Pants: Inked By Erin

To help soothe the disappointment of my lost Pantsing opportunity, I went to rev.iew.me and did eenie meenie on the websites page. Lo, my cursor fell on Inked By Erin, which is quite a nice coincidence given our history. Fancy that.

Erin is currently sporting a layout with some chick I recognise from Alice in Wonderland which, incidentally, is quite a weird film. I have read the book, but not for a loooooooong time (since I was like, 7?) but vaguely remember it was quite large and featured a lot more on riddles and things than Tim Burton’s version. Anyway, what? This is a Pants Award Jem, not a movie review.

So what about Erin’s site is deserving of a Pants Award? It wasn’t the blatant misuse of a celebrity image (and I’m not even talking about copyright; what’s the relevance of the Hathaway girl? (Woot, I remembered her name!)) and nor was it the weird/slightly boring About page which leaves me wanting to slit my wrists in emo solidarity… no, it was (surprise surprise) the Tutorials.

When I saw Erin’s CSS tutorials, I thought maybe I’d been too harsh on her. Her Multiple Columns tutorial, while lacking any real depth, uses advanced CSS3 techniques which I would typically assume to be beyond teenyboppers. (Ouch.) Something struck me about the text though… this line in particular:

Multiple columns are a major face of laying out text – newspapers have used them for decades.

I just didn’t get how something can be a major face of something else. One Googleage later and I discover that actually, multiple columns are a major facet of laying out text. To be honest, the sentence is still fairly clumsy, but hey, at least it makes sense now.

Of course now we have a dilemma. Which is more worthy of a Pants Award, stealing code and copy from an article and distributing it on your site, or changing said copy because you don’t understand what the word “facet” means?

30 seconds later and we can easily see where some of those other CSS tutorials came from: the same CSS3 series from Design Shack. I don’t know how she gets away with it to be honest, especially when you compare the quality of writing between the two. This line from one of Erin’s WordPress tutorials says all that needs to be said there:

Get the coding form you previous layout & look at in in you code editor.

Sigh.

I was hoping to be able to chuck a review of a review in her for your viewing pleasure, but unfortunately she’s not actually reviewed any websites yet. No surprise, given that one of her requirements is:

You must link me on every page of your website until the review is completed. I want to see my link on your website before you submit the application. I will check on this and deny any applications that do not have my link up.

I didn’t even require a link back on a single page when I was reviewing, let alone across an entire website. What has the WPR world come to?!

Should I point out the hypocrisy of reviewing HTML/CSS validation when her own website doesn’t validate, and indeed contains newbie mistakes like nesting header tags inside a paragraph? Oops, just did.

So. Erin, for being so lame as to steal someone else’s work; for writing shitty pointless tutorials of your own; for being an ignorant numpty when it comes to infant feeding; and ultimately, for trolling me all those months ago … have a pants award!

16th Pants Award

(Yes, this is the same pants as last time. Yes, I’ve run out of pictures of pants. Send me some!)

28 Comments

  1. I love the word facet. *cries*

    That note about reviews though; when I did reviews I just asked for a link back somewhere. It didn’t have to be on every page. (Hard to believe it’s only been less than a year since I stopped. :S) I think I stopped reviewing because every time I pointed out the problems in people’s websites they didn’t seem to fix them. :P

    • Jem

      15 Jun at 1:29 pm

      I have no problem with people asking for a link back. Decent reviews are hard work! One on every page is fucking cheeky though.

      Incidentally, I never turn down reviews ;) *cough*

  2. Newspapers have been using them for decades? I don’t care who wrote that (i.e. Erin or Design Shack), but that’s a serious understatement. Columns have been used for typesetting since the incunabula. It’s a practice well over 500 years old. And newspapers have been around for well more than a few decades. Try a few centuries. //ULTIMATE DESIGN NERD RANT

    Also, ilu for posting this.

    • Stephanie

      15 Jun at 3:29 pm

      I WAS GOING TO SAY THE SAME THING. Beat me to the punch, though ;)

  3. PANTS! I missed them so much lol. What’s the point of stealing content for your own personal blog? This Erin chick needs to stop copying people and try being herself. She is worthy of the Pants award just because she is going around and stealing content. Now, honestly, who are these badly written tutorials benefiting? No one, that’s who. That’s just a waste of precious interwebs.

  4. I had no idea her tutorials were plagiarised (truthfully, I’ve never actually read any of her content — but still). Although, I suppose it makes sense, given that she doesn’t appear to utilise many of those techniques expressed in said tutorials.

    In any case, I was thoroughly delighted to receive this in my reader. Still not as entertaining as your mummy posts, though. :D

  5. “Erin is the Tina Fey of the WWW” … LAWL

  6. I sorely missed pants and I’m so glad it’s back.

    I for some reason thought that websites like this didn’t really exist anymore, but then realized that I’m grown up and now frequent more grown up sections of the interwebs. I think I’m going to go back to pretending they don’t exist now in an effort to keep my blood pressure down.

