Been miserable since last night.  Constant headache and hard to breathe.  I did get a little writing done on Sanctuary, but not much.

I was using a tool, trying to find all the dead links on the blog ( a change a while back broke many of the links in old posts ) and in the process realized that the custom skin and the collapsing archives plug-in were both causing validation errors.

I didn’t check the blog ( or the forum for that matter ) when was validating everything else, because I trusted the big names to have kept the code straight.  Should have thought about the third-party apps.

The way the collapsing archives is coded, it would have taken too long to validate for even transitional, and I suspect that WP will switch over to strict soon enough.  So, I dumped it.  Honestly, I like the dropdown version on there now more anyway.  The plug-in was neat, but I also saw potential for confusion from users from the beginning.

The custom skin had all of two simple errors in it, which I quickly fixed.

Managed to find about three of the broken links, and then the validation website crapped out on me :p

I’ll probably try again tomorrow.  If nothing else, I can snag some of them from Webmaster Tools crawl errors.  I was trying to get ahead of those crawl errors, though.

Signed up for the bing version of analytics as well.  It doesn’t require any coding on the website, but it should help my indexing by providing them with the sitemap.  Yahoo shares this service, so that takes care of the big three.

Under a major spam attack on the blogs.  Someone has a wide range of virgin IPs and emails that aren’t in any of the databases.  Fortunately, the second layer of spam protection has been taking care of business.  It has the added benefit of capturing the spammy links and allowing me to report them along with the spammer.

Been seeing activity on my contact forms as well.  I haven’t set those up to log blocked spammers, so I don’t know if they’re just regular visitors, spammers failing to spam me, or humans trying to figure out the anti-spam protection.

I’m ready to update my custom anti-spam question there with a whole new layer if necessary, although I doubt it will be.  Because it doesn’t allow automatic posting through a login, someone is going to have to log all the potential combinations of my anti-spam question in order for a robot to take over.

The custom coding that calls the spam database could also be tightened if necessary.

If nothing else, you can trust me to do everything in my power to prevent spam from getting in front of you on my website.  It amuses me to foil them and report them to help out others who might not have the ability to micro-manage things the way I do.

Beyond that, my headache kept me from even considering a look at the code to get the next part of the website rollout going.

Another thing I’m considering is an optional ( and private, if you wish ) ability to link your profile on Lit or SOL to your profile here on the website, if you’re a member.  If private, it will eventually provide you with special benefits if you have me favorited as an author or have favorited a story on Lit.

I’ve already checked into everything, and I can automate this on Lit.  I’ll need to look into things on SOL, and probably contact Lazeez, because he has the ability to micromanage his site in much the same way as I do, so I want him to know that if I do an automated check, it’s not something malicious and will be responsibly throttled.

If I decide to open a facebook or twitter account ( which is becoming more likely as time rolls along ) then there will probably be the same sort of benefits system going on there for likes, follows, links, etc.  Ditto if you have a personal website and link to me.

Every backlink equals more people finding me, my work, and giving me the feedback that is my drug and motivation fuel to write.

Potential benefits would be early access to new stories.  Most of them are submitted to Lit first, because it has a very long lag time compared to SOL.  I could post local copies for readers who have validated links/favs/etc. as soon as I submit, allowing you to read before anybody else.

( Of course, I would ask that you go vote once the story posts. )

Another possibility is early access to website exclusive stories ( discussed in an earlier post )  Could be more as time rolls along and I add new features and content.

For those who have been with me for a while, you can probably guess what a large part of the rut I’m fighting my way out of right now is.  It hit four years a few days ago since I lost the love of my life.  This time of year is always hard as hell.