WARNING: If you get an email with subject “Rejected Federal Tax transfer” its bogus and contains an .exe file hidden in a .pdf file name. Delete delete delete!!
“Your Tax transaction (ID:xxxxxxxxxxx), recently sent from your checking account was canceled by the The Electronic Federal Tax Payment System.”
UPDATE: Another email going around with the subject: “Federal Tax payment canceled” – same thing as above.
Sounds strange doesn’t it? “keep a website out of the search engines”?? Why would anyone want to do that? Well there may be several reasons. For example, the site is in development and you don’t want it indexed before its ready to be indexed. Maybe you have a private member site that is for a small group like your family or church group and you don’t want it showing up all over Google. There could be a number of reasons you would want to do this. Well the good news is, you can — and its easy!
Important: It makes a difference if your site is already indexed in Google or Yahoo or where ever.
Method 1 - For a brand new website that has never been indexed at all…
1. First check to make sure it really hasn’t been indexed. You may think to yourself, “I just bought this and set it up on the hosting yesterday, it can’t be indexed already!”. But you’d be surprised how fast it can get picked up these days. Make sure it is NOT indexed at all! (in Google type “site:yourdomain.com” — without any quotes and change the domain to your domain. You should see a message
“Your search – site:yourdomain.com – did not match any documents.”
This is good, you may proceed to step 2. If it shows some indexed pages and not that message above, move to Method 2 below.
2. Create a robot.txt file with the following code:
# go away
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
3. Upload to the root of your website. DONE!
Now if Google, Yahoo, Bing or any other legitimate search agent tries to get it, it will be rejected right at the gate.
Method 2 - If your site is already indexed you must NOT put that robot.txt file there. “Why?” you ask. Because if its already indexed, the search engines cannot learn to de-index it because they cannot get in. Your existing indexed pages will remain indexed. So if your pages are showing up in the search results do the following:
1. Remove any robot.txt file (for now, you can put it back later when its all clear)
2. Add the following meta-tag to every page on the site… EVERY PAGE! <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,nofollow” />
3. Upload all pages to the live server and you are done.
Now you can just wait it out. It may take a few weeks for the search engines to catch on. If your site was in existence for some time and there were a large amount of pages, it will take quite a while to remove it all. For removing a dead site out of existence, see my article How to Remove an Entire Website from the Internet
Another step you can use if you have Google Webmaster Tools account is to “remove URL” feature. In Google Webmaster Tools under the domain you are working with select Site Configuration>> Crawler Access >> Remove URL (tab). If you can get your hands on that, it will remove the site from Google pretty quick. You have to have verified ownership of the account, so don’t try this with your competitors website, it won’t work. However, this will not remove it from other Search Engines like Yahoo. For that you will have to wait for the noindex, nofollow tag to take effect.
Also note that bad bots (naughty evil search agents) will still ignore these directives and follow and index all the day long. So this works to get your site out of the important nice search engines, not the naughty ones.
Inundated with stupid blog comment spam? Me too. Hey, I like real comments and questions that mean something and contribute to the blog; but annoying meaningless comment spam is a different story.
Here are some real examples:
You surely have a thing for this, I will return again and again to read your marvelous wit!
Just desired to comment and say which i genuinely like your weblog structure plus the way in which you create too. It’s very refreshing to see a blogger like you.. keep it up.
Wow, marvelous blog layout! How long have you been blogging for? you made blogging look easy. The overall look of your site is great, as well as the content!…
All lovely comments that betray their pretense in three ways:
Real people who just want to comment or ask a question almost always leave that field blank. That field is the first red flag that the comment I am about to read is garbage. Once in a while the comment seems to indicate that they actually read the post and have something to say. But usually not.
So, what’s my new policy… (I know… you are just dying to know)? Simple. Anything that makes it past the first major comment spam filter I will approve…but… I will remove the link entirely. That way, my blog will have tons of comments: good comments, bad comments, positive comments, negative comments, stupid comments, weird comments, broken English comments, all kinds of comments. The only ones that will get the backlink will be the ones that actually contribute to the discussion and pass the “comment spam” test.
So that’s the new idea… whatever actually gets through, I delete the website URL and approve it. See if that encourages more spam, or slows it down or does nothing at all. I know one thing, I will have a lot more comments on my blog! I may even turn on the dofollow plugin just to attract more and more weirdos. I use Conditional Captcha integrated with Akismet to prevent the worst stuff. It does a fantastic job. Over 19,000 comments blocked before they even got in the queue.
