Shutting down the walls
Over a year ago, I launched my little vCard website. To say the overall response was overwhelming is an understatement. That wasn’t the best part though.
It inspired people to create their own beautiful unique vCard websites, some far more beautiful than mine. Besides those inspired, there was (and still is) a huge number of people who don’t respect the efforts of others, and blatantly copied everything, from icons up until the link to my Mint file.
To reward those inspired and punish the lazy ones, I decided to start a Wall of Fame and a Wall of Shame. Within days, people started sending in their vCard website, or notified me of rip-offs. The system was working, and all was good.
After some time it became clear I couldn’t keep up with submissions, so I decided to switch from a list with thumbnails to a list of links. For a while, this worked, and process of adding links looked like this:
- Read mail from person submitting
- Check out site to see it isn’t a duplicate or that they didn’t use any of my graphics or code, of which I notified the sender (most of them quickly made changes, others disappeared forever)
- Copy URL
- Open the CMS
- Paste URL
- Select “Wall of Shame” or “Wall of Fame”
- Press submit
- Send an email to the submitter telling him his site had been added
Again, this way of adding links worked for a while. Right now, there are about 100 emails in my inbox tagged with “Wall”, and I realize I can’t keep up with it. So I’m shutting them down. They’ll both stay online, but I’m not taking any more submissions. I’m sorry if you’re one of the 100 people who already submitted yours, but I can’t make the commitment anymore.
For those thinking they can now get away with copying my site: Don’t forget I still have Twitter to show the world how big of an asshole you are.