were so bad that I can’t even stand re-reading them, so kudos to them for their achievements. But to me, the idea of following the blogging advice of a 12-year old boy²  is almost as ridiculous as taking relationship advice from my 13-year old male cousin. All I can think is, do they really know what they’re talking about? Maybe they do, but surely I can get more credible advice from someone who is older and more experienced, no?

It’s just like those tween/teen-run hosting sites that offer “unlimited” space and bandwidth all for $1/year³. Yeah it’s cheap and yeah you get everything those $5/month hosts offer, but is it reliable? I know I’d rather spend that extra $59/year to have a product that I know won’t screw me over without warning⁴. With informative blogs though, everything is free, so between the blog written by a 14-year old kid and one by a 30-year old web designer, wouldn’t you rather read and follow the advice of the latter? I’m not discriminating on age, but rather, on experience, and unfortunately, that’s something that can only be accumulated with time. To the tweens and teens running those blogs, give yourself a pat on the back, but you’ve still got a long way to go.

What do you all think of the emerging trend (or what I call invasion) of the tweens and teens outside of circle of personal blogs (aka. hosting sites, niche blogs, etc)?

My WordPress 3 wishlist

I remember the day I first started WordPress 1.5 (and B2 before that), and since then, WordPress has indeed come a long way.  From being a simple blogging engine to a powerful CMS software, each of their updates have yet to fail to impress me. But as they say, there is always room for improvement.

After reading the 9 Features We Most Want in WordPress 3 article, I couldn’t agree with all 9 features, so I’ve decided that I’m going to compose my own list of things I want to see in WordPress 3.

1. Better back-End organization
   Similar to what the article pointed out, the back-end of WP gets extremely messy and slow once you start piling on the plugins and what not. Though they did do a total revamp of the admin panel for 2.8 (or was it 2.7?), the way things are organized are still inefficient in my opinion. Ex: I don’t like how the plugin settings aren’t on the plugin page. What’s up with that?
2. Pagination
   They have paginated comments, paginated individual posts¹, yet somehow it escapes them to have paginations for the main entries. Since 1.5 we have been stuck with the default “previous page – next page” navigation that totally blows if you have 100+ pages. I know there’s a plugin for this, but come on!
3. Lightbox integration
   I know the gallery/media feature for WP has improved a lot since the days, but I really don’t like how when you upload a picture and post the thumbnail version in your post, it links to the full-size image which just opens in the current or a new window. Yes, I know there are plugins for this dilemma as well, but I’d like something more streamlined and integrated please.
4. Popular plugin integration
   Which would basically include #2 and #3. Instead of having every user install the same plugins every time, why not make it a standard feature of WP 3? And to throw in something for the few that don’t use those features, give them the option of turning it off. Everyone is happy!
5. Rich css/xhtml editor
   There’s now an image editor included in 2.9, yet the theme editor still looks like it just crawled out of a hole from the Stone Ages. Though I usually code with Espresso when I first design a theme, I switch to the WP online editor once I start the fine-tuning. Editing the css isn’t too bad, but it would be nice to get an auto-complete function when for the various WP loops and functions available.
6. Faster, faster, faster!
   Though WP can be a mad powerful CMS, it can also be mad bloated, especially once you add on all those plugins and whatnot. I know that this has continued to be a serious issue, which is why people are starting to look for other lightweight alternatives. Hell, even I’m tempted to switch if only I wasn’t so reliant on the SEO plugins for WP.

If you’re a WordPress user, what would you like to see in the next version? If you aren’t, what changes would you like to see WordPress make before you switch?

On a totally random and off-topic note, I has a new layout up!