Is Your Blog Work Safe?
04. May, 2007 
7 Comments - Leave your comment
As much as I’d like to condemn workplace-surfing, I simply cannot.
Let he who is without sin to cast the first stone. Paraphrased from John 8:7.
Let’s face it. Internet surfing at work will happen, whether it be blogs, checking the news, or other legitimate uses. However, it is rather embarrassing when a co-worker (or supervisor) comes and visits your cubicle unexpectedly and sees something rather disturbing on your monitor.
Here are some tips to keep your blog work safe.
Manage Your Ads Properly
Bloggers need to make money. I understand this. However, what is with the half-naked woman in your ad? It doesn’t matter how work-friendly the content is if that small advertisement is the one that catches the eyes of others.
“What are you looking at Ron? An article about global warming?”
Warn Us About the Videos
Many workplaces have banned YouTube, MySpace, and other video-sharing services. However, if a video contains material that you consider not work safe, please warn us. The last thing a workplace employee wants to happen is to hear suggestive moans coming out of the speakers or inappropriate images that others can potentially glance at.
Warn Us About Links
If you are linking to a site that is not work safe, please warn the readers. The best thing that could happen is the site is flagged as inappropriate by the workplace filters. The worst thing would be the employee’s supervisor is alerted to the employee’s browsing behavior.
Avoid Hosting Images on External Sites
Please avoid hosting images on external photo-sharing sites. An exception perhaps would be Flickr. Sometimes these images show up with security warnings, or don’t show up in Feed Readers at all.
Hold the Music
Imagine this scenario: You are at work with your speakers full blast. You don’t know it. You go to a site and music starts blaring. Depending on the music, it’ll take a while for you to live that one down.
Please make music optional. Do not ever allow music to play automatically no matter how cool or cute it is.
Don’t be Malicious
This should be a given regarding work content, but some bloggers forget that people do still browse at work. Avoid trying to set unnecessary cookies, using “questionable” JavaScript techniques, and trying to download files to a user’s computer.
Avoid the Pop-Up Ads
You would think with pop-up blockers that pop-up ads wouldn’t be that big of a deal, right? Unfortunately, a lot of pop-up blocking software is disabled since a lot of Intranet and other web applications need pop-ups to function. IT would rather have the headache of pop-up ads rather than people calling them constantly regarding inoperable web applications.
Please avoid pop-up ads like the plague, especially if they contain questionable content.
No Suggestive or Inappropriate Avatars, Please
This tip was suggested by Inspiration Bit.
With MyBlogLog getting so popular and blogs that display gravatars of their commenters, I can imagine that everyone tries to be “different†and catch people’s attention to their gravatar. However I’d rather see someone’s face than a bellybutton and bikini.
Conclusion
Thank you for reading my tips regarding creating a work safe blog. If you have your own tips to share, please do so in the comments.
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Here’s another tip:
No Suggestive or Inappropriate gravatars, please.
With MyBlogLog getting so popular and blogs that display gravatars of their commenters, I can imagine that everyone tries to be “different” and catch people’s attention to their gravatar. However I’d rather see someone’s face than a bellybutton and bikini.
Hey, Ronald, thanks for including my tip
So, what’s the difference between a gravatar and an avatar? I’m getting confused with all these names…
An avatar (without looking up the official definition) is just a small picture that allows a person to set themselves apart on forums, blogs, etc.
A Gravatar is a globally recognized avatar, which allows users to have one central place to assign themselves an avatar and use it in many different places.
Great point with the music, I hate when people put music on their websites that autoplays and then you have to spend 5 minutes trying to find where to turn it off because the button is hidden somewhere in between ads.
Those were pretty good points, luckily I run a rather family friendly site so the only thing I might end up getting are bad ads but then again I don’t know how to restrict my Adsense ads to good ones.
Church of Integrity,
Music is rather annoying, which is why I despise MySpace. Adsense isn’t too bad usually, but some of the content in pop-up ads are pretty racy.
I personally don’t think you have much to worry about unless you start getting people with bad avatars as inspiration bit pointed out.
Ronald, thanks for the explanations of gravatars and avatars – makes sense now.