#I deleted the original version to remove the negativity out of the tags

[prince-toffee]

Deleted the original post just to take away the negativity out of the entrapta tags. All sorted out and cleared up now. Gonna put this in my #salted toffee tags which you can filter easily. Keeping this around cause I stand by with what I said.

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Misunderstanding, I think

https://garnet-xx-rose.tumblr.com/post/615315863286022144/the-best-part-about-hordak-and-entraptas

Hope the link works. So pretty much I commented on this post belonging to garnet-xx-rose a while back, and it was a bad day for me so I was a little salty, but I thought I cleared it up with later comments, but maybe not. So theoriquewitherseld I hope you saw my replies and didn’t block me, and if you did, if anyone knows them could you tell them what I said in this post. I didn’t want to offend them or anyone else.

I. Do. Not. Think. Entrapta. Is. Dumb.

You miss understood me. I was talking in a mocking tone as an imaginary writer on the show.

I. Love. Entrapta!

I was calling out the lazy writing of the show. I think Entrapta is a competent and genuious-level intellect adult woman! And I know that’s what the writers of the show thought and wanted to portray too! But in my opinion - they failed.

Again, please read through the comments, I pretty much explain my thought process through them, and I’ll say it again, because I don’t want there to be any confusion.

I feel like they should have made Entrapta a more villainous character, make her more serious. I feel like Entrapta got the short end of the stick, in season five she was practically downgraded to a walking joke/gag, not only that she was forced to be portrayed as childish, apologising for acts she did and yanked around like a child by a parent. I felt wrong to watch.

THIS IS AN ADULT WOMAN IN HER THIRTIES!

Instead of being this force of nature, an actual threat and power, this cool awesome amoral mad-scientist, she acts... foolish. And then the Princesses have to grab her or put her on a FUCKING LEASH! Like a dog. It’s sickening. And the worst part is: WE’RE POSITIONED AS AN AUDIENCE TO AGREE WITH THE PRINCESSES! The writing of the show feels like we’re supposed to go: Yeah, Entrapta is stupid and an idiot, if we don’t physically pull her around she’ll end up killing herself.

And it’s horrible!!! At no point does the show show the princesses as the assholes, Entrapta is the one who apologises! And we are positioned to support the princesses! It’s fucking wrong! Like did the rest of the crew know Entrapta was in her 30s or did they think she was a kid??!!! Because that’s how she’s treated!

Entrapta, an autistic adult woman is talked to and interacted with as if she was stupid!

THE SHOW TURNED HER INTO A JOKE!

And the fact that the crew confirmed after the release of season five that she was in fact autistic is just plain insulting! Like yeah, she’s a joke, not just because she’s yet another needless comedic-relief, but because she’s autistic. I have no idea how that slipped under their radar?!

Okay, you say, but that was in season five, the salty comments I made were about season four, so let’s dive into it.

I hate Entrapta’s arc. It’s demeaning.

Instead of having the guts to say that this autistic woman was a cool, badass villain that tops her disabled genderfluid husband and can burn the earth if she wants, so don’t fuck with her, they made her a push over!

THEY HAD HER A PUSH OVER!!!!

So, her hair, is it like super powerful, or something?

NAH. You just pull it and she’s done for. She’s a weak, defenceless baby. We don’t have a moment where Entrapta’s trapped on Prime’s ship and then she escapes and like forges a weapon out of the very walls of the warship and starts to pick clones off one by one. We never see her being capable! We are told she is, but we’re not shown.

Show don’t tell!

We’re told Entrapta survived Beast Island, but we never she her struggle or have a cool moment. Like, great job writers. The lesbians have Catra who practically one shots anyone by jumping on them somehow and Adora that cuts through fighter ships in space and autistic people get Enatrapta: the joke. Fuck that!

I choose to throw away canon, BECAUSE I love Entrapta. In my headcanons Entrapta is a badass and awesome, not... whatever the show gave us.

I’d be set if I had a penny for every time during this show I thought ‘Oh, shit, just you wait until this character starts to wreck shit’ and then nothing happens. After season three I was like, I can’t wait until Entrapta just comes back from Beast Island and kicks Catra’s ass, it’s gonna be so great. We all know what happened instead. Catra felt bad and Entrapta just forgave her. Lazy writing.

When the Beast Island episode rolls around it turns out that, guess what her character arc was? Can you guess? I bet you’d never guess.

She just wanted friends... that’s it... she was confused about her feelings.

...

You know when you commit acts of terrorism and war crimes because you were confused about your feelings? No? Woaw, that’s weird, I thought that’s what all autistic people act like. You know, you’re confused and you build killer robots.

I don’t understand this! They yet again portray her in a childish manner! Instead of portraying her as an adult morally grey woman who goes with the princesses just to rescue Hordak and cut Horde Prime’s brain into pieces, she’s just naïve. It’s revealed that she was naïve and didn’t fully understand her actions because she was confused about her feelings! That’s almost the same level of bullshit as Noelle saying Catra pulled the lever out of curiosity!

Once again, I choose to throw away canon. I believe Entrapta knew what she was doing and doesn’t give a shit, she’s a chaotic neutral that kicks ass and is competent.

It gets worse and worse, her turn is due to one speech about friendship. And that’s it. That’s all it took!

“Oh gosh, you guys was that me back there doing war crimes and acts of terrorism? I had no idea! Gee sorry guys, I had no idea I was doing something bad. My bad. I’m so glad you teenagers half my age were here to tell me what was right or wrong, because otherwise I would’ve just been totally oblivious to my evil doings. Well, gets go, and I’ll fuck a ship or something because I’m a joke and not a real character with effort put in.”

I hate it so much. Again, I’m sure the writers didn’t mean to, but that’s what it came off as.

And I completely agree with the original post made by garnet-xx-rose Entrapta is only portrayed as a respected and truly understood adult when she’s with Hordak. (And Scorpia, I don’t ship Scorptrapta, cause I’m into villain ships, but they’re cute together) But when she’s with Hordak specifically, she showcases her villainous side, her mad-scientist side, which is what she was sold to the audience as so why would you betray the fundamental appeal of the character in favour of making her a joke!?!?!

Look I know I’m pissed and salty, but I hope I made my point clear.

I just feel like you could have easily fixed it by letting Entrapta be more villainous! Make her state she knew what she was doing in the Horde and make her call out the princess’ hypocrisy. They wanted her just to make weapons for them. Make Entrapta have more kick ass moments. Have her interact with Hordak more since their chemistry brings out the most interesting aspects about them.

This is just my opinion,

I’m not saying I’m right,

I’m not saying you have to agree with me,

I’m simply voicing my opinion and clarifying a misunderstanding.

In conclusion, I LOVE ENTRAPTA. And I’m also disappointed with the writing for her. Yes, we exist.

[twst-discourse-bot]

Updates on fandom4lesbians Drama: lesbiansinfandom and More

So, after about three days of no mental peace, I thought it only right that I provide the next wave of evidence that I have gathered regarding Yuuna/Marie/Lumine/Ray and their seemingly never-ending energy. They are already spamming the tags again, looking for trouble.

Here is a LINK to my previous post on the matter which contains the evidence that their first four blogs are in fact connected, in case anyone is new here or wants a refresher as I will be removing the pin and pinning this post instead, but I will still provide a short recap on what is going on:

Yuuna/Marie/Lumine/Ray is a user in the TWST and Genshin fandom with a long history of racism, Sinophobia, homophobia, and TERF behavior, in addition to spamming tags with repetitive content and being linked to the harassment of other users.

I have also answered more questions clarifying this statement on my blog, if you'd like to read more into it.

I am continuing this effort because many concerned people who agree that their actions need to be stopped and they need to be held accountable for them have personally come to me in support. I have also sought out several users who I believed to be negatively affected by this person and they kindly helped me compile this evidence as well, so I want to give them peace of mind if possible.

Further Explanation Below (Long Post):

She has used many names until now, (genshin-lumine or genshinlumine, yuunatsukuyomiinwonderland, mult1fandoml3sbian, and fandom4lesbians) and I have since been provided with MORE account names that are also under her control:

1. lesbiansinfandom (formerly magicalstorybook); see a pattern here? This is her new “main”, at least in TWST

2. lumineforlife (active until July 9)

3. anonymousdiscourse (active until July 9)

4. deadyuunaacount (renamed and wiped yuunatsukuyomiinwonderland)

This time, I have a lot more screenshots that detail their behavior, many of which were kindly provided to me by other people who have been affected by the situation. For the sake of privacy, I will be blocking out all users’ names that do not belong to the offender.

A. Proof that Ray (lesbiansinfandom) is the same as ever:

I think that anyone who isn't interested in playing devil's advocate can tell that these blogs are all the same person, but I will go into detail for everyone's sake and to deter naysayers.

I received an anon message that sums it up perfectly:

All of these points happen beat per beat on any of her main accounts, most notably in the most recent three, all containing lesbian in the name in some form.

To highlight the first criteria:

current main blog

current main blog before rebranding

deleted fandom4lesbians blog

pfp of deleted mult1fandoml3sbian blog

The last image also shows an example of criteria #3,4, and 5; the "hate" she receives and her typical response to it. People suspect that these messages are sent by her to herself in an attempt to garner sympathy and attention. As you can see mult1fandoml3sbian is also the blog where the original tirade about boycotting the EN server Ghost Marriage event started.

Keep in mind that these blogs all started posting within DAYS of the previous version being found out and removed/deleted, so taking everything into account it becomes obvious that Ray and Marie are the same person using different pseudonyms.

B. The Other Blogs

The easiest to explain is deadyuunaaccount, which is just what this person renamed her yuunatsukuyomiinwonderland account to after deleting all of her posts. Here is the evidence they are the same blog and therefore, the same person:

original OC profile with former account name

a reblog of the original OC profile to the burner account lumineforlife

deadyuunaacount answering an ask as the owner of the OC

This ties me into my next point about the blogs lumineforlife and anonymousdiscourse, which claim to be "friends" with each other and Yuuna. Look what the most recently reblogged post is on both accounts:

These were both reblogged on July 9 and then both accounts went quiet. As you can see, they also really like the damnfandomproblems submission blog, which is another characteristic of the previous versions.

lumineforlife reblogging a post from anonymousdiscourse defending Yuuna, from an anon message to damnfandomproblems

another reblog by lumineforlife from anonymousdiscourse, regarding an unrelated situation on damnfandomproblems

two posts related to Genshin shipping discourse, both of which displaying opinions that the offender has publicly displayed on their previous blogs before

So, if you've been following, I have established that lesbiansinfandom is the same person who was running fandom4lesbians and mult1fandoml3sbian, who was ALSO the person behind genshin-lumine and yuunatsukuyomiinwonderland. Due to the number of interactions between the Yuuna blog and lumineforlife and anonymousdiscourse, as well as the users having the same mannerisms and posting habits as the rest, it can be assumed with certainty that these blogs are also run by the same person. That is one person behind SEVEN blogs, eight if you count the rename of the Yuuna account.

C. Finally, Proof of Sinophobia/Racism and TERF-iness

Before, I lamented not having appropriate screenshots to back up my claims and relied mostly on people's memory and good will to follow the trail of evidence I provided. Now, after some digging, I have collected quite a bit of proof.

Notice that multiple times, the user will fall back on race or gender (they claim to be a black, trans lesbian who uses she/they pronouns) to defend their actions, as well as other fake "friends" that clearly do not exist.

a few examples from anonymousdiscourse account

What follows is a consecutive interaction between three users and the offender.

the post the argument is in reference to, from damnfandomproblems

This is also not all of the evidence that I have collected, but I figured it was enough to prove a point. If asked, I can make another post with the rest of the screenshots I have of their behavior.

D. Conclusion

So where does this leave us? Same as before, block them, report them, spread the news of who they are and keep yourself and your friends safe. If you want to investigate yourself, feel free to look through the three active accounts as well as the damnfandomproblems archive, there is a lot about Yuuna there.

The only different advice I would give this time is to avoid interacting directly with them, it's not worth the energy and you'll be talking to a brick wall. They won't stop unless someone makes them stop and the method for doing that is both illegal and outside my skill set, but if we can avoid scaring them into changing their MO until it becomes impossible to recognize them it would be helpful. Ideally they just leave, but that likely won't happen.

And please, again, don't be racist, sexist, gross, etc. to troll them. It's equally disgusting behavior, no matter how much you may delude yourself into thinking it's fair or for the greater good.

Thank you for reading, I wish you well.

[eulangelo]

callout for @genderfluidlucifer

google docs

tw for transmisogyny + TERFs + emotional manipulation

Transmisogyny

Lucifer is a huge transmisogynist who will complain 24/7 about how TERFs hurt the ace community, but the moment @randomclustermissile , a trans girl (who is not an exclusionist at all) tries to point out transmisogyny in inclusionist circles (in the most vague and general way possible, without pointing fingers nor calling anyone names) Lucifer will immediatly jump to block her and so they did with me (another inclusionist) and i have to suppose to everyone else who agreed with that post, even arriving to vagueing about us in private group chats to suggest that we were “sympathizing with exclusionists”. all because we dared point out transmisogyny in inclusionist circles. lucifer is TME but apparently they think they’re the authority on TERFs and their talking points but actual trans women are not, according to them, since this is the stuff that they would go and spew to other people. (screenshots from @enbyoctoling​)

here’s more examples of Lucifer (again, a transmasc person) going deep in detail about how according to them, TERFs/SWERFs hate aro/ace people and are an active threat to us

1. link

[Image ID: Three screenshots of a post by Genderfluidlucifer. The first screenshot is of a paragraph that reads, "Hey. So I can actually answer this. Anon your commentary about how you thought terfs would approve of sex repulsed aces is sort of it. Except...not. Basically terfs hate ace people for not wanting sex in the approved by terfs way. Terfs are actually extremely interested in [forcing] amatonormativity onto everyone. Because for as sex negative as terfs are...they don't want to actually acknowledge or change the fact that amatonormativity is at the root cause of rape culture and misogyny."

The second screenshot is a zoomed in section of the post that reads, "So yeah no I have NO idea where exclus allies are getting this idea from that terfs would even remotely care about the sexual rights of ace people. Terfs generally hate any sexualities in the LGBTQ+ acronym that aren't LGB because they can't force a gender binary onto those sexualities. At least, not as easily. That's why it's actually a massive sign of someone who doesn't call themselves a terf being a crypto terf if they use the term LGB in a positive manner. Along with the term SGA, as it is deliberately exclusive of nonbinary and not inherently SGA centric queer-aligned sexualities. /END ID]

link to the full post, these are just excerpts but the whole thing is just a very long rant about how TERFs hate ace people and so on (i think it’s worth noticing that although the actual post is kinda long, trans women are never once brought op in a conversation about TERFs issues and the only time transmisogyny is mentioned is not relevant to the conversation)

2. link

[Image ID: A screenshot of a reblog by genderfluidlucifer. The original poster is nothorses. It reads, "Because apparently I have to say it: Testosterone is not a 'violent' hormone. It doesn't make you 'more aggressive' or a worse person, it doesn't make you 'dangerous,' or 'toxic.' Transmascs do not need to be 'warned of the dangers of T.' We do not need to spend our transitions terrified that we're going to become a danger to those around us - that HRT is going to turn us into a monster.

Everyone experiences mood swings during hormonal shifts (pregnancy, menstruation, menopause, estrogen HRT, etc.) and while you might have grumpy moments or feel anger/frustration that you need to learn to handle differently, that doesn't make you a bad person.

Testosterone can change the way you access/process emotions somewhat, but if you're already thoughtful about how you handle your feelings and treat others, you're going to be fine. It's normal to lash out on occasion, by accident, then apologize and work to do better. It doesn't make you a bad person. Everyone on HRT is prone to this, and everyone experiencing hormonal changes is prone to this.

