Internet Profits Blog

I am constantly needing to display html code on a web page. Without actually executing the code. This is so someone can see what the code looks like.

There is an easy solution:

I use the form on this page:

http://www.felgall.com/htmlt47.htm

To convert regular html code into something that will display but not execute.

Google Groups has limited possibilities for promotion, at least after an initial once-through.

Links on group pages are no-followed.

Links on discussions use a redirect from Google. While there is no ‘no-follow’, I would question whether Google follows the link or not. Although other search robots might, and give it weight. In other words, if my site is google.com, and I have a link to yahoo.com using a redirect such as http://google.com/url?sa=D&q=http://yahoo.com, is this a do-follow or a no-follow link?

Perhaps of most concern is the potential email problem. User profiles, and information listed for discussion posts, includes the email address used to sign up for Google Groups. While there is some spam control, certainly not enough for my liking. There is no reason for an actual email address to appear. Period. Otherwise, that is inviting trouble.

Especially when a simply captcha – easily and quickly worked around by spammers – shows a naked email address.

It may be prudent to use a throw-away email to sign up for Google Groups, which is confirmed, and then discarded. That may have some negative consequences in getting group communications, but we’ll see how the spam issue goes.

But it certainly appears that Google does not have a high concern for it’s user’s email privacy.

I suppose if someone just wanted a platform to write some pages and have limited discussions, with no monetization, then Google Groups may be enticing. You may get some group members from other non-techie people, which may be find for your purposes.

But given alternative options, especially having your own website, go with your own site.

The RSS Includes Pages WordPress plugin has been very useful to make sure pages, not just posts, appear in the RSS feed for a WordPress site.

Testing of the plugin with new WordPress 3.0 (using the Flexibility theme), shows that the plugin is now causing RSS feeds to not validate. Once the plugin is deactivated, the RSS feed validates. Validation was done with FeedValidator.org.