romandock dot com

In my various journeys through the blogosphere, I have seen a variety of “About Me” and “Contact Me” pages. It is a very good idea to have these two pages available on your site.

The “About Me” page allows the reader an opportunity to get to know a little about the author of the posts they are reading. By knowing a bit more about the author, the reader will often times be able to better understand what the point is that the writer of the blog is trying to get across and also feel a bit more connected to them. When the reader feels they actually know the reader of the blog, they will be more likely to return for a future visit; and we all know the benefits of repeat traffic.

The “Contact Me” pages that I have come across almost invariably have some sort of form that the user can fill out that will send an email to the owner of the blog. I find this to be probably the most effective layout of a contact page. There are different theories relating to blocking spam that may be sent to you through your contact page and I encourage everyone to do their own research on that to decide what measures they wish to take.

For anyone who does not have a form for users to fill out on their contact page (yes this includes you Bloggrrl) feel free to contact me and I will help you get one set up. There are also many resources available online that will help you set one up on your own.

Now, for the inspiration behind this post. In my journeys, I have noticed that there are many blogs that allow comments and/or pingbacks on their “Contact Me” and “About Me” pages. I’m not sure why and would like some feedback on why you do if you are one of those people.

In my humble opinion, I don’t see any reason to have those options available on those pages. They are probably about the only “static” pages on your site and static pages generally do not allow comments, etc. The other thing I don’t like about them being available on these pages is that I feel it takes away from the professionalism of the site.

Let’s get some feedback here. Who does and does not allow these things on those pages? What is your reasoning behind your decision?

If you do have them allowed on your contact and/or about page and would like to change that, simply go in to your WordPress Dashboard and click on Manage and then Pages. Then, click edit next to the page you need to change and at the top right corner of the edit page section there will be the options to allow comments and allow Pings. Simply uncheck the box next to the ones you would not like to have on that page (my recommendation would be to uncheck both of them) and click save.