Hi all, I just wanted to let you know that I am still alive, but bogged down in last minute holiday work. I’m working on the next release of the AWSOM News Announcement plugin right now, so I hope to get that out next week as a Christmas/New Year’s present to everyone :)

I may not post many updates in the next week or so though due to the tons of work I need to get done before the end of the year. I will however be available by email and contact form, and also checking Harknell.com and other locations in case people have support requests.

Happy Holidays everyone.

I’m sorry for the recent lack of updates but I just got back from doing a Convention appearance at Philcon. It is also Thanksgiving holiday week in the U.S., so that is also making it difficult to get anything done. I’m focusing on getting the 4.4.4 release of AWSOM Pixgallery finished–so posts to the site for the rest of the week might also be light. Things will resume as normal after this week though, with (I hope) a new release of AWSOM News Announcement also.

Thanks,
Harknell

I wanted to thank the advertisers who have been placing ads through Project Wonderful and our own advertising service. They help make it possible for me to provide all of the plugins and other stuff that’s done here to you guys for free. So please check out their sites.

It always seems like this, when you want to get back into the swing of things you come down with the Flu. I’m in bed and will probably be so for a few days so please keep that in mind if you send support requests or post in the support forums. I’ll try to answer things as soon a I can, but it sucks to be too weak to really move even the mouse well :(

UPDATE: I’m back from the hospital, yeah it got that bad. Pneumonia + 104 fever = 5 hours of iv drip fun. Obviously I will be totally in bed for a few days– I’ll try to answer general questions and such but anything advanced won’t be happening until next week.
Thank you for your patience.

I’m sure by now most of you guys have heard of the major social bookmarking/news websites like digg.com, reddit.com, technorati.com, StumbleUpon.com, etc. In most cases getting a link on the front page from any of these sites can lead to a huge increase in traffic and visibility. That can be a good thing.

My problem with the situation is that it now appears that everyone in the universe is turning into a submission beggar, with “submit me to” buttons filling up most of the page. It’s getting to the ridiculous point where you can have 20+ buttons after every article. I understand that statistically it’s been shown that directly asking readers to do something makes it more likely something will be done, and making it very easy for them to submit your site with an easy to click button makes sense in this context, but I still find it somewhat wrong to have this be the focus of your efforts. It’s almost like reverse advertising, in that as a reader you are being asked to advertise for the site, but in an overly obvious and annoying way. You are no longer the actual audience, but a conduit to the big prize of being featured on a networking site.

There are now articles out there on how to write something that will get you to the front page of those sites. These aren’t “How to write something well” articles, they are “how to push the right buttons to get people to link you” articles, and they seem to me to defeat the purpose of putting things up in the first place: To have good content that has inherent value. Where is the line between spammers and this gaming of the system for traffic? The internet is a big place, that’s true, but I still believe that if you write something well, and it has inherent value, you will be found and gain an audience.

If anyone visiting this site thinks that something I’ve written or released is good enough to share with others and submits it to a networking site on their own, that’s great, I appreciate the sentiment and support. I believe in doing one job though, which is providing the best plugins and content I can, I’m not in the gaming business.