I will update this post in a few months to report how its going.
For more information about Web Design Hudson Valley NY, visit our main website.
I received an email today from Best Buy (supposedly) alerting me to a security breach involving a company they used for email marketing. These sort of emails always raise red flags. I checked out the headers on DNSstuff.com and everything checked out ok. I see some other web postings about it but I am still not confident its legit.
Here is the body of the email:
Dear Valued Best Buy Customer,
We have discovered that a former business partner’s files containing the email addresses of some Best Buy customers were accessed without authorization. For your security, we wanted to call this matter to your attention.We believe the only information taken was your email address, and that no other information was accessed. We do not believe that Best Buy was specifically targeted in this breach. We are continuing to investigate the situation, and are working closely with the appropriate officials to explore all possibilities.
We ask that you remain alert to incoming emails. Please be very cautious when opening links or attachments, even if they seem to come from legitimate sources. If you hover your cursor over a hotlink in an email and the URL that pops up makes you uncomfortable, it’s probably best not to click on that site. We encourage you to visit www.ftc.gov/idtheft or www.staysafeonline.org for additional information about how to safeguard your personal data.
Remember: Best Buy will never ask you to provide or confirm any information, including credit card numbers, unless you are on our secure e-commerce site, www.bestbuy.com, or call us directly to place an order. If you receive an email asking for personal information, delete it. It did not come from Best Buy.
We take your privacy very seriously, and we will continue to work diligently to protect your personal information and improve our data security procedures on an ongoing basis. If you have concerns, please contact Best Buy at privacymanager@bestbuy.com.
Sincerely,
Barry Judge
Executive Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer
Best Buy
Comment below if yo know anything more about this. Thanks!
All website owners start out with grand ideas about having their own bit of Internet success. The ease of getting something on the web these days creates the illusion that its a piece of cake to build a successful website. Small business owners soon find out that such success is elusive.
Where do they go wrong?
There are many ways to go wrong when building and managing a website.
1. Failure to plan – Like anything in life, failing to plan is planning to fail. For websites the axiom holds true. So many otherwise good business ideas float in the pool of mediocrity because the website that was crucial for success was not well planned.
2. Improper budget – Many website owners treat budgeting a website like buying a used car. They think that if they spend the least amount of money, they are getting the best deal. They have limited resources or they are just cheap and try to generate success without spending any money. Business doesn’t work that way. It takes money to make money, plain and simple.
3. Hiring the wrong people – By this I mean a lot of things. There are many ways to hire wrong. It usually comes out of the budget problem discussed earlier which can manifest itself in all kinds of bad decisions not the least of which is hiring the wrong person. They may hire a freelancer or student who is not capable of operating at a truly professional level. They may hire people from far-away countries like India or China and find out the hard way why that is usually a bad idea.
4. Failure to market the website - Quite often, website owners think they can “build it and they will come”. No they won’t. Unless there is some deliberate marketing activity, any website is doomed to failure.
5. Failure to maintain the website – The web is a dynamic environment. What was good 3 years ago, may be bad now. Software changes, design styles change, business and markets change. A website may have all kinds of technical problems that lead to failure simply from neglect. Not keeping things up to date, and not making sure everything works correctly all the time is a serious oversight that leads to failure.
6. Failure to expand and grow the website – Another common problem is putting up a basic website and leaving it alone for years. How does this make any sense? Dynamic websites with growing content and interesting features are far more likely to be successful than dry, boring commercial websites that are nothing more than an extended yellow-pages ad. Successful websites like successful businesses grow.
7. Failure to advertise off-line – There are dozens, if not hundreds of successful ways to advertise a business that have been around for ions. These off-line advertising methods are often ignored by website owners who think only about the Internet. Business cards, post cards, bill boards, radio ads, are all tried and true off-line advertising that still work very well.
8. Failure to optimize the website for Search Engines – Did you know that somewhere around 80% of people choose to “google” for things rather than open the old yellow pages? Who are the other 20% anyway? If you are not well positioned in the search engines for general terms relating to your business, you are missing out on a lot of business. Getting there for most websites is not by accident. Achieving top rankings for good and relevant key terms is a pro-active strategy that requires expertise. Many small businesses are either ignorant of this, or don’t see it as very important. They are very wrong.
