It was 1015 The Point in Tampa, Florida’s Nearly Impossible Question, and we have no idea when, but suspect it was after Tampa’s News 10 mentioned us last April.

Anyway, this is old news. Eight months later, bed bugs have had a lot more press, as they’ve continued to spread. This means bed bugs are becoming so well known they may soon not be as eligible for the “Nearly Impossible Question.”

• Tampa Bay and Southwest Florida residents: do not use the DE from your pool
• Are you in the UK? Got bed bugs? Or have you had bed bugs?
• new WNYC radio piece on bed bugs
• Abbey the Bed Bug Dog: news report

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New feature: The last ten discussions in the forums are now linked from the sidebar. So from the top of the inner sidebar, these items appear:

• search box
• recent blog comments,
• recent forum posts,
• recent blog posts, and so on.

Many people read the blog, and many people read the forums, but often not the same people. And that’s just fine!

But I thought it would be nice to give blog-readers a taste of what’s going on on the forums (yesterday alone, there were 150 posts).

The Clustermap of Bedbugger.com readers worldwide, and location of last 10 visitors have moved to bottom inner sidebar.

Feedback (raves as well as complaints) welcome.

• Do you love Bedbugger? Prove it!
• Do not adjust your set
• National Allergy mattress encasement test results
• Shout out to bedbuggers in San Francisco

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Thanks for your patience!

• In London? Got bed bugs (or think you do)?
• Tales of Bed Bug Woe: The Return
• Anyone in the Bronx?
• Do you love Bedbugger? Prove it!

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In my latest attempt to fix it, we lost some of the links and content buttons. (It fixed the character sets, but ate so much data from recent posts, I had to undo it.) Don’t be alarmed. The site should be back to “normal” now in that regard.

The exception is that the Spanish FAQs are temporarily down. I did not want to torture our Spanish-speaking friends with barely-legible FAQs. I hope to have them working again soon.

• Need for Spanish resources on bed bugs
• Update: bed bug resources in Spanish: PCO assistance needed!
• Update: bed bug resources in Spanish: PCO assistance needed!
• Russian, Chinese, Spanish fact sheets

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Brown describes his interaction with his management company (which went better than expected). They did not even want to see a sample bed bug, as he expected they would. Not to be alarmist, but if the management company don’t want to see a bed bug, and you have a ziploc bag of 12 of them readily available, there’s a pretty good chance you are not the first person in the building to complain about bed bugs.

The usual response to the first person in a building to claim they’re being bitten by bed bugs in their apartment is complete and utter disbelief. Brown was right to trap samples, since he saw them. Many Bedbuggers are not so lucky. I use the term “lucky” in the relative sense, as in knowing what is biting you is better than not knowing. Not as in “lucky-to-have-bed-bugs.” Despite recent requests of one reader who doesn’t have bed bugs for a sample of them to experiment on, the phrase “lucky to have bed bugs” is yet to be uttered or written, from what I can see.

Brown also complains about his experience searching for bed bug info on the internets:

Sadly, information about bedbugs on the internet is like information about anything on the internet: unreliable and hugely varying in quality.

The first search results are the big-name exterminators and Wikipedia. Next are the bed-bug equivalents of penis-enlargement advertisements: a site that sells a spray to kill all bedbugs without hassle and another that promises same day elimination of the creatures. From my, admittedly vague, understanding the only same-day solution to bedbugs is a flame thrower and a will for arson, so I am skeptical.

Next come the overenthusiastic university entomology departments (a typical entry, from Cornell: “under ideal conditions bedbugs feed regularly when temperatures are above 70 degrees.” The ‘ideal conditions’ in question are, of course, unlivable.) Finally there are the blogs, including bedbugger.com, which I am willing to say is overwhelmingly the absolute no-holds-barred best bedbug website ever invented ever. Of course, they were the only ones to reference my last post, so my objectivity is not absolute.

The shout out is much appreciated! Though somewhat ironic. If Brown (and others) would like to improve the bed bug search results, why not link to useful sites like bedbugger.com? Linking raises page rankings, mentioning doesn’t. (Perhaps Arianna does not permit linking in her blogs.)

The Truth Laid Bare, which ranks website popularity, today lists us as #1629 most popular blog in terms of traffic (number of people reading each day). But we are #51338, if popularity is judged in terms of links to our site from other sites. The discrepancy is quite something, don’t you think? A glance at the other sites listed suggests it is unusually large.

This has something to do with why it is hard to find bedbugger.com if you do a google search for “bed bugs”. Yes, it’s true. I have stooped to groveling for links. If you have a bed bug-related website, and you find this site useful, please give bedbugger.com a link.

• Do you love Bedbugger? Prove it!
• Do not adjust your set
• Disney guests paid off to keep quiet about bed bugs
• cute, pink, cuddly bed bugs?!?

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Sometimes the day to day running of the blog and forums, on top of other responsibilities, means the details take a backseat. So last Tuesday was actually the one-year anniversary of the blog. And though all day long I had a strange feeling, like I had forgotten someone’s birthday (and I could not, for the life of me, remember whose), I completely missed it.

It was a year and six days ago, almost to the minute, that this blog was launched.

I originally decided to set it up to house FAQs made up of suggestions by folks on the Bedbugger Yahoo group.

But pretty quickly, I realized that following the bed bug news as it unfolded would be pretty important too.

Then people started leaving comments–everywhere, on any post at all–asking for advice.

