My Dear Hard Drive

Are you one of those people who add friends on social networking sites or blog catalogues to improve their exposure / readership / social status? YOU ARE WASTING YOUR TIME. Have you ever seen any rating for the amount of friends anywhere apart the number that shows how many friends you have? Have you ever considered the fact that having more than a 100 friends (depending on the type of network the number can be larger. Ie. Flickr as pointed out in the comments) on your list will seriously effect your credibility, unless you really ARE famous? Like it’s okay for Britney Spears to have 100000+ friends on her MySpace profile (if she has one) but if you’re more like Sally Nextdoor, having more than a hundred tells people that you are desperate for attention, you don’t have real friends, you don’t know the meaning of friends, and that you are currently spamming a lot of people with your personal crap.

If you think that having your profile picture displayed together with tons of other profiles will bring you traffic, you’re wrong. Do you know ANYONE who browses friends of friends beyond the Top Friends? I certainly don’t. So if you don’t have a real relationship with the person on your friend list, you won’t gain any advantage of it, quite the opposite.

This goes with BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog as well. The more friends you have, the less value YOU have to people you add. Why would anyone want to be one of your thousand friends? They know you don’t care. They know you won’t remember 15 minutes from the time you added them that you did. All you put out is negative vibes, as everyone knows you don’t have time to follow all these blogs even if it was the only thing you did in your life - and that would make you officially pathetic if you did.

The more popular you are in reality, the less you tend to make “add me” requests, because you don’t have to. You don’t have to beg for attention, and you start to clear out the bulk from your friends list to keep only those you really are interested in. That shows your real friends you give value to them, and it shows people you wish to know, that you are not over worked by the number of people you have to socialise with so that they too may have a chance to actually getting to know you.

If anyone has a real good reason to do this, and it being so popular I would imagine someone has some rationale behind it, please do share if you dare!

I was looking for an online community for people who don’t want to have children. This was because I generally feel a bit… Well out of my place surrounded with women of my age who are either having children or desperately trying to have children. I search through blogging sites and come across 10 blogs by blogging moms who rule.

I don’t hate kids or anything, just that since I don’t have one, I have none in my near family and my closest experience of kids is having been one, I really don’t feel that connection with moms - unless we have something else to talk about of course. But often, kids take so much of your time that you just can’t focus on anything else, and in all reality, why would you want to?

So I went looking for those communities and was surprised not to find any other than No Kidding, which didn’t seem to have a working online community and was really full on about the no kids stuff. I don’t want to talk about “childfree issues” I just want to talk to people who’s lives aren’t wrapped around a 1 inch little finger.

So my solution is to create a community, I know how to do it technically, but the community creation is a whole other matter, isn’t it? So first I will tell you guys that it exists and can be found here. Sure, it’s barely alive yet, but should you find the idea interesting, you could register on the forum to receive updates - I will be sure to notify you when there’s enough people not having to talk to yourself the whole time…

Feed from the forum:
Childfree
Live information from Childfree

Do you like kids?
Ok, we don´t want to have children of our own, but do we like kids in general? For example, are you godparents?

To me kids are ok, I don´t mind being in a same room with babies or children. But I´m glad that I´m not their mother 


Re: How does your family and friends fell about YNHK?
Me and my husband had told her that we don´t want to have kids, but my mother just don´t believe us... She assumes that my husband would like to have kids...

When will she believe it?
Re: How does your family and friends fell about YNHK?
How clear have you been about the fact it's your choice not to have children? Are they still assuming that you want some someday, but haven't yet tried? Did you tell her that you have discussed the topic and have in fact decided th...
Re: What are the funniest / silliest pieces of advice you've been given?
Oh that's a tricky one... Adalia's mother-in-law is suggesting Adalia and her husband should become a foster parents for abused/neglected children. It sounds like she really doesn't get the grasp of the idea of someone not wanting children. :D
Re: What are the funniest / silliest pieces of advice you've been given?
My mother-in-law has given up the hope that I get pregnant soon, so she has suggested us to adopt a child. And my father-in-law told us last week that we should give home to children, whose own parents can´t/ dont want to take care of (huostaanotettu i...