9. Poor design and / or navigation – This again usually stems from lack of budget. It is very easy for a visitor to get bored or uninterested or confused on a website and just leave. Making the website pleasantly designed with solid navigation is healthy for visitors and search engines in keeping them on the site and reading. There is much thought and research that goes into how to best present your information. Ignoring this is doom.
10. Do it yourself - Another budget problem? Usually. Some people cannot bring themselves to spend a few thousand dollars on a professional website. So they instead choose to try and do it themselves. While there may be a select few who have the knack for success with such things, for the rest of the world its far wiser to hire a professional to do things correctly. Big companies who thrive on the ignorance of consumers make do-it-yourself websites a major business. They rake in the dough while you waste your time and money creating failure. Don’t bother.
The list can go on, but suffice it to say that there are many ways to go wrong when building and promoting a website. It often comes down to ignorance and weak budget. Website owners new to the game don’t understand what they are doing and make a lot of mistakes. It all starts with the planning and seeking out experienced professionals to help do it the right way.
I thought it would be good to set forth some Q & A about Privacy Domain Protection to help those new to domain registration get the facts straight and avoid making serious mistakes with a new website. This uses Domains by Proxy as an example, but is not meant to endorse or disparage any particular Privacy Domain Registration service.
Domain privacy or Private Domain Protection is a service offered by many domain name registrars. While registering a domain name a user can opt to buy “privacy” from the registrar. The domain registrar will replace the user’s WHOIS info with the info of a “forwarding service” such as “Domains by Proxy, Inc.” or eNom’s “Whois Privacy Protection Service”.
Yes. There is usually a recurring fee for this service.
When someone does a “whois” search for your domain name, instead of your actual contact information, they are presented with “proxy” information instead. This contact information tells the searcher that you have hidden your real contact info and reveals nothing about you.
Yes and no! The domain privacy service acts as a barrier to your real information. For normal searchers, there is no way to find out your contact information. However, if they have a legitimate claim under certain conditions which usually require court orders or law enforcement documentation, the Privacy service can release your contact info if compelled to do so. Otherwise, they will not.
No. This is a very bad idea. ICANN, the authoritative body that governs domain names, forbids domain registrants from providing false information. If one is caught doing so, ICANN has the right to seize the domain. Additionally, in the USA, there is currently efforts to make such activity criminal as a matter of fraud. Furthermore, if one were to get involved in civil court cases, such deception can be counted against one’s credibility.
Not really. I would advise against it for a few reasons. First of all, if you are a properly registered and legal business you should not want to hide your contact information. I don’t know of any business who does not want people to contact them. Secondly, it looks like you are hiding something when someone takes a few steps to ‘check you out’ before they do business with you. Perception is everything in business and looking a bit sneaky (even if that was not your intention) can negatively impact your business.
Yes. For one simple reason… an individual who is not a business has legitimate reason not to have their home address, phone number and email published on the Internet. For an individual who has a blog and writes interesting stuff that attracts a following, the last thing you want is your “number one fan” showing up on your doorstep or calling you at home. Moreover, marketers harvest this information in order to inundate you with email spam and junk mail. I believe this is the only case where privacy protection is advisable.
For micro businesses and home-based businesses it is wise to get a few things in order to separate your business from your personal life.
In doing these things, you can legitimately use this business info instead of your personal info in the domain contacts (whois) and at the same time protect your personal contact info from being compromised.
This can get very tricky… way more difficult than it should be. I use Domains by Proxy a service by Godaddy as an example, since this is very popular and I am most familiar with it personally. This is just my opinion, but Godaddy is only good for one thing… registering domain names. Everything else they provide is mostly fluff and trash designed to sell to the unsuspecting and inexperienced. It works for them, I guess; but not for people who know what they are doing with websites and domains. I digress.
Here are some simple facts that make the process of canceling your privacy service harder than it needs to be:
I could go on, but you get the idea. Once you’re in, its hard to get out. It can be done though, so don’t worry.
My view is that for very particular circumstances, namely; if you are a private individual and not a business, it may be wise to protect your personal info from the kooks on the Internet. But that’s about the only reason it is worthwhile. For businesses it is definitely a bad move for reasons explained above.
You may think this article is going to be biased and one-sided with the sole purpose of guiding you to my website and to contract with my company for web design services. Well, that’s not exactly true in this case. Sure, like anyone I would love to have you contact me about your web design needs so we can do some business, and I can pay the bills, but that’s really not why I am writing this. Give this a good read and see if I am telling the truth here.
