The importance of a structured public signature

The profile management page contains a set of fields that you must fill in correctly if you want to be identified for your participation in a blog.

The value of a public signature

By default, the articles you write are signed with your WordPress username: a data you use to connect to the administration interface of your blog and that shouldn’t be visible to your readers. Filling in the information in your user profile will give you a public signature that greatly improves the visibility of your work.

Indeed, a public signature does not have the same implications as if you simply enter your name at the end of your post: your online texts are scanned by robots used to reference web pages in search engines like Google. Indexing your work will be much more efficient if WordPress can tell them the author’s name right away.
The same applies to regular or sporadic contributors of your blog.

If you use the Zotero software, you will be able to directly see the impact of this information in terms of bibliographic referencing. Indeed, the bibliographic information of each post published on Hypotheses is perfectly identifiable by Zotero : the distinctive icon of the software, located in the web browser’s address bar at the time, is a testimony to this. Thus, a note whose signature is not correctly filled in will result in a faulty and unusable notice.

Display your signature

To manage your signature, go to the “Users” menu of your dashboard. The first step is to fill in the “Last name” and “First name” elements in the “Last name” field of the “Users” option. Then select in the drop-down menu of the “Name to display publicly” field your signature composed of your first name and surname.

Associated with an identifier and an e-mail address, your public signature is thus established. It will be valid for all the blogs in which you participate.

Featured image: MLK signature – Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum by Tim Evanson under CC BY-SA licence.

Cite this article as: "The importance of a structured public signature" from Marion Wesely. Published on The house of blogs, 07/09/2018. Link: https://houseofblogs.hypotheses.org/651.

Marion Wesely

Anciennement Chargée de l'accompagnement des communautés et de la valorisation des contenus d'Hypothèses / Community manager & communication officer for the Hypotheses platform (OpenEdition)

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