Getting HRT should be positive and affirming; you should not have to spend your entire transition terrified of becoming a monster."

The post then has a reblog by captainlordauditor that reads, "The big danger of T is that needle ouchy." /END ID]

here’s them reblogging from known transmisogynist user @nothorses (once again, the irony that a post about how testosterone is seen as the "aggressive hormone" does not mention transfem at all which are literally the main victims of this rethoric in the first place)

3. link (1), link (2)

[Image ID: Two screenshots of posts by genderfluidlucifer. The first screenshot reads, "Queer exclus: We're not repackaging terf rhetoric! Saying that is transmisogynistic! Also queer exclus: Remove the plus from LGBT!" and has tags that say, "I will pay these people to grow some god damn self awareness. Imagine being this dense. Queer discourse." The post has 15 notes.

The second screenshot reads, "Honestly it is so stupid and frustrating to see ace exclus continue to deny that the ace discourse was started by terfs. Proof was given countless times. And a big name terf like galesofnovember even admitted to starting it. Those of you who demand proof but ignore all of this never wanted proof to begin with." and is tagged with, "ace discourse. The post has 38 notes. /END ID]

heres another two post of theirs conflating TERFs with ace exclusionism

4. link

[Image ID: A screenshot of a reblogged post by furbearingbrick. The original poster is boxlizard, Lucifer's old account. The original post reads, "By the way for people still in denial about it, here's galesofnovember, a terf, admitting that she intended to start the ace exclus movement. She's taking credit for it. Normally if the victims of this behavior weren't ace/aro or other queer identities y'all be ready to rightfully lynch her. But since it's us, y'all just still wanna stamp your feet and go, 'Nuh uh!' instead of acknowledging facts." The part that says, "admitting that she intended to start the ace exclus movement" is a link to a galesofnovember post.

There is then a reblogged addition from furbearing brick that reads, "archived versions of the receipts" and has two links to the webarchive. The tags read, "Bringing this back since it's apparently still relevant. Terfism mention. Aphobia mention. Queerphobia mention. Blocklist." and has 1,455 notes. /END ID]

this is their post that ive already talked about but basically they found a 52 notes post made by a TERF in 2012 and this one person said "i dont know why i dont get to be the princess of the anti-ace-brigade" and apparently they are convinced that this means TERFs started the ace exclusionism movement and that this is one of their goals. which is insane when TERFs in real life only care about making life miserable for transfem people first and foremost.

5.link

[Image ID: A screenshot of a reblog by genderfluidlucifer. The original poster is yu-gay-fudo. It reads, “Just in case you happen to be unaware, some of the “radfem lite” they post to warm you up to their rhetoric, just off the top of my head:

- Ace/aro exclusionism

- Bi exclusionism or claims that bi people are “less queer” bc of “straight passive privilege”

- Saying you have to be dysphoric to identify as transInvalidating nonbinary people

- Calling queer a slur regardless of context, saying people can’t identify as queer, and saying that it can’t be reclaimed

- “Mogai hell”, “kweer”, or otherwise mocking less common labels and claiming they are “just cishets who want to feel special”

- Excluding sex workers from feminist discussions or claiming that sex work is inherently evil

- Basically anyone who thinks they can determine what other people identify as”. The tags read, "queerphobia tw. twerfs tw. no id." and has 70,727 notes. It was reblogged on March 22nd, 2021 /END ID]

another example of conflating radfems to things that, while wrong, have little to nothing to do with them because being a radfem, again, is something very specific that has all to do with transfem oppression.

Emotional manipulation

Lucifer has done nothing but block, break boundaries, spread lies and vague about people, some of which were even mutuals with them knowing they would see the posts. when confronted about it Lucifer's only answer was "just say you hate me and block me" but they actually ended up blocking everyone first, making it impossible for anyone to set some boundaries with them or even just to calmly confront them about anything.

[proof: Io(popncourse) and Lucifer had a disagreement in a shared discord server, which prompted Lucifer to vague Io in a vent post. Io confronted them, as being vagued is one of buns triggers, to which Lucifer initially agreed to delete the vent post, but then proceeded to victimize themself and immediatly blocked Io. later on, Jude(malewifedeckard) was confronted by Lucifer, then after Jude told them “I’m worried that you’ll vague me just like you did with Io” they proceeded to block Jude and vagued about him too. when Io made a post (which was not a callout, it was just bun setting buns boundaries) explaining what Lucifer did, Lucifer immediatly jumped to victimize themself, acting like they were being called out and straight-up lying, even going so far as to say that no one tried to hear them out, which is a blatant lie if you consider the aforementioned Io and Jude’s attempts at doing so, with Lucifer immediatly blocking and cutting ties with the both of them. ] 

(screenshots taken by @popncourse and @malewifedeckard)

as seen in the proof above Lucifer’s behaviour is not ok because they don’t accept any kind of confrontation and immediatly jump to blocking, and after blocking, they'd immediatly go and vague about the people who confronted them pacificly, spreading more lies and painting themself as the victim and even arriving to say “no one hears me out at all” which is simply not something you can say when you block people who are trying to hear you out in the first place.

this is by no means an invitation to go and harass them, send them hate or anything like that. i absolutely don’t want anything even remotely hateful or negative to be sent their way after this post. 

this post was only made because:

1. as an ace person who fully supports the inclusion of aspec identities in the lgbt+ community i don’t want to support an enviroment that costantly downplays transmisogynistic oppression in order to be taken seriously. there are hundreds of ways to make aspec activism without acting like we(as in TME aspecs)are the victims of a system that seeks for the annihilation of transfemenine people in real life everyday. i especially don’t want to support TME individuals who act transfem-friendly but then block any transfem who tries to speak on transmisogyny without a second thought.

2. Lucifer’s behaviour has hurt two friends of mine and i don’t want to associate with someone who actively breaks people’s boundaries without taking accountability when messing up.

3. i cannot associate with someone who spreads lies about me accusing me of sympathizing with exclusionists all while having me blocked so that i can’t see it nor defend me. they complain about people not hearing them out but they’re the very first person who does not try to hear people out, and instead jumps to spread baseless rumors. this is not someone i can nor want to associate with. 

(image descriptions provided by @malewifedeckard)

[stubbornjerk]

Why people keep telling you to block them if you support Pholo (Penumbra Edition)

Or: why jitterbug-juno really deactivated

I love when people categorize this as fandom wank. Really makes you feel like you’re putting the onus on either side of the conversation.

I’m making this post not because I want to stir up spoiled milk, but because I want it out there that this wasn’t a purity culture war.

The TL;DR version of this is that fans of color tried to tell Rab (prev. jitterbug-juno) not to post her Omegaverse (or A/B/O) fic. And instead of taking the L, she posted it on Ao3 and deactivated.

But, if you want context, well, buckle in. CW for mentions of racism and transphobia.

What did jitterbug-juno do?

Before I get into this I do want it out there that I will not be linking Rab’s fic, but I will show you this screenshot of the summary of it.

[ID: It is a screenshot of a fic, “As You Are” by Pholo.

Summary: Peter can hide his scent glands behind cologne; makeup; concealer pads. He can quash his heats with suppressants. He can divert the urge to nest and fawn.

But he can’t feign another gender’s subvocals. He lacks the anatomical capacity. Mag taught him to distract from his silence with fast, flashy words. For longer heists he relies on social convention. Traumatic mutism is uncommon, but remarked upon by enough war vets and soap operas to be widely recognized. Peter’s marks assume he’s been harmed long before they assume he’s a closeted omega. It would take quite the backwater brute to ask why he doesn’t murmur or chuff or growl.

On the 'Blanche there are the usual furtive glances. Juno makes clear to Peter that should he ever want “to talk about what happened,” he’ll be there to listen. The gesture annoys Peter more than comforts him.

‘Nothing happened,’ he wants to scream. ‘There’s nothing to talk about!’

There are 14 comments, 85 kudos, and 11 bookmarks /end]

You decide what you’re doing with that information, but honestly, I’d rather you don’t give it anymore engagement than it deserves.

There was a period earlier this June (yes, even though it’s only the 10th, at time of writing) when Rab was posting snippets of the aforementioned fic on her blog and tagging it appropriately, putting it in the attention of pretty much the entire Penumbra fandom.

What’s Omegaverse or a/b/o and why is everyone so against Rab for it

If you know what Omegaverse is, I don’t have to tell you why it’s controversial. If you don’t know what Omegaverse is, well, Fanlore said it best:

a kink trope wherein some or all people have defined biological roles based on a hierarchical system, with the terms originating from animal behaviour research. There may be werewolf, knotting, or other animalistic elements involved, or the characters may be otherwise purely human.

The term is generally written with slashes (a/b/o). Many fans, particularly ones from Australia and New Zealand, are uncomfortable seeing the term without slashes because it is also an Australian slur for aboriginal people.

I won’t get into the history or the heaps and tons of other discourses (mostly about fictional male pregnancy, homophobia, transphobia, sexual assault, etc.)  that go on within that. We’re here specifically on Rab v. Penumbra fans of color and we’re staying there.

Anyone who’s been in Penumbra enough to realize that everyone draws the Junoverse characters in a certain way knows that a) Juno is black, b) Nureyev is Asian, and c) as a fan you have to be aware of what you’re subjecting or saying about either of them because of the political repercussions that come with it.

And despite that, Rab proceeded to write Peter Nureyev, a gender nonconforming gay Asian male character that is widely headcanon’d as trans, into a fic using a kink trope that relies heavily on animal behavior.

Unlike most people new to fandom, Rab is aware of what Omegaverse is and is very much white. She is (and if she isn’t, should be) aware of the racist undertones that writing him in would get.

I couldn’t get a screenshot of what snippets Rab was sending out into the ether, seeing as a majority of my friends would rather not have seen any at all (I have all of the usual tags blocked so I wouldn’t have seen it either way), but needless to say, Rab got attention for it. Both positive and negative.

Anne (@hopeless-eccentric) even posted a satirical fic, in the odds that Rab was just writing this thing to be “the first” to write Omegaverse fic in the Penumbra tags.

But, I’m assuming more than one fan of color came into Rab’s inbox and messaged her about it, but someone I know (who would like to remain anonymous) was gracious enough to take a screenshot before he sent his in and let me use it for this post:

[ID: A message to jitterbug-juno about to be sent by a sender whose name is censored with a black bar. His messages says:

“as someone who is a person of color i think the nature of the fic you are writing right now is extremely racist and attributing animal characteristics to lgbt people of color is not at all appropriate, especially when you are someone who is white. i have to ask you to not publish this fic and to reflect as to why you would want to write this in the first place, these tropes are extremely harmful and”

There are 33 characters left to write into the message. /end]

I can’t speak for whoever else sent asks about the fic she was writing. If anyone was actually not-so-gentle with her, well, minorities don’t really owe it to you to be gentle about what they can tell is bigotry-tinged behavior.

But, the message was clear: this is different from your garden variety, lily white straight male character m/m kink fantasy. This is an actual queer Asian character that a lot of queer Asian people feel attached do. Do not post the fic.

What happened next: the beginning of the end

The next morning, I woke up to most of my friends being frustrated by this post on Rab’s account:

[ID: Dated 5 June, a post by jitterbug-juno:

“Gonna leave the fandom for a while. Wishing you all well.”

The tags say the following: not sure if i’ll be back, thank you so much to everybody who’s read my fics, and who’s sent asks or engaged with my art or any of that, you’re amazing and I’m sending love /end]

That... was not what fans of color wanted, but it was definitely an action they took. Some celebrated, as they were very much wary of Rab for having caused much of the same category of drama in fandoms like Voltron: Legendary Defenders and Warrior Cats. This also meant that she was probably not going to post the fic either.

Some, myself included, were relatively pissed, as they’d wanted even just the measly bit of accountability. An apology or an acknowledgement of having been called out in private and that they’ll take time to consider why. But instead we got Rab leaving in the face of fans of color telling her not to post her Omegaverse fic.

Well. The next day...

[ID: Dated 6 June. A post by jitterbug-juno titled, “Well... that was short-lived”

“I gave the situation a lot of thought yesterday. The reaction to my omegaverse previews made me figure I should leave the fandom. It seemed like the safest option.

But you know what?

Hell.

I don’t want to leave. The fic discusses the tropes of omegaverse and I spoke to several POC on Twitter, and I’m going to post it with plenty of tags so people can avoid it if they wish. I’m not going to be chased out of this space.

Thank you to everyone who sent messages yesterday. I shouldn’t have made that post about leaving. It was really reactionary. I’m okay and I appreciate your support so much.

(bolded on the post) To those who are angry and uncomfortable with me: Please block me. If you’re going to talk about this fic on Tumblr and Twitter– and this may sound odd– PLEASE NAME ME as Jitterbug-juno or Pholo. Don’t vague me. That way people who don’t want to see this discourse can add my name to their block lists.“ /end]

That certainly was short-lived, she wasn’t kidding.

This got a lot of outrage. Again, the fic is up on Ao3 and she has not taken it down. A lot of POC were pissed and I didn’t see a single fan of color actively support what she was doing, at least, not in my friend group. Everyone started making those posts to block them if you liked the fic or Rab’s content in general, in accordance to what Rab wanted.

Perseus (@mraudiodrama) noticed/pointed out that Rab deleted the part where she said she spoke to several POC about releasing her fic, as well as the part where she said she refused to be chased out of the fandom. This was an incredibly pointed detail to edit out, according to some.

[ID: A screenshot of jitterbug-juno's last post taken 11:00PM. Much of it is the same except the following bolded words are removed: "The fic discusses the tropes of omegaverse and I spoke to several POC on Twitter, and I’m going to post it with plenty of tags so people can avoid it if they wish. I’m not going to be chased out of this space." /end]

That same day, Rab deleted her blog. I actually caught this one on tape, believe it or not.

[ID: A screen recording taken at 12:01 PM of someone scrolling down jitterbug-juno's account. The posts and asks about Omegaverse and her post about leaving and coming back are conspicuously absent. /end]

Initially, I thought she deleted all mentions of it. I wanted to see firsthand if the rumors about her deleting portions of it were true. If she added things where she was saying that she wanted to write it because she was autistic and wanted Nureyev to be autistic too, regardless of the numerous QPOC telling her not to do it.

Instead, it turned out, she deleted her blog.

And now, we're here. The fic is still up. Her blog is down. Rab's public Twitter account @nataclinn is quiet about this. Her @cushfuddled Twitter account is on private after her run-in with the Warrior Cats fandom, according to a friend. And her Tumblr @cushfuddled account has nothing but memes.

Again, I didn't make this post to stir up drama. I wasn't even obsessively making this post as a call-out because she isn't in the fandom anymore. I just want it out there that this isn't a purity culture thing that got out of hand in a fandom as niche as Penumbra. This was a case of someone being called out and failing to acknowledge it before running away. And I want all that out of the way before I say:

If you are on Rab's side of this debacle, I, a queer person of color, want nothing to do with you either.

[griimhilde-a]

if you know, you know.

———       a response to those who refuse to move on.