The Internet is a great tool. I don’t know what I’d do without it. I would not have a web design business, I know that much for sure. When my kids ask me, “when you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?”. I always tell them
One of the major drawbacks of the Internet is that anyone with a computer can learn to post any information they want. This means although the information is plentiful and quickly accessible, determining what is legitimate and what is not can be difficult. In many cases the search engines have developed systems to filter out the crap and give precedence to the legitimate sources. However, this is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. With the continuing battle between search engine optimizers (SEO’s) and the major search engines, there are times where the optimizers get the upper hand.
When this legitimacy issue is applied to businesses, it can get very dicey. Anyone can post a website claiming to be a legitimate business and trying to attract customers to send their contact information. Certain business types or sectors are more prone to fake businesses than others. Web Design, for example, is highly prone to this sort of thing. Because it is so broad reaching with every business needing website services of some sort, it turns out to be a perfect category for deceptive websites.
I have observed several types of illegitamate web design “companies” poping up more and more frequently. The first is the less diabolical amateur. The amateur could often be a well-intentioned start-up who just lacks experience and know-how to do a professional job. Yet, they build a website and tout themseleves off as experienced pros. The second more sinister type are the foreign companies, particularly from India and nearby countries in Asia, who pose as legitamate US companies. They build websites that focus on a particular US locale and optimize it until it over takes many of the legitamate US companies from that region. Sometimes that create many fake sites that collectively gang up on the legitamate competitors and polute the first page results for the most important keywords. Therefore, when a local business in New York is looking for a local web designer in New York, they end up talking to some phony 5000 miles away who says he has an office in Manhattan. They under cut the typical pricing for the region because the work is done in their home country for 10% of the cost in the US.
Don’t get me wrong, if foreign companies want to compete that’s fine.. What I object to is competing under false pretenses. Pretending to be a US business when you are not.
For more information about Web Design Hudson Valley NY, visit our main website.
So you need to completely destroy and remove your website and try not leave any traces behind. Well.. its not that easy to remove the pages from the search engines. But there is a way to speed up the process.
I had hard time finding a clear answer on this, but here is the solution I found that works.
This is for a typical Linux web server. I don’t know about IIS
***WARNING – This really does get rid of your website. So be sure you want to do this.
Need cheap hosting? How about 6 months free?
1. Backup your site (if you want to).
2. Completely delete all files from your web root. (via ftp or ssh) This includes any databases or applications like WordPress. If you have server access and the ability to terminate the account, do that. Then recreate a new account on the same domain with nothing on the web.
3.Create or update a robot.txt file with the following:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
4. Update your .htaccess file with the following
Redirect 410 /
(get rid of all else in the .htaccess).
5. Upload the robots.txt and .htaccess to the web server.
The result of this is that robots cannot index your site. There’s nothing there anyway but this tells them to go away and don’t come back. The 410 error is “GONE” – the resource is intentionally and permanently removed. This will speed up the process of search engines removing content from their index.
It may still take several weeks or months for your site to be gone… gone.. gone. But eventually, it will be.
“If something seems to good to be true, it probably is”, said Adam to Eve…
Notwithstanding the above common sense axiom that has been around since the dawn of time, people are stupid. In today’s competitive web hosting market, many of the heavy-hitters have come up with an interesting feature. Its what the scientists call a “gimmick”.
gim·mick
–noun
1. an ingenious or novel device, scheme, or stratagem, esp. one designed to attract attention or increase appeal.
2. a concealed, usually devious aspect or feature of something, as a plan or deal: An offer that good must have a gimmick in it somewhere.
3. an offer for unlimited bandwidth and/ or unlimited disk storage on any web hosting plan.
What’s wrong with this offer? Its not exactly true. Nothing in web hosting is unlimited. Common sense will tell you that.
So what is it then? Its a marketing ploy, plain and simple. Realize that all servers are limited. For example, here’s an offer for six months free hosting with all the unlimited stuff you can want. Now, don’t get me wrong… if you are a very small website and don’t think you will grow much in the next year or two… go for the cheap stuff. There really is nothing wrong with that.
Back to the point. There is no such thing as a computer with infinite bandwidth and storage. Moreover, if it were legitimate, why would larger companies have to pay hundreds (or thousands) per month on dedicated servers… with clearly defined limitations? Maybe their IT people are stupid and they should put eBay on one of these unlimited web hosting plans for $5 per month.
