HeadsetOptions Web Design, SEO, WordPress, Etcetra

This plugin is probably one of the most useful and valuable tools to have if your site had used WordPress 2.3 ever (even for a day!). The plugin simply points out exploits and shows you the location of the malicious files, which you can then find and easily delete via FTP. You will be surprised how many such hacker installed files you will find, especially in unused themes and plugins (might not pose a threat, but must be removed nonetheless.) And if you are still using WordPress versions older than 2.5.1, you must upgrade immediately, else its only a matter of time before your site will get hacked.

Jonathan Zittrain, professor of internet governance at the Oxford Internet Institute, who is also the author of “The Future Of The Internet And How To Stop It“, says that from 1998, hacking exploded. It is now all about making money. Listen to his interview on BBC Radio 4.

I will be experimenting with partial feeds for the rest of this month. The splogger issues with my content is not yet resolved. I know switching to partial feed is going ass backwards and will inconvenience those who read my blogs on readers, but bear with me while I figure a work around.

If your site gets any traffic at all, chances are your RSS feed is scraped and misused by some one trying to score on SERP for the work you have toiled on. This very blog is constantly ripped by sploggers who have no regards to intellectual property rights or just plain simple dumb to realize they are stealing. Here are three sites where you can find the entire content of our blog scraped/ripped/stolen and posted as their own. Of course I did not link to them because I really don’t want you to visit them:

myblogmix.com (this m^*&*0 f$%*r even uses one of our themes on his splog!)
frenzygraphics.com
urlfan.com

How do you stop them?
Jonathan Bailey, a security expert (Plagiarism Today) who also writes on Blog Herald, lists 6 steps to identify and fight content theft. We religiously followed the suggestions for months now (that post on BH was from last November), but none worked thus far. Google is yet to acknowledged our letters (used his cease and desist letter templates, which is a good source, thanks!). I even took solace in thinking maybe they have a backlog or that they will eventually write back, but nothing really happened.

When a client of mine upgraded to WordPress 2.5.1 from WordPress 2.5 she encountered an issue where the database will not upgrading, resulting in the “WordPress 2.5.1 is available! Please update now.” flashing in her dashboard and every other admin pages. On initial search of the WordPress support forum, we found the following strings that pointed us in a certain direction:

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/172004
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/168964

Neither strings suggest solutions that are easy or safe, however, I urge you check these posts and then search your install via file manager/FTP/WebFTP to ensure you do not have files with the following extensions anywhere within a writable …

For good SEO, it is preferential to open your comment authors URI in a new page. Why you might ask? Google and other search engines track sites you visit, they can tell what that site contains (obviously), how long you stayed there and where you went next. The intended use of this information is to find if the sites you visited were relevant to your search keyword and/or if all the sites you visit are related. That could also work against you if your site get a lot of spammers commenting on it. Here’s how.

Let’s say you get a comment on your site that look legit, so you want …

I try not to write such posts, but the frustrations expressed by my clients who host on Yahoo! Small Business compels me to point out the obvious shortcomings. This non-exhaustive list is in no particular order, it’s just the top 4 reasons why I would not recommend/host any site on Yahoo!
One-Click-Install
A client recently used the one click install feature to add WP to her site, within days it was hacked and she lost everything she had moved from another CMS (luckily she had backups). The problem was the defunct version of WP that Yahoo! installs, WP version 2.0.2, which beats …

I guess folks at WordPress.com start talking about copyright violation only when it hits home. When we cried foul about WordPress themers ripping our work and calling it their own, no one cared except Thomas (and Lorelle).

The reality is, you can’t stop people from stealing content or code, it pinches those of us on the receiving end and it sucks. Google can de-index a few sites, but many more will pop-up.

Although Google is the search engine leader, how many …

I recently received this email, I am sure many of you have encountered such Spam, this one however caught my attention because if I were a terrorist, I would totally use this strategy to find sponsors.

Read on.
Dear Sir,

We are an investment company that specializes in co-ordinating highyielding investments for our clients who want to make confidential investments in any part of the world. We have clients who are interested in making investments worth millions of US dollars but specifically want to invest confidentially by appointing a third party to manage the investments on their behalf.

We are contacting you to know your ability and willingness to make and manage such investments with little supervision. Please confirm to us that you will work with us to achieve the investment objectives of our clients.The fund is available in a secure bank account and shall be released upon favourable agreement with you. Please note that we want to make the investment as confidential as ever. If we do not hear from you in 7 days, we shall consider it that you are not favourably disposed to accept our offer. You can contact me on forglobalinvestment@*****.*** I await your urgent response.

Faithfully,

Fadiga Khalid

For:Global Investments Ltd.

BBC’s “Have Your Say� should really be relabeled “Have Your Say, And If We Find Your Comments Agreeable With Our Views, We Will Post It, Else, We Will Pretend Like You Don’t Exist.�

F*** BBC, f*** censorship.