Bylaws

Being open and transparent is important to me and I think you need to know what’s going on behind the scenes.

  • All comments are moderated.  I do this so that I can read and enjoy every single comment. Comments on older posts don’t get overlooked when they have to be proved… I normally get to the moderating quickly so it shouldn’t take more than a few hours for your comments to appear. Once in a while a comment will get sent to the spam folder and those take a few days to get fished out.
  • I will never edit or censor your comments, but I won’t allow haters. They either go up or don’t.  The only time I will change the text of a comment is if the original commenter asks me directly to change something. Bless this Mess is a happy place with no room for hateful, attacking, or crude comments. If you don’t have anything nice to say to me, call your momma, she’ll listen to you. Opinions that are different than mine are great, perspective important and the like, but if it’s just plain mean it’s not gonna be seen.
  • All photos, content and recipes are protected. Pretty please don’t steal my content. If you’d like to repost one of my photos, go for it, just be sure you give credit to Bless this Mess  and link back to the original post. Failure to do so is a copyright violation. If you’d like to repost one of my recipes, please refrain from copying and pasting the content directly and instead link back to my blog. Duplicate content hurts the Google rankings for both of us. If you change my recipes, feel free to post them but a link back would be much appreciated.
  • I don’t sell or give away your personal information to anyone. The only time this policy changes is for delivery addresses for giveaway winners and only with your written permission by e-mail. Otherwise, your data is your data.
  • Product reviews are my own deal. If I received a product for free from a company or was compensated in any way for including their product on my blog, I will disclose that the first time I use the product on the blog. If I get sponsored to attend an event for free or at a reduced price, I will mention the sponsor in accordance with the sponsorship agreement. I will not accept payment to write a biased (read: positive) review on any product. All my reviews will be truthful and accurate to my own opinion, regardless of how I received the product. Many, many of the product reviews you see on Bless this Mess are completely uncompensated and the product has been purchased because it is something I love and use at home.
  • Giveaways are sponsored and executed by the companies I partner with. I receive compensation and/or  free sample for hosting a giveaway and only giveaway products I’ve used and really think you would like too. I’m the middle man in the giveaway scenario and do not ship or fulfill the prize. Therefore, I can’t be held liable for a missing prize. I will help you all I can, but the best course of action would be to talk directly with the giveaway sponsor. I’ll let you know how I was compensated on the giveaway post.
  • How some of the ads I run use cookies – the Internet kind 🙂 A cookie is a small file which asks permission to be placed on your computer’s hard drive. Once you agree, the file is added and the cookie helps analyse web traffic or lets you know when you visit a particular site. Cookies allow web applications to respond to you as an individual. The web application can tailor its operations to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences. We use traffic log cookies to identify which pages are being used. This helps us analyse data about web page traffic and improve our website in order to tailor it to customer needs. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes and then the data is removed from the system. Overall, cookies help us provide you with a better website, by enabling us to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not. A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us. You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. This may prevent you from taking full advantage of the website.

Feel free to let me know if you have any questions.