EDIT: after some encouragement and realizing that, while i tried to be respectful and private about this situation, i was not given the same treatment, i’ve decided to be upfront and filterless. here is a link to my page of receipts that i did not provide in this post. 

i would like to point out that when i made the DNI, it was buried and sandwiched in my super long rules purposely so that it wasn’t explicitly visible and drawing attention. it was specifically put there for mutuals to understand my boundaries for the new blog, and as soon as i moved blogs, my guidelines underwent heavy reconstruction and the DNI section was removed overall ( i don’t like DNIs for myself ), as well as on this blog. all statements made in the DNI were what i felt to be true and based off of not only my experiences, but others’ as well, backed up with evidence i have saved that i didn’t feel the need to provide because it wasn’t meant to be a big deal, but i also felt i needed to explain why this person was on a DNI and that it wasn’t done out of malicious intent. again, if something sounds bad it is because “bad” things were done and i can’t control that.

reading the call-out had me ( and others ) confused on where it was i had bullied her, when i had her blocked since november, where it was i had manipulated her, and so forth. i’m always wanting to be a better person, so i was extremely confused on where i had done anything wrong. i also didn’t appreciate my new blog url being attached to it as it had nothing to do with it and i was trying to move forward, and it read very much like an attempt to blacklist. despite everything, i never wanted it to be a spectacle. the pinned, public call-out by this person doesn’t read to me as someone wanting to move on, but wanting to drag things further. this is not a call-out post, this is me defending myself. i will not name drop. if you know who this is about, i ask you just read this to understand the full story. 

this is going to be a long boi ( i really tried to keep it short but alkfjdklfksldf nope ). i would also like to apologize for any dryness here, but i am aiming to just state facts as they are. it feels    ----    ridiculous writing this all out because it’s something that could and should have been handled privately. but, here we go !!

everything on the DNI is true. i will not post or reveal the sources because one, they are not my stories to tell, and two, i am not going to give her the excuse to bother them. they deserve to be safe, and i am walking proof of what happens when you speak out against someone like her. if i have to bear that burden, then so be it. 

it stopped being about “just a url” a long time ago. it became more about how i was treated in that interaction, and how i was continued to be treated afterwards. not to mention the increasing tension within the rpc and having to second-guess whether or not i was truly wanted. it was about how it was affecting those around me, my time in a hobby i love, and my mental health. the amount of times a mutual has tagged me by accident when they meant to tag her is insane. it most definitely did not feel good !!! if that kept happening, it was a problem. i also had to shut off the anon feature because of the amount of anons i was receiving. some had good intentions, but others had resorted to hate. 

regarding the messages on discord --- i stand by them. i thought if you were friends with someone on discord and have previously talked over time, it was okay to message, otherwise what was the point of discord? i didn't realize it would make her uncomfortable to do so, and i’m more careful about how i approach people now !!! 

regarding the messages: there was no change in tone other than that i grew exhausted and extremely anxious ( shaking !!! palms sweaty !!! knees weak !!!! mom’s spaghetti !!! ) and wasn’t in the proper mindset to sound happy while i was being invalidated to my face. i have even apologized there if i came off as mean. i don’t “present myself” in a way. that’s just how i talk, i prefer communicating one-on-one and i try to alleviate tension that arises no matter what because these types of conversations aren’t always a walk in the park. i wanted things to be good and not stressful for all parties involved. i’m sorry my tone came off as insincere. after being in desc rpc for a year, i was a little surprised seeing a near-identical url so i think it was fair for me to message her about it. she made the decision use it, and i was allowed to react. it was said misspellings in urls made her anxious so i wanted to help and i was shot down and vilified, essentially told i made her feel unsafe and shouldn’t have messaged. if it wasn’t okay to claim i felt “unsafe” and “paranoid”, why was it okay for her to claim the same based on a choice she made herself, but not me to feel anxious about those choices? 

i have never told a blog to block her. i have never initiated conversation about her, nor have i spoken negatively about her as a person. ever. i have, in fact, even stated that i didn’t want anyone blocking and that it would be okay to interact. here’s one example after i was approached about her. i cannot control what other people do.

hardblocking her on my end was to avoid seeing her on dash as much as possible. 

i am allowed to softblock / unfollow people who interact with her after months of trying to be okay with it. what kickstarted this process was someone i thought was a close friend had dropped me and suddenly i realized i didn’t need to sacrifice my comfort for the sake of keeping a mutual. if they could do it, so could i. while i adore the descendants rpc, the rpc is not a family, we’re not obligated to interact IC or be mutuals with every single person in the rpc. it’s not causing a rift when we don’t interact on dash. i have even emphasized that i would love to stay in contact via discord and write there if possible !! why am i being vilified for trying to make my blog a safe space for me?

regarding the “vagues”: they were all responses. a mutual wrote the post, i reblogged it, my tags were in response to the post ( said mutual’s url wasn’t even blocked out so ... ). if it felt like a vague, i can’t control that. the meaning behind the url post was circulating on dash, i didn’t see any vaguing in it other than me recounting my process of choosing this url, which was true ( was i not allowed to participate?? ). the shrek meme was in response to a public dash event ( which i originally thought was a joke ) that had received copious amounts of criticism for. it wasn’t a vague and it was explicit on what it was referring to, it was meant to be silly dash commentary, nothing deep. 

this is in my rules but i have explicitly stated that my headcanons about my characters are not a vague if they differ from yours. the talk about hair styles was actually initiated in a conversation with my friends in private. it had absolutely nothing to do with her. if it sounded like a drag, i encourage everyone to look at how i’ve “dragged” many other things including the original outfits for descendants, evie thinking mermaid dresses are ugly, evie not liking wine, and so forth. my portrayal of evie =/= other portrayals of evie. while she may never do so-and-so, it doesn’t make it wrong for another portrayal to do it. ( why was my blog being kept tabs on and compared with, in the first place? that’s not duplicate friendly ).

regarding sex week: i've stated it was an inappropriate event because the descendants rpc had been heavily criticized for smutting and felt it wasn't the best response, nor was it the best way to promote sex positivity. it was insanely uncomfortable to witness, as someone in this rpc. it doesn’t matter if the people or the muses involved were adults, i would still call it inappropriate had it happened in any other rpc. it wasn’t a “block and move on” situation. i’m also allowed to defend myself because i didn’t want to be associated with something she posted. i didn’t want it tied to my url. i would like to clarify that when i said "embarrassing" in the responses under that anon, it was directed at the anon for misreading the url, nobody else. ostracizing occurred when the descendants rpc was being added to DNIs because of sex week / smutting, which was posted by this person ( if you post it, you start it. simple ). i had been blocked simply because i am a descendants blog and that had never happened before. 

i was also notified that people uninvolved with this have been namedropping me on dash in an attempt to have me “written off” ( their words, not mine ) because my rules stated that i was open to exploring evie’s sexuality. below is a screenshot of my rule regarding smut. i deleted the rules page from this blog when i moved so i snatched it from my other canon descendants blog that i reuse on all blogs. the second is my elaboration on sexual content in my new evie rules. the third is what’s on my google doc, a condensed version of my rules. there is a major difference between smutting and posting a public dash event dedicated to sex versus being open to explore sexuality as a topic. they are not the same. also, me not choosing to smut does not dictate my opinion on smut, so do not make assumptions about that either. if you want to move on, why are you still talking about me on dash, especially when unprompted? if you just want to move on, why are you upset that i’m not “written off”?

this person has vagued me multiple times ( which they conveniently did not show in the call-out ), this person has been shown to talk badly of me in private ( and now, publicly as well )    ----    all of which i have not done. i have screenshots sent by others to show for it, but do not feel it’s relevant to share because this is not about her. this is just about defending myself. 

i have spent three months apologizing for feeling things, apologizing for reacting, apologizing for things i should not have been apologizing for. i have spent so long accepting blame because i felt it would help. i’m done doing that. i know what i did and what i didn’t do. people know what i did and didn’t do.

all in all, i am confused on why a call-out was made when the content provides nothing other than catty remarks meant to air out personal drama. the messages exchanged only show how i tried to remedy things. the screenshots of my “vagues” were just responses, and most of which had nothing to do with this person. my initial silly dash commentary and later discomfort over a sexual dash event posted by this person is not a vague. 

if you ( referring to maker of the call-out and others who partook ) are upset about people not talking about me in regards to the “rest of the call-out”, maybe consider the fact that there was nothing about me in it that warranted a call-out in the first place. people saw that i did nothing wrong. the only thing of substance in the call-out was something the maker themselves did : the public, sexual dash event. people are allowed to identify that as a more prominent issue as opposed to how my messages or public posts could be perceived through basic, biased narrative manipulation.

me deciding to unfollow / softblock blogs that interact with this person =/= involving the descendants rpc or making it public. i am allowed to softblock whoever i want to cultivate my dash experience. most people i know have it in their rules that they are okay with people softblocking for their comfort and that it won’t be taken personally. you know what IS making it public and involving the entire descendants rpc? this person messaging a descendants server and name dropping me in the server, reducing the situation to just being about a “url” and publicly announcing it in the server. here are the facts to consider: her message was sent jan. 21. my DNI went up feb 2. 

so, regarding the call-out: there was no bullying, no manipulation, no harassment, no gaslighting, nothing from my end, and the call-out shows precisely that the claims are just that: claims. whatever was felt is valid, but feelings =/= gravity of the actual action itself - the most common thing pointed out in therapy: feelings are valid, but are they justified? call-outs should be reserved for people who cause actual harm, not because someone wants an excuse to blacklist. if i am a “bully” for unfollowing blogs for my own comfort, then i think the rpc really needs to reevaluate what these terms mean because the misuse is harmful. 

here are the things i did do: treated everyone i talked to with respect. approached things civilly. communicated. tried to accommodate for others. attempted to make a safe space for myself. did not involve the entire rpc by announcing it in a server. did not make a call-out post nor pin it. did not continue to name drop afterwards despite claiming to want to move on.

this entire situation is absurd and should have never been public, much less made a call-out for !! while this was meant to defend myself and state facts, i understand it may not change minds. a friend has told me that people will hate me because they want to hate me, no matter what. and i can’t do anything about that !! all i have to say is that holding hate in your heart never ends well. i hope everyone can find peace at some point.

so please, let me move on. let me write with my friends. let me unfollow / softblock people to keep my dash comfortable. let me take a break from descendants while also having the choice to return at anytime. please stop talking about me when i’m not even giving this another thought and haven’t since i moved blogs. please stop name dropping. stop keeping tabs on me, stop stalking my new blog. please leave me alone. i hold absolutely nothing against anyone i may have softblocked / unfollowed or am not currently interacting with on my new blog. my IMS / discord is always available, you will not be violating my safety by messaging me, everyone is welcome, but i also understand if you feel the need to separate yourself !!! as for those of you who have interacted with the call-out post, i wish you the best but i hope you understand why i do not want to interact with you by any means in the future. 

i’m hoping this post lays everything to rest, seeing as my first one did not. honestly, what are you trying to prove if you still have to post about this? it helps nobody. this back-and-forth is exhausting and unneeded. no more. let’s be better people, yeah?

i hope everyone takes care of themselves, i hope you all have a great day / night !!! thank you for reading this long boi !!

[transgenderteensurvivalguide]

Are you aware of operation pridefall?

Lee says:

Transphobic and homophobic trolls have been on the internet forever, and sadly it looks like they won’t be going away any time soon. Ain’t nothin new.

I’m a pre-med college student with a wonderful partner and plenty of friends, and I’m happy, loud, proud, and living my life. I came out 8 years ago and never looked back, so nobody is going to stuff me back in a closet. Trolls don’t have any more power over me or my life than the power I give to them, so I’m not going to be afraid because there’s nothing to be afraid of. Like ? Ohh noo, what if someone sends something rude to my inbox?? whatever will I do, I sure wish there was a “block” button ...

But while I personally don’t feel concerned about this particular troll effort and I’m no stranger to rude and hateful anons, you should always take whatever steps you feel like you need to take in order to protect your mental health.

If you get anon hate, or are worried about getting anon hate, here are a few options:

Step one: Don’t reply to the ask, and don’t delete the ask- block them! You can’t do this in the Tumblr mobile app, but if you’re on the computer-version of the Tumblr website you can block an anon in the inbox, which will also delete their ask. Often anon hate is just from like 1 user pretending to be different people.

Step two: If you keep getting hateful anon asks from different anons, you may want to check the tags on your original posts. You might be accidentally using a tag that discoursers use, which makes it more likely that you’ll attract hate from people scrolling through that tag. You may also want to avoid tagging or using key words in your posts, so censoring things when necessary can help avoid your blog from showing up in searches.

Step three: If you don’t want to appear in search results at all, you can always remove your blog from all search engine results (including Tumblr’s) by turning off the “Allow this blog to appear in search results” option in your blog’s settings on the web. This means your posts won’t show up in the “recent” posts if you search on Tumblr, and it makes it harder for people to search within your blog itself.

Step four: If that doesn’t work, and you’re still getting anon hate, turn off anon. People can’t send you anon asks if anon asks aren’t enabled. People are less likely to send hate when their URL is attached- it doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed to avoid getting hate, but it does make it way less likely.

On the Tumblr website on the computer, click “Settings” under the account menu at the top of the dashboard, then on the right side of the page, choose the blog you’d like to update. In the Ask section, enable “Let people ask questions.” Then uncheck the box that says “Allow anonymous questions.”

I’ve turned off anon asks on a number of my blogs, including @brownandtrans because there’s no reason someone has to be sending me questions anonymously in some places. I know you might get fewer asks, but you have to ask yourself if that’s an acceptable trade off, and honestly it usually is.

Step five: Your other option is turning off asks entirely and turning off submissions. You can similarly restrict replies so only blogs you follow can reply to your posts, and you can restrict messaging so only blogs you follow can message you. That way people can only send hate via reblogs.

It’s reasonable and valid to be upset about people being transphobic in your inbox, and I’ve been through the same thing so I know how you’re feeling. It sucks. But you don’t have to be passive about it! If IRL transphobia was something you could control your exposure to and simply turn off in the settings we’d all be a lot happier, but that isn’t the case. But that is true in some cases when you’re online, so why not take advantage of the opportunity?

If you’re getting a lot of hate, it’s worth blocking those asks and then turning off anons or asks entirely for at least a month and seeing how it goes. Your social media is supposed to be safe space for you, and you control what content you want to be seeing and interacting with, so there’s no reason you have to allow people to send you asks at all if it’s going to be negatively impacting your mental health. Even if you haven’t had any trolls yet but you’re really anxious about it and it’s affecting your mental health, it’s okay to take the steps you need to take to protect yourself.

Step six: Hide your blog entirely and password protect it. Only tell your blog’s password to people you trust and want to interact with, like friends or mutuals. This is another option in your blog’s settings on Tumblr. Now the only people who can see your blog are the people you’ve explicitly given permission to.

TLDR: You don’t have to take all these steps if you don’t feel like you need to, but at the very least don’t reply to anon hate (stop feeding the trolls, it isn’t helping you or the best way you can spend your efforts to help the movement) and block the ask instead.

Note: These are my tips for Tumblr specially, so you should look through your privacy settings and options on any social media site you use to see what your options are!

But honestly, I don’t really predict much more trolling this June than we experience in general. Most of these troll campaigns are a lot of bark and no bite, and they usually end up creating more fear and anxiety when people warn each other about it than from the troll’s actual actions, in my opinion. Sadly, we can get homophobic and transphobic anons at any point in the year.

[heywriters]

Not every writer wants to post their work online, however there are positives to doing so. If you seek feedback and advice from readers and writers, or just want to share your fanfic, you might consider posting a draft or two. Even a few chapters or a poem can be uploaded online to get a little audience feedback.

Here are writing sites I’ve explored along with brief reviews of my experience in using them:

Archive Of Our Own (AO3) | Fanfiction only** | No covers — Invite only, but getting in isn’t hard. High viewership, exceptionally well organized, and ad-free. Some written feedback, especially if you ask for it, but the “kudos” button is open to the public so anyone can leave their mark of approval. You can also set individual stories to “users only” along with other useful privacy options. Another useful feature is “orphaning” a story so that people can still enjoy it, but it is no longer in your name.

Crossover friendly, so you can finally post that multi-fandom fic and tag each property for search. Ships, subject material, and trigger warnings can also be tagged for search (or weeded out). Lets you group individual stories into a series, and has various features for sharing/gifting your work with others.

