The W3C came up with a technology at the height of this issue called PICS, short for the Platform for Internet Content Selection. In some ways, that technology saved the Internet. If you read Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web
by Tim Berners-Lee, you will read how there was legislation in progress to restrict the Web. PICS revolved around content providers being able to rate their own content, rating criteria from third parties, and rating decisions by end users. It was a system based on trust that didn’t impose anything on anybody.

As the technologies used to communicate metadata evolved, so did rating bureaus communicating their labels. Originally the Recreational Software Advisory Council for Internet used a system based on PICS. As RSACi morphed into the Internet Content Rating Association, the labeling became more detailed and granular. As ICRA has now morphed into the Family Online Safety Institute, they have moved their labeling to leverage RDF. I learned this when a 404 report for my site was for labels.rdf. I have now created that latest version of the labels for my site and link to it from my WordPress site.

My site is rated as having no nudity, mild language, and user generated content amongs other things. Check for yourself with the label checking tool.

Technologies like OpenID are going some way toward being able to log in to multiple sites without constantly needing to make new accounts. This is good for several reasons. It is most definitely more convenient. It is also more secure because you can use an OpenID provider that support multiple factors of authentication instead of relying on every website to do so. You are also more likely to protect those authentication credentials and change them on occasion where applicable.

Another piece of the puzzle that I do not yet see being solved satisfactorily is profile duplication and synchronization. I have a Fakebook profile. I have a MySpace profile. Shouldn’t they contain the same information? I have way more than these too. Just look at my DandyId list, and that’s not even all. I want to see a solution to that problem.

The issue with my broken link handler and WordPress is that when using pretty URLs with WordPress, a URL like http://gurganus.name/brant/foo is rewritten by Apache to be http://gurganus.name/brant/index.php/foo. Apache finds index.php, and it deals with loading the appropriate content. That’s the issue though: Apache found index.php. Consequently, my broken link handler was never invoked when it was under controlled by WordPress. I installed the 404 Notifer plugin though, and it seems to satisfy my desire to know about broken links so that whenever possible I can address them.

I have found and configured appropriate plugins to compress the content sent to browsers. This means that fewer bytes are being transmitted which saves time for you. I’ve also found a plugin that seems to work sufficiently to generate sitemaps for search engines to use in their crawl of my site. I also added a plugin that adds Google Adsense tracking code.

There are a few other plugins I’m in a search for. I want a plugin that let’s me put PICS labels on posts and pages. I want  a plugin that let’s me create a feedback form as I previously had. The plugin I tried so far didn’t really work. I’d also like a plugin that let’s me put ETags and Expiration headers on posts and pages. I also want to look into ways to recreate my resume. If anybody has WordPress plugin suggestions for these purposes, please let me know.

I also still need to update my theme in these ways:

• Incorporate my logo.
• Incorporate my font and color scheme.
• Validate the CSS and HTML generated.