Today my weekly ramble is more of a sage reminder that the internet plays for keeps. I have been getting more frequent requests than usual from people requesting the removal of posts that they made in the past. The reason is generally one of three. They don’t want their bosses to see that they are struggling with a work related problem. Or they don’t want a client to know that they aren’t the CSS guru that they claimed to be. Or because they don’t want to show up in a Google search (especially if they have been bagging the company).
The internet is forever and it tells tales.
It is very easy to think of the web as anonymous, but it isn’t. If you slate your client in a rash moment, don’t use their name. Chances are they Google themselves every now and then – hell, we all do – and Google just LOVES SitePoint. Don’t write anything that you wouldn’t want put on a billboard. If you need help with a project, no problem, that’s why we’re here, but think about how you ask for it. Move your code to a test site if you need to, rather than linking to your client’s site.
Generally we’ll do what we can to accommodate you, but we just don’t have the time to edit out links from all the posts that you made last month, and we don’t delete threads because someone else may learn from them in the future.
And there ends the lecture.
I have been super busy around the SitePoint forums this week and I’ve done a whole lot of cleaning and organising. In order to further cut down on spam, we have turned off Social Groups. Several unused forums have been removed or merged into others, and the Photography forum has been moved to a more appropriate place. You can read all about the forum sort out here. One thing that I’m very excited about is the latest addition to our fold, the new WordPress forum.
Our Facebook Friday deal this week is the best so far. With the release last week of our latest book “Create Stunning HTML Email That Just Works“, we’re on a bit of an email marketing buzz around here, so this week we’re offering 50% off our famous Email Marketing Kit. Valued at US$197, you can get yours for just $98.50 PLUS free shipping. Our Marketing Manager is quoted as saying “This is the email marketing Bible and we guarantee it will contain everything you need to create killer email marketing campaigns.” But that’s not all… one lucky purchaser will become our weekly winner and receive a $150 Flippa voucher and t-shirt.
Week 2 of our Golden Post Prize Program is over and the winners have been announced. These lucky people have the opportunity to snap up a free copy of our brand new HTML email book, should that take their fancy! There are still two weeks left to run in the competition, so it’s not too late to get a copy yourself.
Hot Topics This Week
If you feel like some light entertainment during your lunch break, have a listen to the inaugural SitePoint ForumCast. The team have done a fantastic job and it’s cool to hear the mix of accents from around the world.
In General Chat they’re talking about a pretty interesting topic – the social skills of web developers (or lack thereof).
That old bug-bear, IE6 support is being discussed in the Web Page Design forum. Drop in and let us know how far you go.
If you go down the open source CMS road for a client, do you think it is your duty to inform them? And if you do, should you charge less? This very topic is being discussed currently in Business and Legal Issues.
That’s more than enough from me this week, so I’ll leave you to it.
Feature image by Chris Roberts from Digital Precision
Sarah HawkFormerly a developer in the corporate world, HAWK (known as Sarah by her mother) said goodbye to the code and succumbed to the lure of social media to become the Community Manager for the SitePoint network. Now Hawk is working with Discourse to build their product and community.