The purpose of AO3 is to preserve fanworks so they can’t be taken down or deleted by third-parties as has happened to other fanfic sites in past. For this reason, AO3 regularly takes in smaller archives that cannot continue functioning on their own. They are backed by a non-profit organization (OTW) that defends creators’ legal right to create and distribute fan media.

— Adult Material Allowed

Major Demographics: Female, All ages.

Popular Genres: fluff/angst, epic dramas, whump, smut

Wattpad | Original & fan fiction | Covers Req. — Here, some writers receive tons of feedback and appreciation, but most receive very little. In-line comments and a profile message board help make this the most interactive writing site I’ve used yet. Besides writing, a useful and appreciated skill to have on Wattpad is the ability to make book covers. Some accounts exist solely to create free graphic designs for other writers.

Circa 2018, Wattpad introduced the “Paid Stories” feature to earn money for writers who fit specific criteria. There is also a “premium” version where I assume you pay not to have ads and commercials interrupt your reading...this is a given on other story sites, but okay. In 2020, Wattpad was bought by Naver. This was done partly to increase Wattpad’s share in the “books to TV” market. Overall, the site’s attitude has moved from encouraging creatives for the sake of creativity, to encouraging a few writers to churn out mediocre pop-lit so the site can profit.

The search function and organizational system are completely useless. Results for a specific title bring back the most popular stories that are abstractly related to your search, if at all. Stories are recommended to you based on either your click history, or just whatever they are trying to promote right now. Finding stuff you actually like is difficult, thus finding readers has gotten harder.

— Adult Material allowed, but Explicit material banned.

Major Demographics: Female, LGBTQ, pre-teens & teens.

Popular Genres: romance, young adult, supernatural, celeb fic, imagines

Fictionpress & Fanfiction.net Neither site allows you to remove reviews, delete your account, or budges an inch about harassment reports. This attracts many trolls, spammers, and critics who feel you’re entitled to their extremely negative opinions of your work. I don’t want young or amateur writers going through that, and the rest of us don’t deserve harassment either. There are wonderful readers and writers on both sites, but overall it’s an unsafe environment I can no longer recommend (further info).

A decent alternative to FF.net is Fictionpad. This site appears to no longer exist. Kinda saw that coming, but it was a nice little place.

Royal Road | Original & fan fiction | Covers Opt. — This was suggested in the replies, so I did some research. Haven’t used it myself, looks nice, but here are the main points interested writers should know: 

Site is affiliated with Amazon, has been running for several years, and is based in Israel.

Site does not claim ownership of your work, copyright stays with you.

Popular stories receive much feedback and viewership in the millions.

You cannot remove reviews on your own stories, and you must submit a ticket to remove your story or delete your account.

From their FAQ: “All new submissions are manually checked for appropriate tagging and plagiarism, so expect it to take 12-24 hrs for a submission to be approved.” Also, stories with low-quality spelling and grammar will be removed by moderators.

Keeping a steady update schedule of “polished” drafts seems to be mandatory, and reviewers sound entitled.

One-shots seem to be out of the question, this is a site for novels.

Premium and free options exist for both readers and writers.

Fantasy, supernatural, epic dramas.

Adult Material Allowed

Smashbook, Livejournal, Inkspired, and Booknet are sites I am aware of, but have too little knowledge of to review. Likewise Wordpress, Blogger, or right here on Tumblr you can regularly post stories or novels and receive feedback. However, for those sites you do have to figure out a blogging system for yourself.

While researching good sites for this post, I found this user’s comments insightful. She suggested Writer’s Digest and Absolute Write as good places to seek professional feedback on your work. They don’t appear to be sites where you post work, but rather they provide tips and resources to help improve your work.

There are dozens of other places online where you can post your original fiction, non-fiction, and fan fiction. Things to keep in mind when site shopping:

READ THEIR SUBMISSION POLICIES & GUIDELINES FIRST

Search for reviews of the site by individuals who’ve actually used the site and are not affiliated with the site.

See what the site’s policy is on deleting works & accounts. You don’t want to get your name and work trapped on a site with a bad reputation.

If “popular” stories have very little feedback on them, this means the majority of stories on that site get none.

If most users haven’t updated in months/years, this means the site is practically dead and may soon shut down. RED FLAG: the site does not date anything.

If the “feedback” on users’ pages and stories are “Like my work!” or “Read for read?” and other self-promotional messages, don’t sign up.

If a site looks cool to you but you’re still unsure, make an account with a junk email and post something you don’t care too much about just to test the waters. Good/bad doesn’t matter much right now, what’s important is figuring out how traffic works and what readers there are interested in. 

Sites to AVOID due to spam, scams, and shifty behavior:

Inkitt—spam/shifty; claims it’s the #1 site for online publishing, but this is misleading. Their idea of getting users is to send copy/paste “invitations” to pre-existing online accounts (often dead accounts), and lie about how good one’s writing is even though they’ve never read it. Signing up with them also gets you endless emails about their pathetic contests.

Dreame/Ficfun—spam/scam; similar deceptive invitation tactic, except they are relentless (they’ve “invited” me fourteen times on two different sites). Their gimmick is to offer you pennies for 5yr rights to your work. Both are owned by their Singaporean parent company Stary PTE Ltd. (who personally sent me my 5th “invite”).

Webnovel—spam; their tactics are extremely annoying and deceptive. For a while they were in my Wattpad inbox two or three times a week.

Rnovel—spam/scam; this Chinese app began sending spam messages to writers before they were even launched. A few people are saying they’re a scam, while others distrust the legitimacy of their initial “5 star” reviews when they first launched. Most importantly, they make you enter a contract with them to buy the copyrights to your work(s), but have already failed to live up to some of those contracts.

+ Please review my pinned Ask Policy before submitting an ask. Thank you!

+ If you benefit from my updates and replies, please consider sending a little thank you and Buy Me A Coffee! 

+ HEY, Writers! other social media: AO3 -  Wattpad - Pinterest - Unsplash

—

*Based on what I see as receiving the most traffic and feedback on each site. These are not accurate statistics, merely observations.

** “Is AO3 really just for fanfic?” (tl;dr—YES)

[inviouswriting]

Rules - Mobile version

I am not cutting this for obvious reasons. It needs to be seen.

All places and people have boundaries. I’m no exception. Please read these before asking questions or requests if you have any. 

1. No loli/shota/underaged stuff. It’s illegal and I will call you out for it. I will never write for this. Not. Ever.

2. I write explicit stuff. Goes without saying… I write what I want. I can’t tag it with certain tags otherwise this site flags it. So if the content is specific, it will have smut tagged in the description. 

3. No incest or rape. I find it disgusting. I will not write this whatsoever. I also ask that people making requests not include scenarios where character A finds out about character B’s past. I prefer to write happy and pleasant things.

4. I won’t write domestic abuse. It’s off limits. I rather write positive stuff over negative. So no scenarios of asking “reader/character came from a bad past. How will this character react.” Some doors are best not opened. I will personally if I feel prompted to will write it on my own terms.

Clarifying rules 3 and 4. Basically I won’t write rape, domestic abuse, incest, reader was a victim of cruel things, suicidal thoughts, was a cutter, has scars or self harms. I can handle some serious topics but nothing that will be outright triggering to readers who have gone through these things. There are certain subjects that shouldn’t be touched just for a reading prompt. Out of respect. If I write something involving anything of these. It’s my own accord. I want to touch it and provide something to others who might need to read something positive about something dark they’re going through.

5. Do not steal my works. I do not give out the permission to repost my written work at all. If you see it anywhere let me know. This kind of goes without saying. Please don’t rewrite my stuff to fit your means. I do not take well to my stuff stolen.

6. Death/gore/depressing/graphic content - I am capable of writing it. Just not for this blog. I am no longer accepting requests for this kind of content. I will delete them. I won’t write reactions for “character is killed in front of character. What are their reactions.“  I don’t like writing triggering content for fandoms. 

Angst is okay. There is a difference between tragic and angsty feels stuff. I just don’t like writing death as much as I use to. Unless it is my reaper.

Comfort and dealing with serious subject matter will always be held with respect. But I just don’t feel comfortable writing it for enjoyment. I have an original universe I do write this content for. So if you see one of my “Original Writings” this content is frequent there.

Thank you for understanding.

FAQs.

1. Why can’t I ask for incest and rape. Domestic abuse? 

Getting into the real of it. I survived it. I did not come from a good childhood. It was full of all of this. I’ve been preyed upon by multiple abusers. I do have PTSD from them, so I keep it out of my writing to avoid triggers and I hate focusing on a negative point in my life. I’ve come a long way from where I was from my traumas. To anyone else who has suffered through it. My writing blog will always be a safe haven from it. This is the only place where I will mention it, I ask that no one come into my inbox for details. I already said more than enough  I don’t like letting people know this side, but I feel like this is where I can explain it. It takes a long time to push pass those feelings. I still struggle with them, just some days are better than others.

2. What takes so long for a post sometimes? I have a full time job that takes alot of my time. I leave at 2:30 - 3 am every morning and don’t get home till around 5-7 pm. I’m tired. If I have time to write something I’ll write it. My free time is usually on the weekends. So patience~ Or whenever I have downtime while I work! 

3. Rule 5 explained - “It’s just written words.” Words and time I will never get back. Just like art theft, story theft hurts the people involved who spent hours writing and getting things right.  So I don’t allow people to print my work, or otherwise copy it and post it across mediums for others. ASK ME FIRST! 

4. I don’t do commissions. I free-write. I also write for myself. It takes me a while to get inspired, and this is a hobby. I like to keep my talents and skills as hobbies rather than make a job or chore out of it. I feel like once I do that. It loses its charm. I did do that once for a fandom (not commissions) but I got so swamped that I left that fandom and refuse to touch it. (looking at you Undertale.) I by no means hurt for money, I have a regular paying job that takes care of me. So no one ever has to worry about me asking them for donations or commissions.

5. You posted something and now I can’t find it. I am normally proud of my written works. There is only one fandom where I have trashed every single thing I’ve written for it. If I despise one of my written works. I probably trashed it. Or if I feel controversy hits, I will remove it. I have zero time to be playing high school games of “ooh she said this lets all gang up on her and hate her for this.” If you are that kind of person. Kindly go away. I don’t want those kinds of people in my circle. I will ban people who act like that.

Personal preference in writing - I tend to try and write gender neutral. Unless prompted or I want to write a specific gender. I tend to lean more towards m x f stories. It’s more my element. More of what I am comfortable with. I am not accepting same sex prompts at this time. Not because I am homophobic or against homosexuality. I don’t feel comfortable posting it. 

There is a theme here. My comfort level. When you click on this blog. You are stepping into my world, and what I bring forward. If my comforts are not yours. Then seek elsewhere. I will not sacrifice my comfort level for you. If I take a prompt on, I either like it, or am trying something out. 

I want to express something whilst here. I have learned in total.. 15 characters for ff14. because I like writing for you all. 15 characters that I graciously spend my time thinking of ideas for. I am adding onto this as I learn new faces. I have over 450 posts just for ff14. Characters I wasn’t certain of learning, I learned and write happily for friends and readers.

Everything I write is my own prompting unless I otherwise specify it. I tag and credit prompts and pictures used, characters. You name it. The only thing you will not see on my blog is unsourced artwork. 

So... to kind of go into something. Since December when I first started Trust. And after the loss of my original writing blog. I have written over 455 posts all for FF14. 

It is a pure privilege to be able to read what I bring out. I am excited to write it! But all of that can come to a screeching halt with careless words. I am a human behind this blog. I do have feelings, I do all of this of my own free will. 

And I am grateful to the kind souls I have met through this. 

I’ll touch on more.

I write for - 

FF14

Kamigami no Asobi

Ranma1/2

Sailor Moon

Ragnarok Online

Bleach

Content I write -

Smut

Romance

Fluff

hc’s

oc x canon - (Usually my own, it is hard for me to write others oc’s.)

original works

friendship

gender neutral readers

reader inserts

I tend to favor female x male writing. So you’ll see a lot of this.

What I won’t write! - 

Death - IE - Character reactions to gravely injured s/o, reactions to love interest dying, being hurt, maimed, or anything catastrophically shocking. 

Gore - This is not the blog you will see death and dismemberment and anything or anyone bathing in it. (I only write that for my original story.)

Rape (See rule 3.)

dubious consent (Still rape yo)

Canon x Canon. Sadly someone ruined this for everyone else. I won't write something involving another character. Unless I personally do it. This will be once in a blue moon.

Triggering things - Stalker, Yandere, abusive content, survivors of things, Tragic backgrounds where character has suffered great abuse growing up or the sort. 

Mental health or other dysphoria, real world problems. Unless specifically asked for a honest prompt. And I mean ones that are held in respect and never mocked.

I want to keep my writing blog drama free. 

All of my content is my own. My prompts, if I use a prompt from somewhere I will have it credited with respect and a highlight back to where I got an inspiration from. 

Last but not least. If you HAVE a complaint. Please send it to my main blog @Invidia1988 . Again I want to keep this blog drama free!

[overwatchspeaks]

Rules & Guidelines update

Please take a moment of your time to read through the updated Rules & Guidelines page on our blog or under the cut here!

ABOUT OUR GROUP

OverwatchSpeaks is a semi-exclusive lightweight roleplay/ask blog hybrid group. We’re welcoming to roleplayers of all kinds, from veterans to first-timers, and our primary goal is to have fun together! Our members portray muses from the Overwatch franchise, aiming to create something new while following the base set for us by the original canon lore.

The group was established 07/21/2017 and has been active since with a lively, friendly community that we’re working hard to support to this day. Whether you’re already a member of our group or interested in joining us, please read the following rules carefully!

FOR OUR FOLLOWERS

Can I follow the Speaks blogs? Everyone is welcome to follow us! Whether you’re an indie roleplaying blog, a member of another group, or a blog from another fandom and brand altogether, our blogs are made for your enjoyment and we thrive on our interactions from you, so please don’t hesitate to click that follow-button!

Can I send asks to your members? Yes! Please do so! Our inboxes are always open for questions, prompts and proddings. You can send your own or join in on any ask meme shared by our members. Don’t be shy!

Can I reblog your threads? Yes - usually. When our characters are interacting in first person, bantering or sharing thoughts, you are welcome to reblog these and interact with us! However, if it’s a third-person paragraph style RP post, please don’t reblog it, as this can disrupt the ongoing interaction!

I’m a roleplaying blog for another character, can I still interact? Yes, but remember that only our group’s members are considered “canonical”. Therefore, if you are roleplaying Pharah on your own blog, remember that whatever happens between your character and our members won’t affect their storyline or relationships within our group and is automatically considered AU or non-canon.

Can I join your Discord server? Our Discord server is only for our group’s members. Sorry!

BEFORE JOINING

How do I apply to become a member? Please visit our Application page for the application outline and examples!

I’m on mobile and can’t access the page. Please use your browser to open our blog’s HTML version, or send us an ask off-anon so we can help you. (How did you open this page??)

Can I claim a Speaks URL for my character before applying? No! This makes it more difficult for our members to claim their urls if you are not selected to play your character. :(

How are applications processed? Our group will review your application, and once enough votes are gathered, we will let you know whether you are accepted into our group or not.

How/when will I know if my application has been reviewed? Our admins will contact you about the results of your application process once the group has voted on it. If you are accepted into our group, you will be able to claim your url and start building your blog as well as join our Discord server. Your url should be something along the lines of “characterspeaks” or “character-speaks”, but alternatives are sometimes used when the desired url is already taken. Your blog can be a main- or a sideblog depending on which you prefer.

