Test posts. As developers, designers, and support people we do them all the time. We even have entire blogs, sites, and/or accounts set up just for testing, often more than one. Mine probably have more posts than my “real” blog does. Sometimes I just need to replicate something quick, or see if a certain feature is behaving the way it should. Writing a quick test post seems quicker, easier, and more efficient.

The short term benefit leads to an unfortunate long term effect. Writing tons of fake posts has turned me into a fake user. People don’t use WordPress.com to write test posts. They use it to write real posts.

I’m trying to stop writing test posts altogether and I challenge others to do the same. If I have to publish, preview, save, share, or write anything for testing purposes, its going on my public blog and is going to be “real”. No more of these test posts to my test blog:

asdf hi hi okay hi

Even if it takes just a little bit longer. I’ve already fallen off the wagon a few times, but every time I take the extra several minutes, its totally worth it.