Archive for December, 2008

Freecycle – Give your unwanted things a new home

Tuesday, December 30th, 2008

I just wanted to tell everyone a little about a service we’ve been using lately called Freecycle.  With Freecycle you can advertise items which you are planning on putting out (i.e. old clothes, tv, dvd player etc) and allow other people to receive these items and benefit from them… after all why put something in the bin if someone else can use it?

The thing to remember with this service is that it is operated voluntarily by people within your local community and all the items listed must be offered for free, with no strings attached!   If you want to offer your old couch because you have a new one arriving next week then you are free to do so, but you cannot ask for any compensation, finanical or otherwise and all offers are made on the assumption that the recipient collects the item unless other arrangements are agreed between yourselves.

We have received a number of items which we have benefitted from using this services, and equally we have re-offered these items or other items when we have had no further use for them.

With New Year just a couple of days away why not make it your New Years resolution to Freecycle your unwanted stuff before you throw it out.

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dofollow or nofollow – Update

Monday, December 29th, 2008

It would appear that Word Press uses the “nofollow” attribute as default on all outbound links which are included in comments (which I didn’t catch right away).  This seems a little odd that WordPress is still using nofollow by default  but my understanding is that this is meant as a method of reducing spamming on blogs. 

I do not believe there is any harm disabling the “nofollow” and converting to a “dofollow” approach as comments require authorisation by default and you can also install any number of spam fighting plugins if you are experiencing spamming on your blogs.

We have now ensured that any links on your comments are followed through to the destination site by using the NoFollow Free plugin.  If you intend to use this on your own WordPress blog then ensure you enable the options (once the plugin in uploaded and actived) via Settings -> NOFF, otherwise the comments will still use the “nofollow” attribute.

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dofollow or nofollow? What is the difference and benefits?

Monday, December 29th, 2008

One method of getting additional traffic to your website is adding a link back to your webiste when posting on other people blogs, but some of these sites operate using nofollow links and others use dofollow links but what’s the difference?

Essentially these methods are for search engines only and they do exactly what they say. 

NoFollow means:-

  • that the search engines do not follow the link through to your website
  • that the link does not count as a backlink

DoFollow means:-

  • that the search engines are allowed to continue through to your website
  • that the link does count as a backlink.

So why post on blogs which use nofollow?  From my research on this there are 2 main reasons to post in blogs which use nofollow:-

  1. Human visitors don’t just visit blogs using dofollow so you can still receive human traffic from nofollow blogs.
  2. If all your traffic comes from dofollow backlinks then search engines may interpret this as artificially generated traffic for the sake to receiving higher rankings and for websites with good content then natural traffic should be part of the balance.

We have decided to operate a dofollow policy because at then end of the day we wish to receive additional traffic from other peoples blogs and we believe that we should give our readers the same opportunity from our site.  In addtion to this we have decided to implement CommentLuv to provide our readers with a link to your latest blog post within any comments you make.

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Merry Christmas

Thursday, December 25th, 2008

Merry Christmas from all of us at Lots of Freebies!

We hope that Santa is good to you all!

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Abolish the TV Licence Fee

Friday, December 19th, 2008

I recently came across a petition for the abolishment of the TV Licence fee which I whole heartedly agree with. I, like may others, are capable of receiving the BBC channels but choose not to watch them in favour of other programmes on other channels i.e. ITV, Five, and many others available on Sky or Cable television.

Although I do not watch the BBC programmes or channels I’m still forced into paying for the TV licence simply because i “watch or record television programmes as they’re being shown on TV”. This statement which is the first line of their “Do I need a TV Licence” section of the TV Licencing Information page was fine when the BBC was the only broadcaster but is now extremely dated with so many different channels, many of which are not related to the BBC.

Why the likes of ITV, Five etc haven’t pushed on this issue more is beyond me as I can’t imagine they are happy with the fact that we’re watching their programmes yet at the same paying their competitor for the ability to watch their programmes.

Show your support and sign the petition today

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