How will I know if I’m a good fit for the group? Our group is welcoming to all kinds of roleplayers. You don’t have to have prior experience with roleplay to join us, but we are still selective and your application will do much better when you show us how dedicated, knowledgeable and passionate you are about portraying your chosen character. Make a good first impression!

We don’t tolerate any kind of hostility in our group, as this is supposed to be a fun, safe place for our members to interact and we want everyone to feel accepted and welcome here. While we expect a firm grasp of and a degree of loyalty to the Overwatch canon and lore from our members, we are welcoming to the variety of portrayals and ships our members bring with them and expect that no one should be discriminated against based on their preferences in our spaces. This goes doubly for the real life identities, orientations and other personal characteristics of our members. This is a discrimination and hate free zone for all races, beliefs, gender expressions, and sexual orientations. Discussion of difficult and triggering subjects such as politics and real life religions should be avoided completely.

ROLEPLAY IN OUR GROUP

What kind of content can I post on my Speaks blog? Anything relevant to your character! Think and blog as if you are your muse; reblog the kind of content they’d reblog on their blog, write out their thoughts, and interact with our other members in first person as your character would. You may also participate in paragraph style 3rd person roleplay as you please.

Do I have to stick to Overwatch lore? While we will always welcome headcanons and different perspectives, your character should begin as if they just stepped out of the game’s original story. Your character’s relationships and experiences should be approximately as stated in your character’s story prior to your involvement. However, from this point on, anything can happen! Just remember to make it believable and build up your relationships and character arc appropriately so that through everything, your character will still be recognizable as themselves. If you’re playing Mercy and want her to join Talon, we want to see her reasons and transformation first - not just her application!

Exceptions to this rule are different events and happenings in our group such as Halloween, when your character can go through temporary transformations and other changes.

Should I keep my blog family friendly? Yes. Our blogs aim to be safe for minor readers. Before posting your content, please consider whether you’d show it to your hypothetical 13-years-old sister first.

Can I roleplay with blogs outside of Speaks? Yes. If a follower interacts with you through asks or reblogs, you may interact with them the same as you would with our group’s members. However, if you are interacting with an in-character blog outside of our group, please remember that only developments within our group should affect your character - so, if in a thread with an outside blog your character married another character, in reality your character remains single in their story. You should preferably use an AU tag for these threads to keep them separate from your other threads.

How often should I be active on my blog? We have relaxed rules on activity, but you should always aim to be as active on your blog as you can! Even one-liners and in-character thought posts count for your activity. If there is very little or no activity on your blog over the period of three weeks, you’ll have to confirm with us that you’re still interested in your role and will be more active in the future.

GROUP ETIQUETTE

Post format guideline Write your posts in a manner that feels natural to your character, but please try to use proper grammar and don’t over-format your posts. They should be easy to read and easy to comprehend for all readers! It is also recommended that you trim longer threads; if you are unsure how, ask for help!

Ask meme guideline Always try to send an ask to the member of our group you’re reblogging an ask meme from! This will help to ensure that no one is left without asks and interactions. We’ve all been there; everyone reblogs your meme but nobody sends you an ask. It’s not a good feeling.

Behavior in group Our group aims to be a safe, fun environment for all our members and followers. Respect your fellow roleplayers and keep our spaces free of negativity and conflict. If a problem arises, don’t hesitate to involve the admins or moderators, and if at all possible, keep any confrontation and callouts out of our shared spaces like Discord and especially your character’s Speaks blog.

SPEAKS AND NSFW

Can I post NSFW content on my blog or in our Discord server? No. We try to keep our content loosely within the PG-13 rating, and no explicit sexual content or nudity should be posted anywhere in our spaces. If your character is in a relationship and the RP turns steamy, make use of fade to black!

I received a NSFW ask. What should I do with it? Delete it or, if you are of age of majority and have explicitly consented to NSFW asks, answer it in private. No NSFW asks should ever be published on our blogs.

I want to send a NSFW ask. Can I? Assume the answer is no, unless you’ve specifically asked for permission OR the inbox of the member you’re sending the ask to states that they accept NSFW asks. Never send NSFW asks to minors. Remember to turn off your anonymous. No NSFW asks will be published on the blogs.

RULEBREAKING AND CONSEQUENCES

I’ve broken a rule. What happens now? Our group has a strike system. When you break a rule either on your blog or in our Discord server, you will receive a strike. On your third strike, you will be removed from the group and banned from reapplying. If your behavior improves and you don’t break the rules again, your strike will wear off in three months. If you’ve received two strikes, you’ll be back to no strikes in six months. Try not to receive your third one.

For serious incidents, instant ban from the group is possible.

A follower is making me uncomfortable. What can I do? Firstly, block them. You can block anons, which will also prevent blogs from that IP address from contacting you regardless of if you’ve specifically blocked their urls. If you’re being harassed, you should warn other members of the specific blog in question so that they know to be wary. 

Last resorts are turning off your anonymous asks or closing your inbox temporarily and sending a report to Tumblr staff about harassment.

[cindylouwho-2]

RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES & STUDIES, December 2019

Welcome to my latest summary of recent news, resources & studies including search, analytics, content marketing, social media & ecommerce! This covers articles I came across since the October report, although some may be older than that.

I am also missing a lot here, but pared it down somewhat to make more readable. The lead up to the holiday shopping season was a lot crazier than I expected 🙃

Given the time of year, please do not expect another report until January. However, I will do brief posts of important news/blog posts in the interim as needed.

There are going to be big changes to this report coming in 2020. Have any suggestions or feedback?  Leave a comment below, email me through my website, or send me a message on Twitter.

TOP NEWS & ARTICLES

You are going to need to add Etsy’s tax ID to customs forms on New Zealand orders as of Dec. 1. Etsy’s ID is: 122-669-18.

FTC issues huge fines for selling fake likes & followers on social media, and for posting fake reviews online. “The [likes and followers] case could pave the way for further legal action on the same grounds, using the Devumi case as precedent. Indeed, shortly after the initial finding by the NY Attorney General, Facebook announced that it was moving ahead with legal action against several providers which it had found to be dealing in fake social media engagement.”

Everyone should read this article, if only to learn what not to do: Using “priming” to convert more buyers/users is a crucial marketing tactic.”Priming works by using associations made in our subconscious, and are almost always unnoticeable to the subject.” Example: “During a study, researchers approached customers in an electronics store, who’d entered to buy a new laptop.Half of the customers were asked what their memory needs were, and the other half were asked what their processor needs were...The group who were asked about memory, bought computers with higher memory and the group who were asked about processor speed, bought computers with much higher processor speeds.”

Etsy removed the word “Bugs” from the Bugs forum, & admits they will only will be monitoring it from 9-5 Etsy time (ET) Monday to Friday. They won’t be replying, but expect “hundreds of sellers” to do that job for them, unpaid. If you have an issue, you will now need to email through the Contact page, use the new 24 hour live chat, or phone them. [Note the parts they aren’t mentioning - Support is taking over a week to reply to emails right now, live chat will only be able to help with the simplest of questions (e.g., how do I change my email address?) & it is possible to spend over an hour on hold when you phone. You could spend quite a bit of money on long distance fees, especially if you are in a country that doesn’t have its own phone number, all for something you used to be able to get for free in the forum, sometimes on the same day. This is Etsy’s definition of “major improvements”.]

Check out this proposed US legislation, which wants large internet companies [yes, Etsy fits their definition] to reveal their algorithms & offer visitors a version with no “filter bubble.” You might not like Etsy search now, but I can guarantee it would become impossible if they removed all of the algorithm factors. [This editorial is a bit over the top, but does cover some of the key questions.]

ETSY NEWS

Items have been disappearing from a small number of Etsy searches since July, & Etsy still won’t tell us what is going on. If you discover you are affected, please let me know.

There have been a few threads on Etsy sending threatening emails about shops being below Etsy’s customer service expectations, often for just a few bad feedbacks or cases, which has shocked many long time sellers (even though they have been sending them for years; it appears they have decreased the number of “problems” you need to have to get an email.) Without announcing anything, Etsy released a page of “seller service level standards” that can help explain what they are looking for, namely cases & 1-2 star reviews, as well as the exact formula they use. I started a discussion thread here, & in case Etsy deletes comments in the thread, here is the dashboard showing your score. (Some people cannot make that link work; Etsy says only shops that received a warning can see it.) My blog post is here.

I summarized the 3rd quarter report here, and Etsy summarized it here. The stock market is not happy with management at the moment, with Morgan Stanley this past week stating that they expected Etsy’s 4th quarter to be worse than originally predicted, due to state sales tax laws and Etsy’s reduction in its Google Shopping ad buying. Note Etsy removed the “priority placement” for US free shipping about a week after the 3rd Q report, without any announcement, probably due to the blowback about it reducing first page conversions. (They didn’t announce anything; it just disappeared.)

Cyber Week traffic on Etsy was more than double what they saw on the average summer day.

They did a Q & A thread on the new stats, which wasn’t particularly useful. They admitted they intentionally removed the keyword & other data prior to November 2017 because “older data periods are less comparable to current stats”. [I believe that is code for “we’re too cheap to pay for the storage; investors need their payouts.”] They did finally add YOY comparisons back in a few weeks ago.

Etsy has again changed a few category & attribute options, including more baby stuff.

They did a holiday gift shopping promotion where people could call Etsy & get suggestions for gifts on Nov. 5. All gifts shipped free, so non-free shipping shops were not included. “It could also be a case study for personalization efforts to come from the long-running handmade marketplace.”

You’ve probably already noticed that Convos are now called Messages, but here is the announcement with the details just in case.

Etsy ran an Etsy search critique thread on November 13; the thread wasn't particularly useful, as almost all the staff who do the critiques aren’t experts in search. Basically, they say to use all of your tags, avoid repeating words in tags & titles, have 3-4 short phrases in your title, use commas in your titles (”Buyer research shows that using commas instead of dashes helps titles appear more clean and readable”), offer free shipping, and use all of your photos. The big takeaway for me was - they think we all have unlimited photography budgets, models, and time to do different modelled photos for every listing (including at the beach! LOL), photos of each of our different pieces in progress, photos of us working, & photos of each type of packaging. Needless to say, none of those things are bad if you have gobs of time or the money to pay someone to do all of that. But if you are like me and are a one-person business, live in a small condo, don’t have the strength to take photos all day, don’t have an abundance of people to model when I am taking photos (i.e., people I know have real jobs & aren’t around when I work on photos), and don’t have anyone to take photos of me making things, then this is pretty laughable. I wouldn't even consider doing all of this for my 5 best selling listings, never mind all 430+. YMMV. [The repeated mentions of process photos makes me worry they will be requiring those for everyone at some point …but I am sure I am just being paranoid.] One notable error was telling someone to use “color” (the US spelling) instead of “colour” (the proper English spelling) because the shop’s language settings were US English - Etsy currently treats these both the same, so there is no issue at the moment. Are they trying to give us a hint about something?

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES

Introducing BERT: Google’s new technology to help organic search process natural language better. This isn’t likely a change you can optimize for, but it should help searchers get more relevant results for complicated queries. “Here is an example of Google showing a more relevant featured snippet for the query “Parking on a hill with no curb”. In the past, a query like this would confuse Google’s systems. Google said, “We placed too much importance on the word “curb” and ignored the word “no”, not understanding how critical that word was to appropriately responding to this query. So we’d return results for parking on a hill with a curb.” Moz’s Whiteborad Friday covered the basics. [warning - some bits are advanced. Just skip those if you need to.] A study said BERT still isn’t very good at understanding “not” and other negatives. The NY Times may be one of the sites that is affected.

If you were disappointed when keyword research tool Keywords Everywhere became a paid tool, a new alternative has been released. Note that Keyword Surfer is still in beta. I’m going to try it for a bit and write up a short report if I think it is worth using. (The traffic estimates are way off, as in almost 10 times too low, for the sites I have info on.)  If you try it, let me know what you think!

While we are on the topic, here’s 13 keyword research errors you don’t want to make. Short takeaways - not every high volume keyword phrase will work for your specific product, don't ignore long tail, and make sure you look at the search results for any keyword before you decide to use it.

Here’s another keyword and topic research tool that compiles questions people search along with a relationship tree so you can see how ideas are connected.

More common SEO problems with ecommerce sites.

If you code your own website, check out the new Google instructions on writing your organic search snippets. Note this is supposedly only about display & not about ranking.

Improve your Instagram traffic with 8 SEO tips for your profile and posts.

Which is better for SEO - Squarespace or WordPress? The results are likely skewed by the fact that “platforms like Wix and Squarespace tend to attract less SEO-savvy people than WordPress.” They agree with what I have been saying for a while: if you know what you're doing, Squarespace sites can rank just fine.

Excellent tips on how good SEO also helps you comply with US disability access laws.

The latest on Google updates - there was apparently one around November 7. This one may have hit affiliate websites more than other types.

The Wall Street Journal wrote an article claiming Google manipulated search results to favour its interests & those of its advertisers, including eBay. [The original article is behind a paywall; the link is in that news coverage.] However, many in the SEO community - most of whom are not usually reluctant to criticize Google when they are behaving poorly - feel the article is way off base, & demonstrates a fundamental lack of knowledge of how Google works. Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Land & Search Engine Roundtable even did interviews with t WSJ staff for the article, and was amazed at how much they got wrong. “Even a basic understanding of the difference between organic listings (the free search results) and the paid listings (the ads in the search results) eluded them…[Glenn] Gabe told us that not only were his conversations with the paper off-the-record but also that he was misquoted”

CONTENT MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA (includes blogging & emails)

Here’s something I don’t see discussed much: using templates (& other consistent branding) in your social media, blog and website posts.

Content hubs are a very useful way to increase your search engine traffic for a core topic while providing a landing page for social media, ads etc.

Good primer here for beginning social media marketing for your business. You’ll need to do more research depending on your target market and what platform/s you choose, but it is definitely a good overview of getting started.

If you think influencer marketing is right for your business, here are 10 places you can find influencers to work with.

Your email subject lines can change the open rates; here are 19 tips to make them more clickable.

Instagram started testing hiding “likes” on posts in the US as of November 11th, & then announced plans to try it out globally. A study on previous tests showed that there may be some effect on influencer engagement.

Facebook has introduced its own payment system, currently in the US only, for limited situations only at the moment.

Reddit is an often overlooked social media platform to use for business but the traffic is strong, so check out these tips on asking it work for your business. [infographic]

ONLINE ADVERTISING (SEARCH ENGINES, SOCIAL MEDIA, & OTHERS)

Pay for online ads (outside of Etsy) but don’t know what negative keywords are? Here’s how to use them with Google.

Hubspot continues their massive rush of “ultimate guides” with everything you wanted to know about Amazon ads.

Facebook now allows you to have different text in the same ads, which can be adjusted for different groups of users.

Amazon is predicted to continue cutting into Google’s online ad dominance through 2021; Google currently has 73% of money spent on online ads in the US.

If you are interested in long term brand building in your advertising, you might be interested in this article, where Adidas admits it was ignoring brand ads & pushing instant returns for too long.

Just in time for the holidays, Google Merchant Center rolled out a bunch of upgrades.

Buying TV ad time is losing popularity; it will be less than 25% of all advertising spend in just a few years, while digital spending is now over 50%.

STATS, DATA, OTHER TRACKING

Facebook changed how they count page impressions.

Everything you want to know about the Google Search Console. Oh, and also everything you want to know about the Google Search Console. Which one do you like best? [If you have your own website or freestanding blog and are not using the Console, you probably should be reading both of those. Seriously, just set the darn thing up, then learn how to use it later.]

Also, the Console now features a speed report, and has changed how they send you messages.

ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS

Trend alert: many struggling or failed retailers sell clothing. “This sector is saturated with supply and is arguably over-stored.” … “For younger shoppers, as they choose which apparel brands do get their attention, sustainability and other cultural issues are often at the forefront.”

