Sometimes It’s Really Nice to Know

I write articles mostly for my own sake– because I like to write, because I have found a way of doing something or found a great site and just want to talk about it. This blog was initially a testing blog, but it formed into a geeky-kind of blog where I could post about all the cool things I discover as I surf the internet, play with blog software, or cute things to buy at Ju Ju Be.

It’s really, really cool to meet new people, make new friends, and find that people are helped by what I write. This is just amazing and it really makes my day. One such lady is Fida Abbott. She is from Indonesia, but came to the United States to marry and raise her children. She lives in the Northeast– imagine leaving tropical Indonesia for the chilly Northeast! But she is a star. I don’t think I have ever met anyone with such a sweet, tender, feminine heart. She is a real example of what a gracious woman of God should be. And she is always giving me internet awards and saying she is helped by my blog posts! Amazing!

I recently gave her the I Heart Your Blog Award, and in return, she gave the award right back to me and then she created a special badge of honor. I am the second recipient of her special badge. This is a great honor, because Fida has some very loving friends and she hardly knows little old me!

So thank you, Fida. You are a dear friend. God bless you.

Hotlinking Protection Messes With Htaccess File

Live and learn. And I usually learn the hard way, lol. Nothing like experience to aid a little lesson along.

I’ve discovered that toggling on and off the hotlinking features in my cPanel (where I host my blogs) messes with my blogs’ permalinks. This seems to be a common problem. What happens is that the hotlinking changes the coding to the .htaccess file of your blog.

For your information: “hotlinking” is the term we use for the stealing of bandwidth. Let’s say you upload a photo of your weight loss pills to your web host’s server, in your image folder. You then post the photo onto your blog. That photo is being hosted by your web host, at your expense. (Sites like Flickr and Photobucket host your photos for free). Hotlinking is when a person takes the url of your photo from your web host, and puts it on their website. The “energy draw” for the photo at your site and at the thief’s site is coming from your web host and thus using up your bandwidth– a service you are paying for. You are being robbed. You can prevent hotlinking by turning the feature on at your web host’s cPanel, but you risk changing your .htaccesss file, and ruining your permalinks. (Basically what toggling the hotlinking feature does is it deletes the line “RewriteEngine on” line from your .htaccess file. Adding this back in to your .htaccess file will restore your permalinks.

But you DO want to stop the hotlinking of your images. So I found some sites with information about it. Mind you, I am still learning about the process! But so far, preventing hotlinking is working for me for one of my blogs. I just have to get around to adding the code to the rest of my blogs’ .htaccess files.

Using .htaccess to Stop Content Theft
Protect Your Images with .htaccess

Remeber– ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS back up your files before changing them. Your .htaccess file is crucial to the functionality of your blog. Don’t mess with it unless you know what you’re doing and until you’ve backed it up.

Testing Your Blog’s Loading Speed

How fast does your blog load? If it takes too long, you lose readers. Things like large badges, buttons, graphics, music, autoplay video, and other gadgets drain your load time. Here’s a website I found to test your blog’s loading speed: Pingdom Tools. It’s free to use. This is how they say it works:

The Full Page Test loads a complete HTML page including all objects (images, CSS, JavaScripts, RSS, Flash and frames/iframes). It mimics the way a page is loaded in a web browser.

The load time of all objects is shown visually with time bars.

You can view the list of objects either in load order or as a hierarchy. The hierarchy view allows you to see which objects are linked to in for example a CSS file.

Every test also shows general statistics about the loaded page such as the total number of objects, total load time, and size including all objects.

Note: This version doesn’t load objects included in JavaScripts. We have also put a limit on the number and size of the objects that are loaded (to prevent the tool from downloading movies, for example).

I see a lot of blogs everyday. Waaaay too many of them take up to 2 minutes to load! I know you love those buttons and twinkles and music, but to be honest– not many other people do. Of course, you should blog for yourself. After all, it’s your blog! But it also helps to be considerate to your visitors. If your blog takes longer than 30 seconds to load, that’s far too long. Consider removing the resouce-eating hogs on your blog.

Hide Your Plugins Files

It’s becoming more common so perhaps you’ve heard of it happening: someone’s Wordpress blog was hacked. Usually it is by a spammer, who inserts malicious images and coding. There are weaknesses in Wordpress, because it’s open source software, and because users often don’t know all the security holes.

Here’s one quick and easy tip to help secure your Wordpress site: hide your plugins files. Plugins are so convenient but they can be a security risk. I recommend using only plugins you really, really need, and hiding what you have.

