Tag Archives: writing community

Site redesign complete

So I decided to give it a week or so between changing the site name from “procrastin8or” to “sweat, tears and digital ink” so that non-regulars and the viewers from the web had time to adjust to the new name. I was always going to change the look of the blog but not until I was sure that there would be no more confusion.

I started off with Pilcrow and that standard header image of the row of books. The theme felt a little clunky for me despite that I used it for the best part of 18 months and tinkered with it ove rtime. Approximately four months ago I changed the theme to 2010. It was nice, easy on the eye and semi-professional looking but it still wasn’t what I wanted. I added my own bookshelf image to make it feel more like a bookworm and writer’s blog. Even back then I was starting to feel that I wanted to change the blog name. “Procrastin8or” aside from sounding like the villain in a sci fi spoof, just wasn’t appropriate any more. I’ve stopped procrastinating and I have a passion for writing back again and then some. I write something every day now and I wanted a title to reflect the new step forward. Continue reading →

“Like” Spamming

I am getting a little fed up with receiving lots of likes on posts. Great, I enjoy good feedback like any other blogger and I appreciate that you appreciate what I write. However, there seems to be a growing trend on WordPress for “Like” spammers. That is, people who trawl hundreds of blogs in a day liking every post that they see yet never post a single comment. These people are not engaging with the content or using the feature in the spirit in which it is intended. It seems that the majority are not actually reading the posts they are liking.

How have I worked this out? Firstly, several times in the last few months I have acquired several “likes” on posts that have (at the time) registered zero hits. Secondly, I turned off “likes” on 2012 and all that several months ago yet I still get them. It is clear what is going on here. Using the reader (which shows only the first 50 or so words of the post) these bloggers are scrolling through a subscribed topic and hitting “like” on everything. Thirdly, I am seeing the same gravatar icons appearing on a wide range of blogs covering a multitude of subjects and in each case, they have not commented. So as of today, I have turned this feature off on this blog. Continue reading →