US sellers can now get discounted UPS rates through Shippo.

A bug is keeping suspended Amazon sellers from being reinstated.

BUSINESS & CONSUMER STUDIES, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE

Don’t use these common customer service lines. ...“there are studies that support the use of positive language in customer service. Instead of focusing on what you can’t do for a customer, focus on what you can do. No one likes to be told no.”

Another article on the psychology of colour; beware that some of this is a bit simplistic, as there are always exceptions.

Holiday shopping will push further into December this year, with half starting around Cyber Monday (Dec. 2). 62% of “high spenders” (over $2100 spent on the holidays) will shop on their smart phones. 25% of respondents to this survey said they already started shopping in September. It turns out most people want gift cards, among other stats. Nearly half of US shoppers are more likely to shop with companies that are socially responsible. Mobile shopping is expected to beat desktop shopping for the first time this season. And yes, most Americans expect to add to their credit card debt before January, men more than women.

US retail sales fell 0.3% in September; online sales fell the same amount.  

MISCELLANEOUS (including humour)

Trend alert - apparently Generation Z is not big on makeup, and it is affecting large companies’ profits.

Google’s co-founders hand the parent company Alphabet over to the current CEO. They still work for Google and will focus most of their time there.

Google Webmaster spokesperson John Mueller tackles the controversial question - is a hot dog a sandwich? [humour]

[huntypastellance]

A follow up to the posts about the Nazi art (drawn by a Klance artist), the Pride Parade Klance sign & all those edits where Sheith scenes in canon got turned into Klance ROMANTIC scenes by people who constantly spam “I ONLY SEE THEM AS BROTHERS, BROGANES, THAT’S SUCH A PLATONIC BROGANES SCENE” everywhere.

NOTE: This is referring to the Klancedom, NOT Klance shippers. If you do NOT do any of these things, this post is NOT talking about you.

This interview has been approved of by MisterPoofOfficial (names were blacked out at her request).

Do NOT harass any of these people in the screenshots.

The events:

> Misterpoof creates a parody animatic of the Heathers song “Dead Girl Walking” & makes it a Sheith video. At this point, Poof was already known for not wanting to make any content for Klance & only making content for Sheith, Keitor, Pance & gen stuff.

> Klancers fill the comments section, whining for a Klance version. Misterpoof blacklists the word “klance” from her notifications & deletes all comments mentioning them. Poof’s fans tell the klancers to knock it off.

> A Klancer makes a yandere Klance PORN version of Poof’s animatic, directly advertising it on the comments of Poof’s animatic. (Keith & Lance semi-graphically have sex in this video).

Lord Pastel Lance: The Klance version was Keith TRYING TO RAPE AN UNWILLING LANCE (he gives in after Keith "reasons" with him) Oh god, klancers Never change Poof: Oh dear lord;;;; that’s gross I didn’t even watch the video, I was too scared it was gonna look like mine;;;” Lord Pastel Lance: NOPE It's got yandere creep faces & is genuinely disturbing with dark colors & Lance PHYSICALLY shoving Keith away from him And like, actual sex Like, they fuck

> Meanwhile, as Klancers & antis flock to the Klance version, the plagiarist upvotes & responds positively to anti-Sheith & anti-Poof comments. She claims that she admires Poof’s stuff even though it’s Sheith & she hates Sheith & doesn’t like going on Sheith vids while also saying that Sheith content on youtube should not exist at all (even joking that she will start a ship war).

Poof: And my video was dedicated to my friends--It wasn’t even supposed to be taken seriously yet people think that me assigning Lance as the "bad guy" means that I hate him Lord Pastel Lance: Seriously, who says "I was inspired by Poof" & then promotes & likes comments basically saying "I hate Poof & Poof's stuff".

> She even went so far as to react negatively & shut down an upset Sheith fan who was just asking for others to let people ship whatever they want. > She also agrees (multiple times) with fans that gay sex is sin & that they are sinners for getting off to her Klance porn video. > She also claims to be a 14 year old who openly draws BL porn on her parents’ laptop & says that she got all her knowledge from BL stuff & yaoi.

Lord Pastel Lance: Google research: literally just a click away Poof: Honestly......I mean they’re using their parent's computer after all Lord Pastel Lance: They already drew twinks fucking on their parents' computer Are they seriously that worried that their parents will see them reading about gay sex

> She also linked Poof’s video directly on her Klance video & self-promoed her klance version directly in the comments of Poof’s vid. (And mentioned how much she hated Sheith). [Reminder that the Klance version was watched predominately by Klancers/antis who were bashing Poof for not making Klance stuff. This was essentially painting a huge bulls-eye on Poof. And that the Klance artist was encouraging these types of comments in her own comment section.]

Poof: The comments I’ve gotten in the video (are removed) -- I’ve been called a "pedophile" for liking Sheith and making content for it -- another comment was talking about age discourse (also removed) I recall getting a comment (also removed) saying this wouldve been better with Klance

> Poof finally disables all comments (just on her Heathers video though).

Lord Pastel Lance: Also They're blaming YOU & your fans in the comments Poof: I KNOW I READ IT AND IT’S RIDICULOUS

Lord Pastel Lance: ??? If they wanted to apologize, why didn't they just send you a fucking ask? Poof: Exactly??? I have my tumblr and twitter on my about on youtube Lmao they could’ve looked and said sorry instead of talking shit

Poof: I found this in my Dead Keith Walking part 2 Lord Pastel Lance: Amazing Poof: Funny.....You say that Lord Pastel Lance: And yet they can't seem to send you a single comment apology Poof: Yup Lord Pastel Lance: It costs zero dollars to say "sorry for causing people to bash on you" Like damn gurl, you don’t need a tumblr to talk to misterpoof Poof: Exactly??? And they don't know how to use it ------------------------------------------- Lord Pastel Lance: By the way, Did the plagiarist ever apologize to you (directly) on tumblr/youtube? Poof: Nope! Never got a single message from them apologizing to me Lord Pastel Lance: Damn It's been like a whole week or so, right? Poof: Yeah Lord Pastel Lance: Even toddlers can use smartphones to google "how 2 do this" now Poof: Lmao true Lord Pastel Lance: Seriously, there is no way that it takes them over a week to figure out "HOW DO I SEND POOF AN ASK ON TUMBLR" Poof: I mean sure they're new to it and they don't know how to use tumblr, but seriously, it's not so hard to just go to my channel and apologize or send me a message Lord Pastel Lance: Yeah, but A WEEK In 2017 Plus they already send you comments on youtube There's nothing stopping them from sending you an apology On youtube Poof: Mhm ------------------------------------------- Poof: So apparently they "apologized", but through instagram and it was just...

:/ You know, I was expecting a message since there is an option on instagram. Not...being tagged in something where everyone can see it.......... I checked my instagram for once jfc, I don't go on it often, but they tagged me in their post to say "sorry"... Lord Pastel Lance: With like zero context Poof: Yup They just straight up said "I’m sorry" and nothing else :/ Lord Pastel Lance: Sorry for what? Plagiarizing? Shitting on you? Self-promo-ing in the comments of your own vids? Promoting comments that shit on you & your vids? That's SO vague Poof: Exactly??? I'm not replying back to the post because not only is it awkward, but it's just not right to forgive them for what they've done Lord Pastel Lance: I don't think they've fully understood their part in this either I think it's more like a "oh noes, a BNF is upset & people think it's my fault that she's mad!!! D:" sort of thing Poof: Mhm

Twas not the straw that broke the camel’s back, but a never-ending pile of sticks instead.

The entitled hypocrisy of the Klancedom is outrageous.

Claiming to loathe Sheith, but constantly looking at Sheith content & whining to the creators that the content would be “so much better if it was Klance & Broganes instead”. Taking no responsibility when people use your Sheith->Klance content to harass the original creators. Excusing anything & everything fucked up that a Klance fan does with “they didn’t know any better!” even though everybody in the discourse is talking through the INTERNET -- the information multilingual multicultural highway. Encouraging discourse & ship hate while pretending to be ignorant about it. Dismissing all the harassment shaladins receive while using the “Not All Klancers” card whenever shaladins complain about the harassment. Doing NOTHING to stop/prevent the Klantis from harassing people while you yourself bitch endlessly about how Shaladins are such hypocrites for generalizing Klance fans as hate-spamming anti-Sheith douchebags. Calling yourself an anti to “protect children & the LGBTQ+ community” while squealing happily about how gay sex is “sin” unironically.

The second you start allowing/encouraging people to trash on someone, who you CLAIMED to like, & that person’s stuff, which you REPEATEDLY mentioned that you dislike, you have chosen a side in the discourse. You are NOT being neutral.

You don’t want to get involved in discourse? Fine. THEN DON’T GET INVOLVED AT ALL.

[collaborativedocumenteditingsoft]

Time Lapse Post Production Software

There would be no more transcoding or exporting stand alone quicktime files. No more time wasted rendering out AE comps, importing and swapping out previous versions. That was before I spent 5 years handling all of the post production. At the same time, I’ve been cutting other feature films and working on other projects but THE GRIND consumes every free moment I have as I get closer to finishing the film.

mediaPLAY Densu A is a compact file playback turnkey appliance that supports playing two channels of all kind of media files in 3G-SDI simultaneously. mediaPLAY A is a turnkey playout appliance that supports playing four channels of all kind of media files in 3G-SDI simultaneously.

What is the final stage for picture editing in the post production workflow process?

Introduction (with title, release date, background information) Summary of the story. Analysis of the plot elements (rising action, climax) Creative elements (dialogues, characters, use of colors, camera techniques, mood, tone, symbols, costumes or anything that contributes or takes away from the overall plot)

Running Windows Firewall, Windows Defender or other anti-virus software on your editing clients can have negative impact on the client’s performance. Therefore, the most common recommended course of action is to disable these services altogether whilst restricting Internet access to the editing clients. It is important to have the time on your storage and the clients synched up. Your ELEMENTS system can easily offer time synchronization to all clients. Under media you can remove/add sounds that you want windows to play.

It’s more work for you and your VFX supervisor, but the cost savings are considerable. If something can be done once and repeated in multiple shots, it saves time and money. The process of post-production is the final gate between your footage and your audience. In order to accomplish my short film, Cosmic Fling, organization and communication within our post-production workflow was key, especially as many of our post-production team worked remotely, providing its own set of challenges.

Streaming MediaMagazine

The video editing toolset is prominently frame based and centered around video augmentation, not audio. The easiest way to create a mezzanine file is to export from the NLE project itself. This means either exporting from within the NLE or, exporting through a software application that understands a project file, such as Adobe Media Encoder with Adobe Premiere projects. Accessing the original media when creating a deliverable means you are generating a mezzanine file from the highest quality files available – the source footage. – Not all projects require the maximum possible number of speakers.

Post Production Scripts (Pps)

• Users can configure, control and monitor Nexis using the updated management console that looks and feels like a MediaCentral

Can 7zip open BIN files?

Click the "Tools" button on the menu, and then select the "Convert Image File Format" option. The "convert" dialogue will be pop-up. Press the “Browse” then choose a BIN/CUE file you wish to convert and choose the “ISO files(*. iso)” option.

As soon as a draft is ready for review, the timeline is rendered and compressed, the file is uploaded, and the reviewers are notified automatically. Each reviewer (director, client, producer, etc) reviews the work-in-progress directly from a web browser or smartphone and sends timestamped comments back to the reviewer. Those comments can be downloaded into the NLE as markers so that the editor can respond with new changes. More and more productions of all sizes (from blockbuster films and TV shows to wedding videos) are using services like Frame.io to centralize all their creators, collaborators, and audience.

Counting the hours until #nab2019 starts. See us at SL14813 and let Strawberry’s new features knock your socks off. #knocktheirsocksoff Book a meeting: https://t.co/XLxjkJ0oI4 pic.twitter.com/PWVDY8B5pb

— Projective Technology (@ProjectiveTech) April 7, 2019

ART OF THE CUT with “Chernobyl” editor, Simon Smith

Before Adobe Acrobat and Portable Document Format, file extension .pdf was used by a word processor named WordStar, which used this extension for printer definition files. https://www.toodledo.com The physical view is displayed and printed (what most people consider a PDF document). The content view is based on the physical order of objects within the PDF's content stream and may be displayed by software that does not fully support the tags view, such as the Reflow feature in Adobe's Reader. Technically speaking, tagged PDF is a stylized use of the format that builds on the logical structure framework introduced in PDF 1.3. YesThe Forms Data Format (FDF) is based on PDF, it uses the same syntax and has essentially the same file structure, but is much simpler than PDF, since the body of an FDF document consists of only one required object.

as soon as I let go of the mouse button, Pro Tools renders out the audio version. - If you are interested in learning Pro Tools 12, hands-on, ProMedia Training will be offering Training Classes in Pro Tools 12 starting in January 2016. The so-called .bin files virus is a threat that is designed to act like a typical data locker ransomware. Following data encryption, it extorts a ransom payment from victims. Frozen instrument tracks display both the MIDI data and the audio waveform, though neither is editable.

A number of things can affect the post-production schedule and throw certain processes on the back-burner for months. When plotting your course through this maze, it’s important to remember the triangle of time, cost, and quality. Due to the nature of how most DAW systems work, any changes to the Picture Edit that take place after the Post Production Sound Team have started working, will cause synchronisation issues.

Software Production Pack

Is it safe to delete mysql bin files?

Delete Files Permanently from your Computer. When you delete a file from your computer, it moves to the Windows Recycle Bin. You empty the Recycle Bin and the file is permanently erased from the hard drive. When you delete files or folders, the data is not initially removed from the hard disk.

DNxIO is bundled with Blackmagic’s Fusion Connect plug-in for Media Composer.

[roburkyplaysthesims]

My Emotional Inertia mod for The Sims 4 is updated to v9 Download from itch.io Download from Modthesims Share the mod on tumblr

What it does Sims' moods will have inertia. Moods become more resistant to change, and can last beyond the original moodlets that caused them. It can now take a sustained effort and multiple points of another emotion to change their mood. 

There are a lot of changes but the biggest one is that it has been split in two! You can now download and install the changes to the uncomfortable mood separately from the inertia features, in the form of my new mod Uncomfortable Overhaul.

v9, 29 August 2017: A big update!

- The filename has changed with this version, so you should delete any previous version of the mod before updating! - The mod no longer includes Zerbu's Uncomfortable Boosts mod - you can now install my new Uncomfortable Overhaul separately to replace it, with no conflicts. - The mod now uses no overrides, so should conflict with no other mods. - The inertia moodlets are now applied to all sims, including NPCs. NPCs get weaker inertia than played sims. - Played teens now get regular +2 positive inertia again. - +3 and +2 inertia moodlets now last 8 hours, down from 10 hours. This feels like the level where emotion-reducing interactions feel useful. - +1 inertia moodlets no longer show their duration. I thought this might help lead players to the conclusion that waiting them out is not the best approach. - +2 tense inertia given to children and NPCs now has the right emotion tag. It should now be reducible by tense-reducing interactions. Thanks to Apex Pecoris for the bug report. - The happy and uncomfortable moods now get no inertia by default again. - Becoming uncomfortable will no longer remove inertia moodlets for other negative moods. This is to support my new mod Uncomfortable Overhaul. - Emotional Inertia is now ready for and compatible with my upcoming Happiness Overhaul mod.

[anthonykrierion]

10 Quick Wins We Can Make Using ODN as a Meta CMS

The Distilled Optimization Delivery Network (ODN) is most famous for SEO A/B testing and more recently full-funnel testing. But fewer people are familiar with one of the other main features; the ability to act as a meta-CMS and change pretty much anything you want in the HTML of your site, without help from your development team or writing tickets. DistilledODN is platform independent, sitting between your website servers and website visitors, similar to a Content Delivery Network (CDN), as shown in the below diagram.

