Branding Rant

Yesterday I decided to make the move to WordPress 2.5 on my personal online journal - a highly coveted personal journal, largely unknown to even my CLOSEST friends.

Unfortunately at the time, I was uploading a configuration file (wp-admin.php for you WordPress geeks) to my site and I just so happened to drop the config file into the wrong directory. HUGE MISTAKE. Upon doing so, I redirected ALL traffic from www.BracingYourBrand.com to www.Journey2Mastery.com.

How I Published My Private Journal

Now this wasn’t too big a deal for me at first, since people were just just going to end up at a page stating it was closed. Little did I know, by redirecting everything to Journey2Mastery, I was also redirecting Google Feed Reader, Yahoo, Outlook, Feedburner and any other bot looking for www.bracingyourbrand.com/feed

By allowing this, I Posted My Private Journal to My RSS Subscribers.

This was HUGE for me. I write things on there that I even have trouble admitting to myself. So, as you might realise, there is some heartfelt stuff in there - stuff that is exceedingly private. Upon realising it, my heart stopped and all I could think was, “Crap! Crap! Crap! WTF.” I had just published my sex life, intentions, relationships with people and worse, to my employers, friends and followers who subscribe to my blog.

The Aftermath

Thanks to a chat with some mates of mine (props to West Loh and Cameron Mackay), I’ve finally come to terms with it and found time to post this sort of “Personal Media Relaease”. As you could imagine this will work wonders for my personal brand… and time will tell whether any publicity is good publicity.

I suppose it’s been interesting, in that I made the realisation that most people don’t care about this sort of stuff, so I’m happy in that regard. It’s also pushed me to being more open and honest - not quite brutally honest but moreso than before. It’s also helped me understand WordPress a lot more and recieve a spike in visitors.

How You Can Use This Lesson

Using this method, you can effectively hijack someone’s RSS Subscriber base and use it for malicious intent or to make a couple of bucks.