mikep

Beta-2 looks very good. I now have a test blog running under xampp/Linux. Why risk the live blog?!

What does not work (and I’m referring to GoDaddy economy Linux hosting) is mod_rewrites of PHP files. In other words, forget deny IP in .htaccess (amongst other things)

“…SBOX rules are taking priority over the rewrite rules. This is preventing your DENY IP from functioning properly. Basically rewrite rules will not work on PHP files becuase our SBOX rules are preventing this.”

I’ve yet to have an adequate explanation (indeed, any explanation) from them as to *exactly* why they prevent PHP rewrites. Nor have I found an explanation anywhere as to why SBOX is being used (SBOX is a CGI wrapper script) like this.

If anybody here has some technical suggestions as to how GoDaddy might be convinced to lift the ban on PHP rewrites, I’d be pleased to hear them. Anybody have experience of SBOX? Is GoDaddy using it incorrectly? AFAIK, only GoDaddy hosting is using SBOX to prevent PHP rewrites in this way.

Having said all that, I’ve no other complaints.

I’ve written something in The Guardian newspaper today about splogs. ‘Cashing in on fake blogs’

And I’ve just looked at your blog – or should that be splog?

The only problems I’ve had with GoDaddy (economy Linux hosting) is with mod_rewrite. They prevent rewrites of PHP files including any forbids (403) you might want to give spammers. I have not bothered with friendly URLs so have no info about that. Here are a few recent comments from GoDaddy support.

“…SBOX rules are taking priority over the rewrite rules. This is preventing your DENY IP from functioning properly. Basically rewrite rules will not work on PHP files becuase our SBOX rules are preventing this.”

“I apologize for the inconvenience however the SBOX will stop the mod_rewrite, and I have sent this information to the developement team.”

“There are no current plans to change this policy. As a large hosting provider concerned with security, reliability, and ease of support for our hosting packages, we have chosen to disable this function…”

I have been reminding them about this situation from time to time, as recently as yesterday. Their latest reply was “Thank you for your feedback and suggestion. As we highly value your ideas, I will forward your information to our developers for consideration.” Which they’ve said before, of course!

The trouble is, I don’t think they do intend to consider changing the policy. I’ve yet to have an adequate explanation (indeed, any explanation) from them as to *exactly* why they prevent PHP rewrites. Nor have I found an explanation anywhere as to why SBOX is being used (SBOX is a CGI wrapper script) like this.

If anybody here has some technical suggestions as to how GoDaddy might be convinced to lift the ban on PHP rewrites, I’d be pleased to hear them. Anybody have experience of SBOX? Is GoDaddy using it incorrectly? AFAIK, only GoDaddy hosting is using SBOX to prevent PHP rewrites in this way.

As a journalist/writer, I’ve had my work copied, most recently by a splog using RSS2Blog. I also see my pieces copied into forums etc. There’s a copy ‘n paste mentality out there that thinks if it’s on the internet, it can be freely copied. And splogs don’t care what they do with other people’s content, provided it earns them money. Zenpop – try splogreporter.com.

There are blogs set up just to increase the page rank on other sites. See www dot bloggerology dot com as an example. However, this is ‘splogging’ rather than blogging (a splog being a spam blog). Google takes a dim view of such activities and it will probably earn you a ban.

As for my own blog, I agree with Lorelle and Skippy that WordPress is search engine friendly. I find my posts are quickly indexed without having to mess around with SEO techniques.

The no-follow attribute applies to the comments only, making it useless for spammers to leave comments in my blog (but they continue to try) to gain page rank on spamvertised sites. Publishing in-bound links is a not a good idea as referrer spammers will quickly make sure their links are in your list. And the topics they usually spam about are not ones you’d like to appear on your blog.

It isn’t about diluting the PR for your blog; the sole purpose of the splog seems to be to raise the PR for seven web sites which use Google Adsense ads. Nothing original is being created in the splog, just postings made up from news items copied in from elsewhere. Each posting has a link to one of the web sites. Over 800 (probably automated) postings since early September. How useful, interesting or original is that?

Read this and then take another look!

Try again www dot bloggerology dot com

Works for me.

A blog that is used for spamming – in the posts and/or comments. If you look at the one I mentioned, you’ll see links to several spamvertised sites.

I’d suggest setting up a local copy of WP on your PC using xampp as a learning/test environment. Podz has some good instructions here – https://www.tamba2.org.uk/wordpress/xampp/ You can dump the live blog db and restore it into the local copy – one way of making sure you’re taking good backups.

Spammers will just spam irrespective of nofollow. It’s not stopped the p*ker spammer has it?

I reckon it’s all random. He’s just started another spam run on me as I write this. The spammers use google to look for blogs, build up huge lists, then spam them. Last night’s run went across several dozen postings. They don’t care what you have on your blog, they just want the links in the comments pointing at the spamvertised web sites.

After several weeks of peace, he’s back. Big time. Yes, I know all about stopping comment spam and none of it got through. Sites to watch out for: firsthorizonmtg dot com, hawkesnest dot com, and about every variation of p*ker you can imagine.

Excellent. But I was also thinking of the questions that have been asked about upgrades to 1.5. Some topics are coming up again and again.