This use case for ODN has been popular for many of our enterprise clients who have restrictions on their ability to make on-the-fly changes to their websites for a variety of reasons. A picture (or a gif) is worth a thousand words, so here are 10 common website changes you can make using ODN that you may not be aware of.

We’ve used a variety of websites and brands that use different platforms and technologies to show anyone can make use of this software regardless of your CMS or technology stack.

Before we get started, there is some jargon you will want to understand:

Site section: A site section is the group of pages that we want to make a specific change to

Global rules: These are rules that you want to apply to all pages within a site section as opposed to only a percentage of pages (like you would with an experiment). An example might be something like “Insert self-referencing canonical”. Rules are made up of individual steps.

Steps: These are nested within global rules, and are the steps you have to take to get to the end goal. Some global rules will only have one step, others can have much more.

In the example global rule above, the steps could be something like, “Remove existing canonical”, “Replace with self-referencing canonical”

On-page values: On-page values are constant values that we extract them from the pages in the site section. You can use these in steps. So for the above rule, we’d have to create two on-page values the “existing canonical” and the “path” of the URL we want to add the self-referencing canonical to. An example site where we’ve done this is included below.

The image below shows how these different components interact with each other.

If you’d like a more detailed explanation about any of this stuff, a good place to start is this blog post; what is SEO split-testing.

Now that you’re familiar with the terminology, here are our 10 common website changes made with ODN, with GIFs:

1. Forever 21 – Trailing slash redirect

Having URLs that return a 200 status code for both the trailing slash and non-trailing slash versions can lead to index bloat and duplicate content issues. On Forever21’s homepage, you can see both “/uk/shop” and “/uk/shop/” are 200 pages.

To fix this using ODN, we create a site section that has the homepage entered as the page we want our global rule to apply to.

Then we need to create an on-page value for the page without a trailing slash. In this example, we’ve extracted this value using regex. Having this value defined means that this fix would be easy to apply to a bulk set of URLs on the website if necessary.

Next, we create our global rule. This rule only has one step, to redirects the URL in our site section to the one created using the on-page value, .

2. SmartWater Technology – Duplicate home page redirects

Often, websites will have multiple versions of their homepage that return status codes, like when they have both an http:// version and an https:// version, or a www version and a non-www version. This is a problem because it means the authority of your strongest page is split across two URLs. It also means you may have a non-desirable version ranking in search results.

We can see this on SmartWater Technology’s homepage. We can fix this problem by deploying ODN on the non-www version of their site, and creating a site section for the homepage. We only have one page we want to work on in this example, so we don’t need to create any additional on-page values.

We then set up a global rule to redirect the non-www version of the homepage to the www version, which has one step. In the step we select to redirect the URL in our path list (the homepage), to the new destination we’ve entered, https://www.smartwater.com/.

3. Bentley – Adding self-referencing canonicals

As mentioned in the introduction, we can use ODN to insert self-referencing canonicals on a list of pages. We’ve done this with Bentley Motors as an example, which doesn’t have a canonical on their homepage (or any other pages).

We can fix this by setting a global rule with one step to insert this block of HTML after the <title> element:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.bentleymotors.com">

We didn’t have to create an on-page value for , since it was created by entering the homepage in our path list. This rule will add a self-referencing canonical to any page that we include in our site section.

If we wanted to, we can also use ODN to apply canonicals that aren’t self-referencing by mapping out the pages we want to add canonicals to, with their canonical page as a value created with a csv upload.

4. Patagonia – Fixing soft 404s

Patagonia uses this landing page, that returns a 200 status code, for 404s, rather than a page that returns a genuine 404 status code. The problem with using soft-404s such as the one Patagonia uses is it won’t send the 404 signal to crawlers, even if the content on the page has the 404 message. This means search engines will see this as a real page, preventing the URL you intended to delete from being removed from the index.

To fix this using ODN, I’ve created a site section with the page path /404/. If you have multiple pages that are soft 404s, you can use other methods to define the pages in the site section. For example, you could match on any page that has “Page Not Found” in the title, or for Patagonia, we could use regex to match on any url that contains “/404/” in it.

Once we’ve defined what pages we want in our site section, we create a global rule with one step that changes the status code from 200 to 404.

5. Amazon Jobs – Changing 302s to 301s

When a redirect is truly temporary, using a 302 status code instead of a 301 makes sense; but if you’re not planning on reverting back to the original URL, using a 302 instead of a 301 redirect means you aren’t passing link equity from one URL to the next.

Once again, this fix is simple to deploy using ODN. We have done it with Amazon Jobs in the GIF below. First, we’ve created a site section with path of the URL we want to change the status code of. I have also changed the response code to match 302 rather than 200, which is the default for ODN.

Again, no need to create an on-page value in this instance. All that’s required is a global rule with one step, to change the status code on those URLs that match what we have in our path list from 302 to 301.

6. Etsy – Changing sitewide links that 30x/404

When you have a sitewide link that has a 30x or 404 status code, it not only might be a frustrating experience for users, it can also have a negative impact on your SEO. If a heavily linked to page on your site has a 301 redirect, for example, you are preventing it from being passed all the link equity available to it.

To fix this with ODN, we can replace the 301 link with the destination 200 link. We have done this on Etsy’s homepage in the GIF below.

First, we create a site section for the homepage, then a global rule with a step to replace the old blog URL. This step replaces the content of the element we’ve selected using a CSS selector with the HTML in the box.

In this case the css selector we have used is “a[href="https://www.distilled.net/blog/uk/?ref=ftr"]”. Using the test feature, we can see this selector grabs the element “<a class="text-gray-darker pt-xs-1 pb-xs-2 pb-md-1 display-block width-full" href="https://www.distilled.net/blog/uk/?ref=ftr"> <span>Etsy blog</span> </a>”. That’s what we are looking to replace.

We then set it to replace the above element with “<a class="text-gray-darker pt-xs-1 pb-xs-2 pb-md-1 display-block width-full" href="https://blog.etsy.com/uk/?ref=ftr"> <span>Etsy blog</span> </a>”, which has the link to the 200 version of Etsy’s blog. Now the footer link goes to the blog.etsy URL rather than the 301 /blog/uk/?ref=ftr URL.  

7. Pixel Eyewear – Adding title tags

Changing title tags is often a desire for content creators, as metadata is one of the strongest signals you can send to Google on what your page is about and what keywords you want to target.

Say you worked at Pixel Eyewear, and after some keyword research decided you wanted to target the keyword “computer screen glasses”, rather than simply “computer glasses”. We can use ODN to make that update, and again this rule can easily be set to target a bulk set of pages.

In the path list, we include all the URLs we want this change to apply to. Then we create a global rule to add “Screen” to our page titles. This has one step, where we use the CSS selector to select the title element of the page. We then enter the HTML we want instead.

8. Pixel Eyewear – Adding content to product pages

This is an example of when a site section has multiple rules. Say that you worked at Pixel Eyewear, and you also wanted to update the descriptions on your product pages, in addition to adding “Screen” to your page titles, and you want to do this on the same pages included in the previous section.  

To do this with ODN, we create a second global rule to edit the product description. This uses a different CSS selector, “div[class="pb-3"]”. You just want the main description to be more descriptive, so you replace the first paragraph of the element “Meet the most advanced eyewear engineered for the digital world.” to “Our most popular product, the Capra will have you looking stylish while wearing the most advanced eyewear engineered for the digital world.”

Since there are two global rules in this section, the order you place them in will matter. ODN works from top to bottom, as shown in the diagram in the intro, so it will apply the first global rule and its steps first before moving to the second. If one of your global rules depends on something created in another, you want to be sure that global rule is listed first.

9. Liberty London – Adding meta descriptions

Meta descriptions are an important meta property to entice users to click through to your webpage from the SERP, but it’s common for website owners to not have them at all, or on important pages on their site, as seen with Liberty London on their UK featured page.

We can edit the meta description content with ODN, and insert a description. First, we include the path of the target page in our path list, then create a global rule with a single step that grabs the meta description with a CSS selector. This time we set it to “Set or update the attribute of an element.” The attribute we want to replace is the content, and we want to replace it with the content entered.

This can also be used to add in meta descriptions when they’re missing entirely, or when you want to insert new ones. If you want to apply in bulk, you can upload a CSV that has the desired meta descriptions for each target URL as a value.

10. CamelBak – Removing duplicate content

E-commerce and other websites frequently wind up with duplicate content on their websites, which can lead to drops in traffic and rankings. Faceted navigation is a common culprit. We can see this in action on Camelbak’s website, where parametered URLs like https://international.camelbak.com/en/bottles/bottle-accessories?sortValue=af41b41832b34f02975423ad5ad46b1e return 200 status codes and have no canonical tags.

We’ve fixed this in ODN by adding canonical tags to the non-parameterized URL. First, we add the relevant URL paths to our path list. Then we need to create an on-page value for the non-parameterized version of the URL. This rule uses regex to extract the content of the URL that comes before the “?” character.

Once we have this on-page value, we can use it in our global rule. Since there are no canonicals already, this global rule has one step. If there were already canonicals on these pages, self-referencing ones, for example, that still referred to the parameterized URL, then we’d have to remove that canonical before we could add in a new one.

The step to add in the canonical inserts a block of HTML after the <title> element. Then we enter the HRML that we want to be inserted. You can see that this uses the on-page value we created, giving us this string:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://international.camelbak.com"/>

Because we’ve used an on-page value, we put a list of paths for relevant parameterized URLs in our path list, and it will insert a canonical to their non-parameterized parent.

This tactic can be adjusted to account for pagination with rel=”prev” and rel=”next” tags and many other variations. Another way to address duplicate content issues with ODN is to redirecting unwanted URLs, among others.

Summary

These examples are only a selection of the types of fixes ODN can employ for your website. There are many more, in addition to being able to perform SEO A/B testing and full-funnel testing. The ability to create custom values and use CSS selectors means there’s a lot of room for any of these fixes to be customized to meet the needs of your website.

If you work on a website that has a difficult time being able to make these kinds of changes (you’re not the only one), then get in touch to get a free demo of our platform in action on your website.

10 Quick Wins We Can Make Using ODN as a Meta CMS was originally posted by Video And Blog Marketing

[ronijashworth]

10 Quick Wins We Can Make Using ODN as a Meta CMS

The Distilled Optimization Delivery Network (ODN) is most famous for SEO A/B testing and more recently full-funnel testing. But fewer people are familiar with one of the other main features; the ability to act as a meta-CMS and change pretty much anything you want in the HTML of your site, without help from your development team or writing tickets. DistilledODN is platform independent, sitting between your website servers and website visitors, similar to a Content Delivery Network (CDN), as shown in the below diagram.

This use case for ODN has been popular for many of our enterprise clients who have restrictions on their ability to make on-the-fly changes to their websites for a variety of reasons. A picture (or a gif) is worth a thousand words, so here are 10 common website changes you can make using ODN that you may not be aware of.

We’ve used a variety of websites and brands that use different platforms and technologies to show anyone can make use of this software regardless of your CMS or technology stack.

Before we get started, there is some jargon you will want to understand:

Site section: A site section is the group of pages that we want to make a specific change to

Global rules: These are rules that you want to apply to all pages within a site section as opposed to only a percentage of pages (like you would with an experiment). An example might be something like “Insert self-referencing canonical”. Rules are made up of individual steps.

Steps: These are nested within global rules, and are the steps you have to take to get to the end goal. Some global rules will only have one step, others can have much more.

In the example global rule above, the steps could be something like, “Remove existing canonical”, “Replace with self-referencing canonical”

On-page values: On-page values are constant values that we extract them from the pages in the site section. You can use these in steps. So for the above rule, we’d have to create two on-page values the “existing canonical” and the “path” of the URL we want to add the self-referencing canonical to. An example site where we’ve done this is included below.

The image below shows how these different components interact with each other.

If you’d like a more detailed explanation about any of this stuff, a good place to start is this blog post; what is SEO split-testing.

Now that you’re familiar with the terminology, here are our 10 common website changes made with ODN, with GIFs:

1. Forever 21 – Trailing slash redirect

Having URLs that return a 200 status code for both the trailing slash and non-trailing slash versions can lead to index bloat and duplicate content issues. On Forever21’s homepage, you can see both “/uk/shop” and “/uk/shop/” are 200 pages.

To fix this using ODN, we create a site section that has the homepage entered as the page we want our global rule to apply to.

Then we need to create an on-page value for the page without a trailing slash. In this example, we’ve extracted this value using regex. Having this value defined means that this fix would be easy to apply to a bulk set of URLs on the website if necessary.

Next, we create our global rule. This rule only has one step, to redirects the URL in our site section to the one created using the on-page value, .

2. SmartWater Technology – Duplicate home page redirects

Often, websites will have multiple versions of their homepage that return status codes, like when they have both an http:// version and an https:// version, or a www version and a non-www version. This is a problem because it means the authority of your strongest page is split across two URLs. It also means you may have a non-desirable version ranking in search results.

We can see this on SmartWater Technology’s homepage. We can fix this problem by deploying ODN on the non-www version of their site, and creating a site section for the homepage. We only have one page we want to work on in this example, so we don’t need to create any additional on-page values.

We then set up a global rule to redirect the non-www version of the homepage to the www version, which has one step. In the step we select to redirect the URL in our path list (the homepage), to the new destination we’ve entered, https://www.smartwater.com/.

3. Bentley – Adding self-referencing canonicals

As mentioned in the introduction, we can use ODN to insert self-referencing canonicals on a list of pages. We’ve done this with Bentley Motors as an example, which doesn’t have a canonical on their homepage (or any other pages).

We can fix this by setting a global rule with one step to insert this block of HTML after the <title> element:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.bentleymotors.com">

We didn’t have to create an on-page value for , since it was created by entering the homepage in our path list. This rule will add a self-referencing canonical to any page that we include in our site section.

If we wanted to, we can also use ODN to apply canonicals that aren’t self-referencing by mapping out the pages we want to add canonicals to, with their canonical page as a value created with a csv upload.

4. Patagonia – Fixing soft 404s

Patagonia uses this landing page, that returns a 200 status code, for 404s, rather than a page that returns a genuine 404 status code. The problem with using soft-404s such as the one Patagonia uses is it won’t send the 404 signal to crawlers, even if the content on the page has the 404 message. This means search engines will see this as a real page, preventing the URL you intended to delete from being removed from the index.

To fix this using ODN, I’ve created a site section with the page path /404/. If you have multiple pages that are soft 404s, you can use other methods to define the pages in the site section. For example, you could match on any page that has “Page Not Found” in the title, or for Patagonia, we could use regex to match on any url that contains “/404/” in it.

Once we’ve defined what pages we want in our site section, we create a global rule with one step that changes the status code from 200 to 404.

5. Amazon Jobs – Changing 302s to 301s

When a redirect is truly temporary, using a 302 status code instead of a 301 makes sense; but if you’re not planning on reverting back to the original URL, using a 302 instead of a 301 redirect means you aren’t passing link equity from one URL to the next.

Once again, this fix is simple to deploy using ODN. We have done it with Amazon Jobs in the GIF below. First, we’ve created a site section with path of the URL we want to change the status code of. I have also changed the response code to match 302 rather than 200, which is the default for ODN.

Again, no need to create an on-page value in this instance. All that’s required is a global rule with one step, to change the status code on those URLs that match what we have in our path list from 302 to 301.

6. Etsy – Changing sitewide links that 30x/404

When you have a sitewide link that has a 30x or 404 status code, it not only might be a frustrating experience for users, it can also have a negative impact on your SEO. If a heavily linked to page on your site has a 301 redirect, for example, you are preventing it from being passed all the link equity available to it.

