Monday, August 04, 2003

Guestbooks and Blogging

When I first started my online entries, I decided to include a guestbook for any reader to leave their comments behind. After looking around on the net, I’ve decide to register my guestbook with one guestbook provider website which will remain nameless. It first it was fine but gradually I noticed a few out of place guestbook entries that looked innocent at first but was actually linking my page with spam pages. It got so bad after awhile that I had to login to the site almost daily to edit the posts. The final straw happened today when I discovered that someone had place a HTML post on my guestbook that automatically refresh the window and directed all visitors viewing my guestbook to a porn site. What was worse was that the porn site that had hijacked my guestbook was not even a gay porn site! It was then I decided to cancel my registration and remove all links to that guestbook site. This is actually my first experience with guestbook spam which I never knew existed before.

Initially, I had thought that no one would be interested with what I had to say in my daily entries. I guess it was because I thought that it was not as insightful or informative as some of the blog sites that are out there. Most of the things that I write in my entries are my thoughts and reaction to whatever was happening in my life and surroundings. So you can imagine my surprise when I noticed that there were actually other people on the Net who were actually reading what I had written. It started out very subtle, a little bit here and there, an occasional nod to what I had said. Soon after I began to notice that my URL had been included in their links list and then my entries quoted in other blog sites. Truth be told, I was ecstatic the first time that someone quoted my entries but I was also feeling self-conscious about the bad grammar that I am convinced evident in my entries.

It is because of my realization that there are people out there who actually think that what I had to say merits a few minutes of their valuable time that I decided to replace my guestbook with an entry comments link. Of course I had to ask Nizam about it since I have no idea how to do it. I may have a degree in Computer Science but when it comes down to creating websites and all, I’m about as good as a monkey with a typewriter trying to write a novel. Ever since I started my online entries, Nizam has been my blog guru who never seems to tire of me asking blog tips from him. It was him who pointed me to the site that I could register for comments link which I will have inserted at the end of every blog entries beginning today. I do hope that the comments left behind by my site visitors would give me the inspiration to continue on producing the daily entries.

In other news, they will be uploading different Real Media clips of the blooper reel from Dawson’s Creek daily at Katie Holmes fan site this week. It would be the last time these clips will be made available for download before they are gone altogether due to bandwidth constraints. So if you’re a fan of the show like me, you should mosey down over to the site and download the clips which will be changed daily until this weekend. They are actually pretty hilarious!

No comments: