Web Design Fail

I have designed web sites for thirteen years. I’ve done so professionally for ten. That may not be apparent from looking at my blog, but this is meant to be an outlet for my writing, not an extension of my day job. Other than adding the image of the wheel (which may or may not be on fire) and making a couple minor tweaks to the code, I’ve left the template pretty much as I found it.

One of those tweaks has been costing me followers.

All I wanted was to let readers view large images without opening them up in another page. I’d used Lightbox scripts before without issue, and the website touted it as simple and unobtrusive. Well, it obtruded. Thanks to this code, almost every browser failed to display the “Follow” button and my tiny list of followers.

What’s that? You weren’t aware my blog had any followers? You must have been using Internet Explorer. Or Firefox. Or Chrome. Or Safari. Perhaps Opera. (Do people actually use Opera?) As far as I can tell, only certain versions of Firefox showed my Followers section consistently. I’ll give you one guess as to which I was using.

Any web designer worth his salt would have discovered this issue in a manner of days. A couple weeks, tops. So, how long did it take me to find out? Ten months. And that was only because a friendly neighborhood blogger alerted me to my missing “Follow” button. (Thanks, Carol!) I'm such a fool. Clearly, salt is too good for me.

Now that I’ve removed the offending code, you can easily follow this blog using your Google, Twitter, Yahoo, OpenID, or etc. account. Of course, you may be wondering why you’d ever want to do such a thing.

As it so happens, I made a list.

10 Reasons You Might Want to Follow My Blog

1. You aren’t following my blog yet. Seems pretty straightforward to me.
2. If you do, it’ll make me infinitely happy. Literally. My happiness will go on and on and on, looping around on itself until the end of my days. It will not go beyond infinity, however; that’s where Emperor Zurg lives.
3. If you don’t, I will send monkeys to your house. And I’m not talking about those darling monkeys with the cute little faces you see on television or at the zoo. No, I’m talking about the evil, godforsaken monkeys of the damned, with razor-sharp teeth, blood-stained claws, and an insatiable thirst for wanton destruction. Monkeys who would love nothing more than to strap you down and force you to watch Pauly Shore movies. Those monkeys.
4. It just stole the diamond necklace, and it’s getting away. If you can track it all the way back to the gang’s rendezvous point, you might be able to unmask the mastermind behind the heist and finally make Detective. Quick, it’s hailing a taxi!
5. You heard it through the grapevine. Oh, sorry. I misread “reasons” as “raisins” for a second there. Let’s just go ahead and change #5 to You love bad puns.
6. You think I’m funny. Looking. And picturing me do stupid things while you read my writing makes you feel better about yourself. Glad I could help.
7. You’re no longer allowed to follow me personally. Dude, I got the restraining order for a reason.
8. You could win something. No, not now. But every once in a while I will run a contest, and if you’re lucky you might win, and if you’re even luckier, you might claim your prize, unlike every winner to date.
9. Out of pity. Go on, pity the fool. (And again we’re back to #5.)
   
   And, the single biggest reason to follow my blog:
   
   
10. Footnotes! Scads and scads of footnotes! What? You don’t see any footnotes at the end of this post? Well, maybe if you followed my blog...