To fix this with ODN, we can replace the 301 link with the destination 200 link. We have done this on Etsy’s homepage in the GIF below.

First, we create a site section for the homepage, then a global rule with a step to replace the old blog URL. This step replaces the content of the element we’ve selected using a CSS selector with the HTML in the box.

In this case the css selector we have used is “a[href="https://www.distilled.net/blog/uk/?ref=ftr"]”. Using the test feature, we can see this selector grabs the element “<a class="text-gray-darker pt-xs-1 pb-xs-2 pb-md-1 display-block width-full" href="https://www.distilled.net/blog/uk/?ref=ftr"> <span>Etsy blog</span> </a>”. That’s what we are looking to replace.

We then set it to replace the above element with “<a class="text-gray-darker pt-xs-1 pb-xs-2 pb-md-1 display-block width-full" href="https://blog.etsy.com/uk/?ref=ftr"> <span>Etsy blog</span> </a>”, which has the link to the 200 version of Etsy’s blog. Now the footer link goes to the blog.etsy URL rather than the 301 /blog/uk/?ref=ftr URL.  

7. Pixel Eyewear – Adding title tags

Changing title tags is often a desire for content creators, as metadata is one of the strongest signals you can send to Google on what your page is about and what keywords you want to target.

Say you worked at Pixel Eyewear, and after some keyword research decided you wanted to target the keyword “computer screen glasses”, rather than simply “computer glasses”. We can use ODN to make that update, and again this rule can easily be set to target a bulk set of pages.

In the path list, we include all the URLs we want this change to apply to. Then we create a global rule to add “Screen” to our page titles. This has one step, where we use the CSS selector to select the title element of the page. We then enter the HTML we want instead.

8. Pixel Eyewear – Adding content to product pages

This is an example of when a site section has multiple rules. Say that you worked at Pixel Eyewear, and you also wanted to update the descriptions on your product pages, in addition to adding “Screen” to your page titles, and you want to do this on the same pages included in the previous section.  

To do this with ODN, we create a second global rule to edit the product description. This uses a different CSS selector, “div[class="pb-3"]”. You just want the main description to be more descriptive, so you replace the first paragraph of the element “Meet the most advanced eyewear engineered for the digital world.” to “Our most popular product, the Capra will have you looking stylish while wearing the most advanced eyewear engineered for the digital world.”

Since there are two global rules in this section, the order you place them in will matter. ODN works from top to bottom, as shown in the diagram in the intro, so it will apply the first global rule and its steps first before moving to the second. If one of your global rules depends on something created in another, you want to be sure that global rule is listed first.

9. Liberty London – Adding meta descriptions

Meta descriptions are an important meta property to entice users to click through to your webpage from the SERP, but it’s common for website owners to not have them at all, or on important pages on their site, as seen with Liberty London on their UK featured page.

We can edit the meta description content with ODN, and insert a description. First, we include the path of the target page in our path list, then create a global rule with a single step that grabs the meta description with a CSS selector. This time we set it to “Set or update the attribute of an element.” The attribute we want to replace is the content, and we want to replace it with the content entered.

This can also be used to add in meta descriptions when they’re missing entirely, or when you want to insert new ones. If you want to apply in bulk, you can upload a CSV that has the desired meta descriptions for each target URL as a value.

10. CamelBak – Removing duplicate content

E-commerce and other websites frequently wind up with duplicate content on their websites, which can lead to drops in traffic and rankings. Faceted navigation is a common culprit. We can see this in action on Camelbak’s website, where parametered URLs like https://international.camelbak.com/en/bottles/bottle-accessories?sortValue=af41b41832b34f02975423ad5ad46b1e return 200 status codes and have no canonical tags.

We’ve fixed this in ODN by adding canonical tags to the non-parameterized URL. First, we add the relevant URL paths to our path list. Then we need to create an on-page value for the non-parameterized version of the URL. This rule uses regex to extract the content of the URL that comes before the “?” character.

Once we have this on-page value, we can use it in our global rule. Since there are no canonicals already, this global rule has one step. If there were already canonicals on these pages, self-referencing ones, for example, that still referred to the parameterized URL, then we’d have to remove that canonical before we could add in a new one.

The step to add in the canonical inserts a block of HTML after the <title> element. Then we enter the HRML that we want to be inserted. You can see that this uses the on-page value we created, giving us this string:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://international.camelbak.com"/>

Because we’ve used an on-page value, we put a list of paths for relevant parameterized URLs in our path list, and it will insert a canonical to their non-parameterized parent.

This tactic can be adjusted to account for pagination with rel=”prev” and rel=”next” tags and many other variations. Another way to address duplicate content issues with ODN is to redirecting unwanted URLs, among others.

Summary

These examples are only a selection of the types of fixes ODN can employ for your website. There are many more, in addition to being able to perform SEO A/B testing and full-funnel testing. The ability to create custom values and use CSS selectors means there’s a lot of room for any of these fixes to be customized to meet the needs of your website.

If you work on a website that has a difficult time being able to make these kinds of changes (you’re not the only one), then get in touch to get a free demo of our platform in action on your website.

from Digital Marketing https://www.distilled.net/resources/odn-as-a-meta-cms/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[heavenwheel]

10 Quick Wins We Can Make Using ODN as a Meta CMS

The Distilled Optimization Delivery Network (ODN) is most famous for SEO A/B testing and more recently full-funnel testing. But fewer people are familiar with one of the other main features; the ability to act as a meta-CMS and change pretty much anything you want in the HTML of your site, without help from your development team or writing tickets. DistilledODN is platform independent, sitting between your website servers and website visitors, similar to a Content Delivery Network (CDN), as shown in the below diagram.

This use case for ODN has been popular for many of our enterprise clients who have restrictions on their ability to make on-the-fly changes to their websites for a variety of reasons. A picture (or a gif) is worth a thousand words, so here are 10 common website changes you can make using ODN that you may not be aware of.

We’ve used a variety of websites and brands that use different platforms and technologies to show anyone can make use of this software regardless of your CMS or technology stack.

Before we get started, there is some jargon you will want to understand:

Site section: A site section is the group of pages that we want to make a specific change to

Global rules: These are rules that you want to apply to all pages within a site section as opposed to only a percentage of pages (like you would with an experiment). An example might be something like “Insert self-referencing canonical”. Rules are made up of individual steps.

Steps: These are nested within global rules, and are the steps you have to take to get to the end goal. Some global rules will only have one step, others can have much more.

In the example global rule above, the steps could be something like, “Remove existing canonical”, “Replace with self-referencing canonical”

On-page values: On-page values are constant values that we extract them from the pages in the site section. You can use these in steps. So for the above rule, we’d have to create two on-page values the “existing canonical” and the “path” of the URL we want to add the self-referencing canonical to. An example site where we’ve done this is included below.

The image below shows how these different components interact with each other.

If you’d like a more detailed explanation about any of this stuff, a good place to start is this blog post; what is SEO split-testing.

Now that you’re familiar with the terminology, here are our 10 common website changes made with ODN, with GIFs:

1. Forever 21 – Trailing slash redirect

Having URLs that return a 200 status code for both the trailing slash and non-trailing slash versions can lead to index bloat and duplicate content issues. On Forever21’s homepage, you can see both “/uk/shop” and “/uk/shop/” are 200 pages.

To fix this using ODN, we create a site section that has the homepage entered as the page we want our global rule to apply to.

Then we need to create an on-page value for the page without a trailing slash. In this example, we’ve extracted this value using regex. Having this value defined means that this fix would be easy to apply to a bulk set of URLs on the website if necessary.

Next, we create our global rule. This rule only has one step, to redirects the URL in our site section to the one created using the on-page value, .

2. SmartWater Technology – Duplicate home page redirects

Often, websites will have multiple versions of their homepage that return status codes, like when they have both an http:// version and an https:// version, or a www version and a non-www version. This is a problem because it means the authority of your strongest page is split across two URLs. It also means you may have a non-desirable version ranking in search results.

We can see this on SmartWater Technology’s homepage. We can fix this problem by deploying ODN on the non-www version of their site, and creating a site section for the homepage. We only have one page we want to work on in this example, so we don’t need to create any additional on-page values.

We then set up a global rule to redirect the non-www version of the homepage to the www version, which has one step. In the step we select to redirect the URL in our path list (the homepage), to the new destination we’ve entered, https://www.smartwater.com/.

3. Bentley – Adding self-referencing canonicals

As mentioned in the introduction, we can use ODN to insert self-referencing canonicals on a list of pages. We’ve done this with Bentley Motors as an example, which doesn’t have a canonical on their homepage (or any other pages).

We can fix this by setting a global rule with one step to insert this block of HTML after the <title> element:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.bentleymotors.com">

We didn’t have to create an on-page value for , since it was created by entering the homepage in our path list. This rule will add a self-referencing canonical to any page that we include in our site section.

If we wanted to, we can also use ODN to apply canonicals that aren’t self-referencing by mapping out the pages we want to add canonicals to, with their canonical page as a value created with a csv upload.

4. Patagonia – Fixing soft 404s

Patagonia uses this landing page, that returns a 200 status code, for 404s, rather than a page that returns a genuine 404 status code. The problem with using soft-404s such as the one Patagonia uses is it won’t send the 404 signal to crawlers, even if the content on the page has the 404 message. This means search engines will see this as a real page, preventing the URL you intended to delete from being removed from the index.

To fix this using ODN, I’ve created a site section with the page path /404/. If you have multiple pages that are soft 404s, you can use other methods to define the pages in the site section. For example, you could match on any page that has “Page Not Found” in the title, or for Patagonia, we could use regex to match on any url that contains “/404/” in it.

Once we’ve defined what pages we want in our site section, we create a global rule with one step that changes the status code from 200 to 404.

5. Amazon Jobs – Changing 302s to 301s

When a redirect is truly temporary, using a 302 status code instead of a 301 makes sense; but if you’re not planning on reverting back to the original URL, using a 302 instead of a 301 redirect means you aren’t passing link equity from one URL to the next.

Once again, this fix is simple to deploy using ODN. We have done it with Amazon Jobs in the GIF below. First, we’ve created a site section with path of the URL we want to change the status code of. I have also changed the response code to match 302 rather than 200, which is the default for ODN.

Again, no need to create an on-page value in this instance. All that’s required is a global rule with one step, to change the status code on those URLs that match what we have in our path list from 302 to 301.

6. Etsy – Changing sitewide links that 30x/404

When you have a sitewide link that has a 30x or 404 status code, it not only might be a frustrating experience for users, it can also have a negative impact on your SEO. If a heavily linked to page on your site has a 301 redirect, for example, you are preventing it from being passed all the link equity available to it.

To fix this with ODN, we can replace the 301 link with the destination 200 link. We have done this on Etsy’s homepage in the GIF below.

First, we create a site section for the homepage, then a global rule with a step to replace the old blog URL. This step replaces the content of the element we’ve selected using a CSS selector with the HTML in the box.

In this case the css selector we have used is “a[href="https://www.distilled.net/blog/uk/?ref=ftr"]”. Using the test feature, we can see this selector grabs the element “<a class="text-gray-darker pt-xs-1 pb-xs-2 pb-md-1 display-block width-full" href="https://www.distilled.net/blog/uk/?ref=ftr"> <span>Etsy blog</span> </a>”. That’s what we are looking to replace.

We then set it to replace the above element with “<a class="text-gray-darker pt-xs-1 pb-xs-2 pb-md-1 display-block width-full" href="https://blog.etsy.com/uk/?ref=ftr"> <span>Etsy blog</span> </a>”, which has the link to the 200 version of Etsy’s blog. Now the footer link goes to the blog.etsy URL rather than the 301 /blog/uk/?ref=ftr URL.  

7. Pixel Eyewear – Adding title tags

Changing title tags is often a desire for content creators, as metadata is one of the strongest signals you can send to Google on what your page is about and what keywords you want to target.

Say you worked at Pixel Eyewear, and after some keyword research decided you wanted to target the keyword “computer screen glasses”, rather than simply “computer glasses”. We can use ODN to make that update, and again this rule can easily be set to target a bulk set of pages.

In the path list, we include all the URLs we want this change to apply to. Then we create a global rule to add “Screen” to our page titles. This has one step, where we use the CSS selector to select the title element of the page. We then enter the HTML we want instead.

8. Pixel Eyewear – Adding content to product pages

This is an example of when a site section has multiple rules. Say that you worked at Pixel Eyewear, and you also wanted to update the descriptions on your product pages, in addition to adding “Screen” to your page titles, and you want to do this on the same pages included in the previous section.  

To do this with ODN, we create a second global rule to edit the product description. This uses a different CSS selector, “div[class="pb-3"]”. You just want the main description to be more descriptive, so you replace the first paragraph of the element “Meet the most advanced eyewear engineered for the digital world.” to “Our most popular product, the Capra will have you looking stylish while wearing the most advanced eyewear engineered for the digital world.”

Since there are two global rules in this section, the order you place them in will matter. ODN works from top to bottom, as shown in the diagram in the intro, so it will apply the first global rule and its steps first before moving to the second. If one of your global rules depends on something created in another, you want to be sure that global rule is listed first.

9. Liberty London – Adding meta descriptions

Meta descriptions are an important meta property to entice users to click through to your webpage from the SERP, but it’s common for website owners to not have them at all, or on important pages on their site, as seen with Liberty London on their UK featured page.

We can edit the meta description content with ODN, and insert a description. First, we include the path of the target page in our path list, then create a global rule with a single step that grabs the meta description with a CSS selector. This time we set it to “Set or update the attribute of an element.” The attribute we want to replace is the content, and we want to replace it with the content entered.

This can also be used to add in meta descriptions when they’re missing entirely, or when you want to insert new ones. If you want to apply in bulk, you can upload a CSV that has the desired meta descriptions for each target URL as a value.

10. CamelBak – Removing duplicate content

E-commerce and other websites frequently wind up with duplicate content on their websites, which can lead to drops in traffic and rankings. Faceted navigation is a common culprit. We can see this in action on Camelbak’s website, where parametered URLs like https://international.camelbak.com/en/bottles/bottle-accessories?sortValue=af41b41832b34f02975423ad5ad46b1e return 200 status codes and have no canonical tags.

We’ve fixed this in ODN by adding canonical tags to the non-parameterized URL. First, we add the relevant URL paths to our path list. Then we need to create an on-page value for the non-parameterized version of the URL. This rule uses regex to extract the content of the URL that comes before the “?” character.

Once we have this on-page value, we can use it in our global rule. Since there are no canonicals already, this global rule has one step. If there were already canonicals on these pages, self-referencing ones, for example, that still referred to the parameterized URL, then we’d have to remove that canonical before we could add in a new one.

The step to add in the canonical inserts a block of HTML after the <title> element. Then we enter the HRML that we want to be inserted. You can see that this uses the on-page value we created, giving us this string:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://international.camelbak.com"/>

Because we’ve used an on-page value, we put a list of paths for relevant parameterized URLs in our path list, and it will insert a canonical to their non-parameterized parent.

This tactic can be adjusted to account for pagination with rel=”prev” and rel=”next” tags and many other variations. Another way to address duplicate content issues with ODN is to redirecting unwanted URLs, among others.

Summary

These examples are only a selection of the types of fixes ODN can employ for your website. There are many more, in addition to being able to perform SEO A/B testing and full-funnel testing. The ability to create custom values and use CSS selectors means there’s a lot of room for any of these fixes to be customized to meet the needs of your website.

If you work on a website that has a difficult time being able to make these kinds of changes (you’re not the only one), then get in touch to get a free demo of our platform in action on your website.

from Digital https://www.distilled.net/resources/odn-as-a-meta-cms/ via http://www.rssmix.com/