With the recent blog explosion, I’ve noticed a proliferation of extra-large RSS icons.

I certainly understand people’s desire to attract subscribers. I have my own RSS icons on my blog. See them over there on the right, near the top of the page? Nice little buttons with the familiar — even standard — little curvy line design. Nice, right? You know what they’re for, and you can use them if you want to.

I got them from feedicons.com, if you’re interested.

But what’s with the ginormous feed icons? They remind me of Flavor Flav‘s huge wall clock necklace pendant. Does it have to be so big? Does it tell time better than a normal wristwatch?

Now, it may be that the over-large RSS icon is being used as a design element, which is fine. But as far as function, I think these R.I.O.U.S.s (RSS Icons Of Unusual Size) are a bit excessive. Kind of like an unnecessary and too-long acronym.

I doubt there is a correlation between the size of an RSS icon and the number of subscribers it attracts. Also, there is probably no relationship between the size of the icon and anything else useful. Of course, people can do what they like with their own sites and icons. But isn’t there a size at which the RSS button becomes too big to do its job, and becomes an eyesore, a distraction, or even a deterrent, to would-be subscribers? How about the “World’s Biggest RSS Button“, which is so big, it leaves no room for anything else on the page?

I think the RSS icon should be big enough to be found easily by users who are looking for it, but small enough to be ignored by those who aren’t. That’s just my opinion.

I have to give a short update to my previous post on the CommentLuv plugin. I installed CommentLuv to provide an automatic backlink to my commenters, and wanted to make sure it was working properly as a dofollow link.

First of all, the plugin author, Andy Bailey, showed up on his own to test the plugin, by leaving a comment on my blog, as soon as it was installed. And when I had a question about whether the nofollow tag had been removed, I sent him an e-mail. He replied within hours, and helped me figure it out. It turns out you have to install a plugin to turn off the nofollow tag. (I used NoFollow Free.)

Over the course of several e-mails and a couple of test comments, Andy made sure his plugin was working properly, on its own and with NoFollow Free. He was very friendly and good-humored. CommentLuv is a free plugin, and I did not pay for his service. Likewise, neither Andy nor anyone else has paid me for this post. Sadly, it’s becoming rare to receive excellent, personal, human service these days, and I wanted to say a big THANK YOU to Andy. Keep up the great work!

By the way, everything is working perfectly now, and when you leave a comment, you will receive a nofollow-free link back to your latest blog post. Links for everyone! (Unless your comment is spam, in which case it will be deleted.) Cheers!

Yes, GeekMom now offers double the love to readers who leave comments, thanks to a nifty plugin called CommentLuv. I don’t know exactly how it works, but it’s easy to download and install on WordPress, and it was written by Andy Bailey.

Now when you post a comment, you can check a box to “enable CommentLuv,” which will display the title of your latest blog post as a link. That’s a free text link directly to your post — not just to the front page of your blog — and that’s in addition to the link you can include with your name. You get two links for the price of one comment! Isn’t that sweet?

It’s not supposed to slow down loading of the site at all, although it may take some number of seconds for the thing to hunt down your feed once you post your comment. Give it a try and let me know what you think! Thank you!