If you were to type in an unprotected blog’s address, like this:

http://BLOGNAME.com/wp-content/plugins

you’d see something like this:

This is basically an open invitation to a hacker, advertising what plugins you have and what possible versions (non-updated). The hacker can exploit any open doors that the plugins may have, and therefore he can gain access to your blog/site through them. You want to block anyone from seeing your list of plugins. Here’s what you do.

Open up Notepad. Save the document as index.html. You can leave it blank if you want. You can type in “Hello” or “Don’t hack me” or your blog address, whatever. I use a blank file.

Open up your FTP program and upload this index.html file in your plugins folder. So after it is uploaded, you’ll see all the folders for your plugins and this little file named “index.html.”

That’s it! Your plugins folders will not be seen.

How does this work? Wordpress is programmed to access index.html files first thing. So when your Wordpress plugins are accessed, it will go to this blank index.html file and move on to your plugins afterward. The index.html file is like a blanket, covering all your plugin goodies. Your plugins will still work just fine, they will just be concealed to everyone.

I hope this helps protect you. Happy blogging!

Did Your Blog Get Hacked?

Very, very rarely do any Blogger blogs get hacked. I love Blogger for this reason. However, the hacking of Wordpress blogs is well known. The coding and all the different security methods and details can be extremely confusing. Both platforms have strengths and weaknesses, so it’s hard to tell what is the best buy. But Wordpress has more security issues, just because it’s open source by nature.

I stumbled across a great blog post that tells you how to know if your Wordpress blog has been hacked, and what to do about it: Holy Shmoly!. GREAT POST! Bookmark it!

SiteMeter Causes Sites to Crash in IE

I’ve been on a lengthy investigation, trying to determine why one of my sites is not working, intermittently. I’ve been getting emails from friends who say they cannot access my site. (Not this site, my Freaky Frugalite blog). What’s weird is that all these things from all sorts of places started going wrong at the same time! It was uncanny! I installed a new theme, I installed SiteMeter as a web stat counter, my web host had DNS problems (that they say they resolved), and ?? So now I am having problems crop up, and I can’t tell what it is. Weird!

Anyway, I found this news article while searching and thought it might be helpful for you SiteMeter users. Apparently, the javascript code for SiteMeter has been causing sites to crash for people using Internet Explorer. See here and here for more information.

This goes back to August 2, 2008. I don’t know if SiteMeter still has the issue. One fix I’d heard, besides removing the code from your site, is to place the code at the very bottom of your footer, so that the code will load last. That is what I am attempting right now. We’ll see if it works.

Akismet Bug

I updated my Akismet plugin software, and weird things have been happening. On one blog, the plugin disappeared completely! Where’d it go!? On the other blogs, I can no longer “Delete All.”

My heart stopped and I wondered if I was having hosting problems (AGAIN). But a quick check at the Wordpress forums showed that others are having the same “Delete All” problems. They are saying it’s a bug.

My only question is:

Don’t people test things thoroughly out anymore, before releasing things to the user??

GRRR!

It doesn’t explain my mysterious loss of Akismet on my other blog, though (different host than the others). Siiigh. Honestly, some days I look back on Blogger and miss it. I really do.

Deleted From the Internet

It’s a long-standing joke about Google controlling so much of the Internet that they just may delete it, someday. They actually did (accidentally) delete their own blog a few months ago, amidst much snickering.

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

But what if Google removes your website? A huge percentage of Internet users use only Google as their search engine. This guy, Ryan Stewart, found out the hard way.

At first I thought it was just because I was in China and my blog had been blocked. But after asking my Twitter friends to check for me I realized that wasn’t the case. My blog had been completely removed from Google’s index. All of my blog posts were effectively gone to everyone that uses Google, which is basically everyone and especially technology-minded folks that I try to reach as an evangelist.

I was confused, angry, and I felt completely helpless. Everyone uses Google. It was a big referrer to my blog and when I posted tips and tricks for Flash/Flex/AIR I did so knowing that someone could Google the problem and find my blog. My name? No longer my own.

His story is riveting and scary. Stewart confesses that he “broke Google’s laws,” but these things can happen, even by accidentally hitting that “delete” button, as Google did to themselves. Really, I think Google has too much power, too much monopoly. It’s scary to think that if they decide to shun you, you are completely gone from the Internet. There is no real “savings account,” no buffer should this ever happen, by purpose or accident. I really hope to see more folks rise up and start their own search sites and etc.

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