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If you are setting up or running a forum, one of the most important things with creating a relaxed atmosphere is to select the right emotioncs for your boards. That may sound funny, but on every forum I’ve ever run, I have had a set of carefully selected emoticons, and people LOVE them. On one board, they came such a part of the community, that I felt compelled to give them a week off from work. (This was to rearrange them really, but I informed people that they have been working so hard that I’m giving them a week off.) The response was hilarious. People didn’t want to see them go, but understood their need for rest and requested post cards from their holiday resort. (And indeed got a photo with all those emoticons in front of an European church.)

When ever I’m a member of a discussion board that only allows the basic set of yellow faces, I feel kind of depressed. It tells me that this board is SERIOUS, and the guy running it doesn’t really care about the members. The set of emoticons that are available on a board, also tell me about the sense of humour on the board, and topics that area allowed. (You can get rather naughty little emoticons if you look for them!) There is a wonderful world of emoticons out there, let me tell you! They make you laughThey make you cry.. and when you’re feeling low, they give you a hug.

To help you to get started, I have collected a basic set of smileys for you to use instead of those awful yellow ones. It still comes with Mr. Green though, as there’s nothing better than Mr. Green! (What? You didn’t know he had a name?!)

Download the groovy basic smiley set

As far as I know all these emoticons have been published in the public domain. I have mainly downloaded them at Deviant Art, which has a great section for emoticons!

One word of advice though: Don’t put all the icons into the post form, but set most of them into the pop-up window, as having a lot of them clickable will slow down your forum. Put the most used icons on the form and the rest of them behind the “more” screen. Also when selecting post forum icons, stick with the standard sized icons, that won’t stretch the rows too much, or it’ll look quite messy.

Then wait to see the reactions when you put up more smileys! I quarantee your members will be stoked!

There’s currently 2 discussions about the handsomest / most beautiful blogger on BlogCatalog.com. This made me think about the importance of letting your readers know what you look like. I don’t know if it is that important to other people, but to me it is… For one thing, you can tell a lot about the person by the photo. The age, the style, the gender - you might be surprised how often people think you’re the other gender if you don’t have a photo of yourself! Some topics are gender biased, like… Environmental issues, girly stuff. Fashion, definitely girls, technology, boys, without question… If a blogger doesn’t constantly tell you that “I’m a guy” the visitor will create an image which will effect the way they read your posts.

I know it is daunting to put your photo up there. I chose to use a series of photos, as currently, after having shaved all of my hair off when I turned 30, I am now growing my hair and I bloody well hate it. Having a series of random photos up there, will give me the satisfaction of telling people that I haven’t always had bad hair! Anyway, I would still put my image up there even if I was’t happy about the way I look, or have ever looked, because it gives people an idea of who I am, and why I think this way. Believe it or not, the way we look will also have an effect on how we view the world. “All men are pigs” will sound different when women looking different say that, don’t you agree?

If you have the looks, don’t hide it! You should not underestimate the value of good looks when it comes to attracting readership. People will deny that they would read blogs based on the good looks of the blogger, but deep down we all know we do… Not that it would be nearly the only thing that matters, just that it has an effect that is important enough to take a note off. Let’s put it this way; having the right meta tags will not bring you as many readers as your good looks.

One more thing that speaks for portraying your image; trust. If you have the guts to put your photo up there, and still say what you say, it gives the impression that you do stand behind what you say. We all know what anonymity does to you online. When you comment on discussion boards or to an article, if you are ashamed of what you say, you won’t be posting that thing with your name attached to it, let alone a photo. What ever you say with your name and face attached to it creates trust. Quite frankly, I don’t really give a damn about what some flower or cartoon character says on a discussion board, but I will take a good look at posts that are decorated with a real face.

If you want them to take you seriously, show them your face.

UPDATE: I just joined a fashion network and searched through the local people. There waren’t many so it was quick. However I found a couple of models that didn’t have an avatar. I almost bursted out laughing. I mean seriously, what does it tell about a model if she doesn’t have an avatar?

This has been driving me CRAZY on so many Joomla! installations, that I decided to post a quick post about how to remove it, if for nothing else, for future reference for myself. After another long while of searching for the right spot, I finally found it.

Go to:
Menu Item Manager Find
Main Menu find menu item
Home to edit it. Find
Parameters (System) on the right side and change or remove
Page Title (And choose whether or not you want it shown in the first place.