Bad Language
No swearing. Think The Times circa 1900. “Shit” is not OK but “Crap” is. I’ve never understood why, but that the way it is.   If Terry Wogan wouldn’t say in live on Radio 2 then you probably shouldn’t write it in your articles. Using the C-word will get you fired.

Sex Talk
No overt sexual language. Mild innuendo is OK. Think the BBC circa 1970 before 9 PM. Tits can be either blue or great but not wobbly. Bums live cardboard boxes. Using the F-word will get you fired.

Discrimination
No discriminatory language.   I personally, am not a great fan of political correctness so you have some leeway here, but be inclusive and avoid the pejorative. Using the N-word will get you fired.

Illegal Activities
No inciting people to riot or not pay their taxes. I don’t want PC Plod and chums at my door at 05h00 any more than you do, and most likely less because I’m not a morning person.

Copyrighted Material
Do not use material in your article that isn’t either public domain or where the copyright is owned by you and you are happy that this site can use it, for free, forever.

Anything that you post in an article you retain the copyright for, but you also grant a perpetual license for us to publish it in any way we like.  You should understand this fully if you intend to use this material in the future in any way yourself (i.e. in a book).

Word Count
The guide is 500-1000 words an article.    But it is a guide.   100 words isn’t enough and 2500 words is definitely too much.

Advertising
Do not use your articles to promote products or businesses whether or not they belong to you.   Yes, mention your book if it is relevant or a good source of some building materials or a good plumber but no selling.

Off-site Links
These are not banned, but please use them sparingly, linking directly to the page in a site that is relevant rather than to the top level of a site.   These will not be followed by Search Engines and will not increase the sites Page Rank or placement.

Bashing
Please no person bashing.   If someone is giving you a hard time, tell me and I’ll deal with it – do not bash them directly in your article.  If your roof fell in due to cowboy builders, tell us about it and maybe mention the name but no libellous comments please.

Anonymity
I highly recommend that you are careful.   If you want to put your real name in your profile or on your articles then please do, but I highly recommend that you never put your address, telephone, primary email or any other private information in your articles or profile.   It’s a wacky world and you don’t want it dancing on your doorstep.

Religion and Politics
These are an important part of some people’s lives.  They are also sure fire, flame war starters. Discuss with caution and sensitivity.  Do not belittle others or their views and do not attempt to indoctrinate anyone to your chosen path (especially me – cults and “the party” are so twentieth century).

Feedback and the Right to Reply
You will get a mixture of good and bad comments (and worse – no comments at all).  Welcome it all.  If it is inappropriate I will remove it.  Sometimes people will feel that they have a “right” to reply because your article is about them or something that they feel close to.  Don’t get into a war of words and don’t expect comments to be removed just because they don’t like what you’ve written.

The most bogus dashboard link ever?

Women do pretty much everything these days. Many of them blog, some of them professionally. So I ask: Why do we need to hold them up as a special group of bloggers worthy of note, especially in some patronising, “ah look how well they’re doing” kinda way? Although actually it looks more like gratuitous self-promotion than anything else.

So here we have a sort of moral choice for the bloggirls, especially given the content of these sites, which are aimed at promotion or youth culture or women in business. Do I accept that the only reason I got myself in this article is my gender, and be happy about it, or do I strive for true equality and say no? Well I guess, actually these ladies have all learned the first rule of marketing bullshit, oft miss-quoted (and if I may say so, totally erroneous) – “any exposure must be good”. Or some such tripe.

Matt just re-links to someone else’s article, which quotes him (Is the irony of doing so little actual blogging himself in WordPress lost on him?) Who cares. The aforementioned article is little more than a list of women but, most importantly, because they are women, there must be pictures. Much more important for us to see them to judge their worth, than read their actual blog itself. Why are these peoples favourite women bloggers? This was not clear at all in most cases. There is no depth at all to anyone’s choices. Picture, link, name, half a sentence about the blog, a bit more if its a good cause. Finito. No actual explanation of why there are being picked. For example

Michelle Thorne is a thinker, about free culture and a whole lot more.

Sadly, and ironically as this is all about exposure, not the pornstar. This says nothing about the person, her site or why Mike liked this blog. I expect he liked it best because he got three lines himself and a link to his business. Nothing personal Mike, but holy crap “a whole lot more”. Did you have real work to go do?

Surly dashboard is about WordPress and “Other WordPress News” about promoting what’s good about it. That most people choose to write superficial drivel with the sole purpose of “being known” themselves is already blogged to death. You can read that crap just by randomly typing words into Google. You might even end up here. This is not something that should be seen as, in any way, good. Dashboard should not become another mouthpiece for patronising piffle. So cut it the feck out.

Mostly I’m with decent well known providers who email me a bunch of times as the renewal gets closer and closer.  One even has the domains on “auto” renewal which is pretty good, since I’m mostly likely to want to renew rather than not.

I’ve had issues in the past with a crap company that didn’t email me at all and just let the domain lapse.  It was an .eu domain which, for some completely bizarre reason, have to be renewed each and every fecking year.  Only the EU would insist on this level of unwanted paperwork.  All my other domains (.com, .org .et.al)  are all pre-paid on 5 or 10 year programmes, depending on how flush I was at renewal and how well that site is looking.

Loosing a domain name is a serious issue.  The system is pretty much working for you with a period of grace if you forget, but 10 years is a long time and addresses change (virtual ones maybe more frequently).  This reminded me how important it is to keep those domain details up-to-date.  If you aren’t getting the emails, then maybe the first sign you have of your domain being expired and sold off is when you find your blog replaced with some shiny edifice with the sole purpose of parting fools and their hard earned ASAP.  At this point it’s all too late to moan about your lot.  All you can do is re-domain yourself and stick up a new sign, while the aforementioned medicament merchants bask in the warmth of your hard fought page-rank until it’s all gone and you’re blackballed at your club.