One way to tell if something rings true or not is to take it to its logical extreme. Using eBay or Amazon as an example, you can see that there is a reason they spend big money on their limited servers. So what is the catch anyway? I’ll explain…
The small priced web hosting is in reality shared hosting. This means that you are sharing server space, bandwidth, databases, and IP addresses with hundreds or thousands of other small websites. If they can cram 5000 websites onto one dedicated server at $5 a pop, that’s $25,000 per month. Of course the have to pay to operate the thing, but lets just say its a nice profit. On a recent domain research project I found the website domain I was researching was on a Godaddy server with 5,283 other websites. WOW.
Is shared hosting bad? No, its a great idea for small websites who do not use a lot of resources. Aye, there’s the rub… who do not use a lot of resources - this is how its done. Those micro sites will never, ever come near the real limitations of the server. As a matter of fact 99% hardly move the needle. So why not give them unlimited stuff… they never really use it anyway. They will think they have the best hosting plan in the world and it will make ANY limitation on any other host seem so restrictive.
So what’s the problem? The problem occurs when you actually do grow and start impacting the server. That’s when the hosting company will remind you of the TOS (terms of service) agreement you agreed to when you started. You know, the 942 page legal document you were suppose to read before you agreed? There they will point out one or several clauses that denote any number of limitations that the average website owner wouldn’t understand even if they actually did read the TOS. The usual suspects are CPU and memory. When a website gets real busy, it uses more CPU and Memory. Each shared account has limits, or at least is monitored for unusual increases in activity. Once you trigger the alarm, you will be asked to kindly slow down the usage of your server, or upgrade.
I did a test with hostmonster.com who offer their bogus “Unlimited” cheap hosting. I set up my hosting server with about 40 accounts to run backups and save those backups on the Unlimited hostmonster.com account. It worked well for a while until I got a notice that I violated the TOS because I was storing backup files on my hosting account. Oh.. so it is limited? Certain files are forbidden such a .zip or .rar. Really? That’s a surprise.
Another example is when I had a client site, whom I was doing SEO work and help make their site much stronger in the search engines. After a while they were getting much busier than ever and some blog posts were taking on a few hundred visitors per day. This slowed the site badly and eventually it was shut down by the host. The reason; too much traffic was causing CPUand memory issues. We had to upgrade it.
Anyone can test this for themselves. Jut move a site that has a decent amount of traffic to a host like hostmonster.com and promote it well. Or if you are lucky or good enough to have a strong site already, try it on one of these unlimited hosts. It won’t take long before you are forced to move or upgrade.
When this happens, I strongly recommend that you move to a host that does not offer such nonsense. If you upgrade with one of these unlimited gimmickers they accomplished their goal with you; lured you in then forced you to pay more. That’s their whole point. It is better to find a more reliable and honest host to begin with. Here’s a premium hosting plan that is about the same price as those cheap “unlimited hosting” plans but has actual limits? Wonder why? Because its higher quality hosting and they don’t get gimmicky.
Most users do not benefit from these supposed non-limitations because they do not use enough resources to even need such a thing. The truth is found in the users who do put it to the test and find out what the limitations really are. Its just a dishonest marketing trick, plain and simple. Why trust companies who count on your ignorance to sell you their product? After reading this, you are no longer ignorant.
Need help changing hosts and migrating your site? We do it for a living and can help.
So your WordPress permalinks admin page is blank and permalinks are not working or doing weird things? You’re not alone. Its broken for sure. This is a problem that started with the latter 2.8 or 2.9 version.
I scoured the Internet and racked my brain on this, but found a real solution. I am republishing it here as it was buried down in some forum and not very easy to find.
SOLUTION!
This is for standard Linux web hosting as it relates to a server directive found in the admin area code. For Windows servers, this probably won’t help, but may lead you in the right direction.
1. Using your favorite html/ php editor, open wp-admin/includes/misc.php
2. Find function
function got_mod_rewriteIts around line 18 or so.3. Comment out the existing function /* this is commented out */ — You can delete this function if you are sure the solution works, to be safe, just comment it out in case you need to put it back.
4. Add the following instead:
function got_mod_rewrite() {
$got_rewrite = true;
return apply_filters('got_rewrite', $got_rewrite);
}
5. Save and upload.Now go back to your admin page and click the permalinks menu item. Should work as expected now.
NOTE: When you update to the next version of WordPress, this will be overwritten and you will need to go back and fix.
Comment below if it worked or not. Thanks!
UPDATE: This regains access to the permalinks admin area. You still have to follow the instructions on there to get the permalinks working.