Welcome to the Weekly WTF (that stands for Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, what did you think it meant?). This is a new weekly installment of me ranting about something that sucks. By that I mean that I am going to find blogs that are downright awful and pick them apart, and at the end of my ranting, you can check out the site for yourself. At first, we’re just going to dissect random blogs. But be forewarned: in a short period of time, I will begin picking on you Real Estate bloggers too. But only if you truly deserve it. This really is a good learning experience for all of you, because you’ll get to see RSS Pieces’ primary blogging principles not being utilized in real sites, and why these principles are so important. It's also your chance to fix your blog and make it as incredible as possible, to avoid scrutiny later.  Poshd took a similar approach when they started a series of the 50 worst sites out there. Check these out, they’re pretty terrible! I’m going to start off with a really outlandish site, because I want to ease you into this, okay? Okay.

We Hate You, Too, Scout!

When I found this blog, I laughed. I really did. I have no idea how else I could have possibly reacted. The first thing that loads is a banner at the top that features not one, but two “Squat-Shots” of dearest Scout - that's hot.  The very next thing I noticed was not the content, nor the “thought-provoking” copy, but the giant advertising banners all over the place! Now, it’s one thing to have ads on your page. In fact, if you do it right, I encourage it. But to have a giant red banner proclaiming to be able to “calculate your love match” is just tacky. 

This blog is written from the point of view of a dog. Yes, that is correct, a dog. I have four dogs, and I hope to heck that they don’t think like this dog apparently does! I wouldn’t even let my dogs play with this dog, with his dirty mouth and antagonist attitude. Scout seems very angry all the time, and I just don’t think that’s too appealing.

I can’t stress enough how important content and copy are to a blog. Essentially, that's what a blog is. Blogs are places to write copy and add content. Make sure it’s worth looking at! And please, if you’re going to make up words, give the readers a clue as to what you may be talking about. I shouldn’t have to Google a word to see what it could possibly mean, only to find out that it was simply misspelled. Check out this word: "univeralistic". I wasn’t sure what that meant, especially given the rest of the sentence where you’ll find the word in question. 

-     The “Other Websites” section contains sites that are in NO WAY related to this one. Not that it would be all that easy to find such sites, but really, how does a site about Poker Tips relate to the rants and raves of a disgruntled dog?

-     Check the titles, Scout. The very first entry on the page is all capital letters, followed by way too many exclamation points, and then followed by the number 1. I guess Scout lost his grip on the Shift key when he got to the end of his “Exclamation Point Rampage”.

-     There’s no contact information anywhere that I could find. Please, someone tell me how I can contact Scout!

-     I have never seen an uglier Archives page in my life. This is really terrible stuff.  It looks like a Microsoft Word virgin failed miserably at attempting to make a table chart. 

-     There are no links. Scout apparently only blogs to talk about himself, because he certainly doesn’t link to anyone else for reference points. I guess Scout has a pretty big ego, but unfortunately for him, his ego problem is giving him a comment problem. If he took time to give other people props, he might get some traffic and some comments. Read our tips on tricking out your blog.

-     No RSS Subscription box. Not that you’d want to subscribe to this (I hope), but hey, everyone likes different things, I suppose.  What I want to know is, why does this blog even exist?  Does anyone read this?  I want to meet Scout's readers.

-     There's no Site Map.  Once I go to a different page, there's no option to go back to Home.  I have to actually type in the web address again to get back to Home, or keep clicking Back on my Browser.  Not good.

-     No social bookmarking options. You Digg?

You know, I could go on and on (and on, and on…) but I think you get the overall picture here. This is a prime example of “What Not to Do”. So don’t do it. Why don’t you scurry over to the site and check it out for yourself, if you haven't already. I also recommend this fantastic post on ProBlogger (I love this site!) which asks the all-important question of blog-value.  After your visit to Scout's page, let me know if you saw something I missed - I like to see if you’re actually paying attention to what we at RSS Pieces try to teach you. 

In addition, go ahead and shoot me your ideas on some other crappy blogs that I can make fun of. If you want to be anonymous about it, you can email me. If you’re brave, leave it in a comment.

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