Thus began the Tales of Bed Bug Woe, a series of catch-all comments threads, where current bed bug infestations could get and share advice with others.

That was a bit of a clumsy solution, so when I could, I moved us over from wordpress.com, and put up the Bedbugger forums, so people could talk to each other and post their own queries in a more user-friendly way.

From the start, this site would have been nothing–and pointless–without your participation. So I thank you, readers, those who have written blog posts, those ad hoc admins who kept the ship sailing when I had a few much-needed vacations, our Spanish translator who has been very helpful in spreading word of bed bugs to the Spanish-speaking internet, and the 574 registered users who have posted comments on the blog or posted in the forums.

I started listing on my notepad all the people who have contributed so much. First the blog posters, then the faithful commenters and forum participants. And then I stopped. I realized that if I even tried to name the people who regularly comment or so generously share advice with others, I would be omitting and potentially insulting many others. So I hope you all know how much your contributions are appreciated, and how completely responsible you all are for making this blog happen. And I will try and remember to thank you all individually.

I hate to wax maudlin, but you’ve made me laugh and you’ve made me cry. Thanks, sincerely, for your contributions.

We haven’t stopped growing. We now have around 1100 different visitors every day, and 70% of those are new to the site each day. They look at an average of four pages per visit (4400 hits a day). It kind of scares me that every day more than 700 new people come on the site, folks who’ve never been here before, since I see it as a sign of how fast the problem is spreading. But I am hopeful that it means awareness continues to spread too, and this can only be a good thing.

We also haven’t stopped changing: I hope to keep adding new features as ideas present themselves for what might be useful. And I am still looking for a graphic that takes us closer to our roots. A recent site update has made some of the characters in old posts and Spanish posts go all screwy, and it needs to be fixed.

I seriously hope that this site outlives its usefulness, and that we’re not still talking about bed bugs in five or ten years.

But if we are, with your help, I will do my best to make sure this site is still there for those that need it.

• Do not adjust your set
• Do you love Bedbugger? Prove it!
• FAQ: I am not in the US. Can you tell me where to buy XL ziplocs, or what mattress covers are called in my country?
• Need help? Tales of Bed Bug Woe 2.0

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The Amazon.com links there direct you to the types of products and provide a photo which you might find useful if you’re looking in stores. Plus, any purchases you make, Amazon will give Bedbugger a small commission, which helps keep the site going. Even if you’re buying a blender or a book, you can help Bedbugger (at no additional cost to you) by sarting from one of those Amazon.com links on the Useful Stuff page.

The National Allergy link (for mattress and pillow covers) right here, on the Useful Stuff page and via the National Allergy logos elsewhere on the site gets you a discount too.

• National Allergy mattress encasement test results
• New: discount on National Allergy covers for Bedbugger readers!
• New mattress encasement comparison test data
• The B-word was used in the Brookstone Catalog!

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If you’ve looked at the FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) page recently, you probably had to strain your eyes to find what you were looking for. It was a bit of a mess. I am proud to say we now have way too many FAQs for one page, and have for some time.

So I have finally gotten around to creating seven sub-pages. The main FAQs page is still at http://bedbugger.com/faqs/ and it looks exactly like this:

Bed Bugs 101: the following two FAQs should be read by everyone:

Think you have bed bugs? Some do’s and don’ts

What do bed bugs look like? How do I know I have them? What else could be causing similar symptoms?

The remainder of our FAQs are grouped by topic as follows:

pest control, treatment, pesticides, natural remedies, etc.

who pays for bed bug treatment, and other legal issues

getting bed bugs out of your bed (and keeping them out)

eliminating bed bugs from clothes, shoes, and other stuff

bed bugs, skin, and bites

travel: how to avoid getting bed bugs or giving them to others

questions about Bedbugger.com and how to use it

The same issues come up with so many of us that I really believe most people should read most of the FAQs (saving some of the more esoteric ones like, “Is there an insect that will eat bed bugs?”)

I also want to note that I only cross-posted two of the FAQs–all the rest are only under one category. If you take part in the forums and send people to the FAQs (thank you!), you might want to familiarise yourself with how they are grouped.

But I do hope that the new structure helps people find what they’re looking for more quickly–and that it helps us send them there more quickly.

Please comment below if you have any feedback or suggestions (since commenting on this on the FAQs pages will get kind of messy).

• Update: bed bug resources in Spanish: PCO assistance needed!
• updated FAQ
• Welcome Bedbuggers!
• Update: bed bug resources in Spanish: PCO assistance needed!

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I realize this is difficult for those of you with the most need of Bedbugger right now, so don’t panic. In the olden days (before the end of March of this year, to be exact), Bedbuggers used to give each other advice and wisdom in one, long thread known as “Tales of Bed Bug Woe.” As much as I know the forums are much better at allowing you to post your own queries and answers and suggestions, for now, please use the Tales of Woe thread which will come right above this one.

Just leave a comment with your questions, problems, and answers. It’s a bit more cozy than the forums, but it works, trust me.

And I will get those forums back up for you ASAP. I expect this to be a headache rather than a permanent loss of data.
But just in case, prayers, good vibrations, knocking on wood, etc. welcomed.

• Tales of Bed Bug Woe: ask questions, share advice and stories about bed bugs
• Tales of Bed Bug Woe: The Return
• updated FAQ
• Share your Tales of Bed Bug Woe

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