Do you blog? Do you identify yourself on your blog? Please do!

Note: This blog post is from 2006. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

I'd like to put out a plea to at least consider listing your name, either in your title ("clever name - by blogger name"), or just in some text below it, or in your toolbar. Better still would be a small bio, or a link to a page that has one. (Maybe it would help if blog software offered an "about" pod that made you think of it more readily.) A photo would be nice, too. And for reasons (and with cautions) I propose below, I recommend you also list your email address.

Why bother with name, bio, and/or email? Because it's in your interest!

There are a couple of reasons to consider it, and they help both you and your readers.

First, as for listing at least your name, a good reason is simply to associate yourself with all the value you create by your blog. Why not get credit for your work? Plus, many would really like to know who you are. (And if your blog software puts a tiny "by" under each blog entry, I'll argue that's not enough. I've missed that myself on more than one site.) Again, whether in the title, below it, or in the toolbar, just put it somewhere! :-)

As for a bio, again, even just a couple sentences about yourself (below the title or in the toolbar) can really personalize the blog. Don't assume everyone knows your background, even if they know you by name. Many readers will appreciate knowing more about where you work, where you're from, etc. Such details can also lend perspective to what you write about. (For instance, if you're a fan or a foe of something where that would color all of your posts, it can be helpful for people to realize, "oh, he works for them|on that open source project|with that tool| etc.)." Let people know where you're coming from.) But at least consider offering some background, even a single sentence.

Finally, as for your email address, someone may want to contact you to offer feedback that's not specific to a post. They may want to offer you work (and not want to announce that in a blog comment)--and even then, which post should they enter such a generic note to you in, anyway? Keep in mind that not all readers realize that you get notified of all comments by email, so they may give up trying to contact you.

Heck, they may even have trouble posting a comment, and therefore need *some* way to contact you. I've certainly seen that before.

But isn't it bad to post your email address online?

OK, I realize you may not want to offer your email, as spambots will capture it. But you've probably noticed more and more people listing their addresses as "name (at) domain". The thinking is that people can figure that out, but spambots (at least the dummer ones) will not. I'll grant that they'll eventually catch on. You just need to way how important the benefits are against the pain of more spam. (You do have a spam catching program, I hope? I love the one I use, Cloudmark Desktop. No, it's not free, but there are certainly many of them you can check out.)

Be careful using that (at) trick with Mailto links
If you do decide to use the (at) approach, but you also offer a mailto link, like:

<a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a>

be careful: you need to list the "anti-spammer" address in the mailto (used to launch the email) as well as between the a tags (as shown to the user). Spambots grab all the text on your page, not just what's "visible". This is a pain, because then in the email that's opened the user must notice that you've done this and change it, or the mail will fail to get to you. What I do is explain to the user that by forcing some body text into the mail that's opened. Did you know that was possible?

<a href="mailto:charlie (at) carehart.org?body=please change the spam-fighting email address format I filled in for you, replacing the (at)!">charlie (at) carehart.org</a>

And for those who maybe already knew about it, did you know that you could also use:

<a href="http://tipicalcharlie.blog-city.com/forcing_a_line_break_in_an_html_email_link.htm">force a line break within such content in an HTML email link</a>

(this is from another blog of mine, typicalcharlie.com, which is for generic, non-CF tips)

So please, bloggers, step up and identify yourself. We'll all appreciate it!

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