  7. Do those pants have pockets? :D

  8. Yessssssss! They’re back! :D

    I haven’t seen a layout like this in ages…

  9. Although this made me ROFL I must admit I am nervous now that my site is on Rev.iew.me. :S

    Anyway thanks for putting that all out there, I never grew the balls to do it myself, because I know I have flaws and I don’t like when people are petty and try to fight back. (Makes sense? O.o) Anyway I can’t wait to see more pants awards. :P

    • Jem

      15 Jun at 7:57 pm

      The fact that she is on rev.iew.me is just a happy coincidence, she would’ve been pantsed sooner or later anyway :)

  10. I’ll admit that you and I have had our differences, but wow. This was rather shocking. I hadn’t realized that Erin had plagiarized many things in her tutorials. I’ve actually only used like one of her tutorials so that I could learn how to convert layouts to WordPress themes. (I don’t follow many tutorials well, especially if they’re too in depth. So her’s being as simple as they are, was better for me.)

    As I read through your review here, I stopped upon reading the statement of her reviews. Erin has actually written multiple reviews. So when I read that you hadn’t see/found any, I had to go to her website and check. I see now that she had taken them down. I had only read one of her reviews, but at that time, she had multiple complete reviews up on her website. I’m kind of surprised to now see that they were taken down.

    I did find this to be very interesting. I appreciate you bringing all of this to my attention and for taking the time to write this. Pants award! Lol

    (Sorry, I kind of wrote a lot of BS here.)

  11. I was sore to hear about the last potential Pants Award recipient getting away from you, so I’m beyond glad to see you were able to find one that was still obviously deserving of the title. :D

    You pointed out some great quotes from her site, especially those from her [not stolen] tutorials. Some of my own “favorite” parts of her tutorials include these gems:

    From her “Cool Header Image” Photoshop tutorial page:

    “I create some of my headers [with most of a person cropped out] because it doesn’t look like I’m using a celebrity image but I am. You can use pretty much any celebrity image or a picture of a random person. Just make sure you can only see-at most-half of their face.”

    This one from her “Troubleshooting Errors” tutorial just baffled me:

    “If the [WordPress plugin] is not installing, this is not your issue. This is the designer’s issue. You can either shoot an email over to your host and or the designer of the plugin and they should be able to resolve your issue.”

    Then her entire “Using SolusVM” tutorial because it surely cannot possibly qualify as an actual tutorial…

    As you said to Domenica above, “she would have been pantsed sooner or later anyway” and that is so painfully true. I’m glad it finally happened so now other communities and websites can reference this award/post when dealing with her (and her site). If only we had that a year or so ago…

    …although a year ago you had the breastfeeding trolling pandemonium which I totally forgot was this same Erin. That post, the screenshots, and the comments across the internet pretty much guaranteed her getting PLENTY of titles, honors, and awards of a more unorthodox kind. Is there a Razzie Awards for the internet blog-o-sphere? If there is she would sweep them.

    So hooray for the Pants Award! :) Thank you for posting it Jem!

    • LOL at the WP plugin error. Never really got these “not my fault, it’s the designer who made the theme”… sheesh! Isn’t it your site? Aren’t you responsible for its correct working?

      Weird people…

      Jem: Yay! Pants!

      • Yeahhhhhhh. I’m SO TOTALLY sure that the creators of an ultra-popular plugin like All In One SEO Pack or whatever that’s been downloaded 7,998,862 times (as of June 17th 12:44am) are going to answer your personal email asking them to fix your installation problem(s) just because you’re too stupid to know how to troubleshoot & fix it yourself!

        Snort.

      • Haley: My problem however is that these people lay the blame for their site not working on the plugin author, not even trying to fix it.
        eg: uninstall the plugin if it crashes.

        It’s fine to ask plugin/theme author for help, but not with the attitude of “hey your plugin sucks because it doesn’t work with my theme”. *rolls eyes*

  12. Hahaha missed these

  13. Huh. I stumbled upon her website some time ago and didn’t realize that was a celebrity image in her header. I thought it was actually a picture of her and she thought she was just that important, heh.

    The thing that got me in her “reviews” the most was this:

    “I will email you when I start your review you may not make any changes to your website until you get an email from me saying that I have finished your review. Until you get the email saying that I have started your review you may make small changes to your website.”

    So people aren’t allowed to update AT ALL “while she is writing their review”? Getting a review from her is that much of an honor?

  14. After reading this, I thought I’d go and take a look at Erin’s website but (surprise, surprise) it’s now on Maintenance Mode. It seems she’s “working on the website and trying to make everything better”.
    Dammit.

  15. Oh man, I was too late! All I got to see was the 500 Internal Server Error now! :( Screenshots anybody?

  16. You’ve got power! I’m now keen on seeing Erin’s site when it comes back from revamp-mode. To see if the constructive critisism has actually hit home.

  17. Hahaha! I love Pants awards :)

  18. Funny. Her site’s in maintenance mode, imagine that.

    I found that she runs hostwish.net. There are no list of packages on her site, so I had to actually start an order. She charges $2 per month for Frontpage extension, WTF is that? It’s really just as easy as checking a box in the “create a new account” function in WHM. I really hope nobody is hosted through her. She’s also offering dedicated and virtual servers, wonder if she’s capable of actually offering the support required when people run into problems with their systems. Judging by her tutorials on basic web building, I doubt she would be of any help if serious help was required.

    Check out her “Stuff to add to IBE” section, and 3 of the 7 listing include “Nothing”, so why exactly are they on the list if they aren’t going to be enhanced? -shrug-

    Arggh, I’m getting way to old for this kiddie shit. Something in me doesn’t justify picking on a baby.

    • Jem

      24 Jun at 3:47 pm

      At 17, she’s not exactly the youngest of my Pants recipients ;p

  19. aw lamesauce.

    Her site is under maintenance. You scared her away.