Sep
21
Testing EzStatic Plugin for Static WordPress Pages
Filed Under WordPress | Comments Off
Testing one page in the root directory, a plain page named ezstatic.php with no templating, style or tags.
Added:
Exactly what it did, is save the file in the root directory (which is robots.txt excluded) as ezstatic.php with a query string. It did not also get saved in the CMS and WordPress archives (which causes a situation with duplicates).
http://www.marciahoo.com/archives/category/cms-and-blogs/wordpress/
Even though it was uploaded as a plain HTML page, the style from the template was applied. For those pages, the plugin that switches the site name with the post title, putting the title first for the page, doesn’t work. It seems only to work with the dated archives.
There’s a limit to what should be dumped into a root directory, so the next thing to try will be to repeat, using the same file but putting it into a /subdirectory/. Ideally, it would be good to have the index.php page in a /subdirectory/ as just an index with a bit of text and links to other pages within the section.
First this will get experimented with a bit until it’s right, and then the mod_rewrite.
Sep
19
Self-Censorship is Just Too Annoying
Filed Under Marcia Personal | Comments Off
First off, being a member of a Christian webmasters group and also webmaster of my own local congregation, both of which serve as reminders of my own core value structure and also as bolsters to my own already_idiotic conscience, means that I can’t express certain things that are on my mind, or that they can’t be expressed in the ways I’d normally express them, without offending some of the people with whom I’m associated and who I happen to care about.
Second, there are people I’m acquainted with online who I either dislike intensely “as a person” and not without good reason, and certain sites I believe are an offense to humanity in general in some cases, and in others, are an offense to a person who values either the dignity of the human soul or the integrity of personal expression by individuals.
The first scenario is a valid one. Technically, there are some things I should not say if I am who I believe I am and if I believe in what I claim to believe in. Good enough. The second scenario is not quite as valid. There are just some people who are hypocritical sonsabitches, egotistical, self-centered b*stards of the worst kind, and there’s no other words to describe them. There are also sites out there that misinform, misrepresent and manipulate, also for personal ends without conscience.
So what’s a person to do? Tact and “appropriate behavior” say one thing, while standards of personal honesty and integrity say something else entirely. Somewhere there has to be a line drawn between being intelligently politically correct and dysfuctional, neurotic people_pleasing behavior.
Really, self-censorship is a bummer. And this is exactly the kind of issue that divides the dysfunctional portion of the population from the rest. Some know and some just don’t.
Sep
18
Static Page Plugin for WordPress
Filed Under WordPress | Comments Off
It’s the Faked Folders plugin, complete with .htaccess instructions.
And more on static pages I hadn’t even thought of.
Sep
18
Sabotaged Google Listings
Filed Under Search Engines | Comments Off
Without getting into the mechanics of it, what’s been happening - apparently for well over a year - is that there are people using redirects on sites of their own to replace the listings of other people’s sites in the Google index.
Here’s the current lengthy discussion, the latest of many on the subject, and another one linked to from within the thread from a few months ago (the second one) that has an explanation and links to many others where the same phenomenon was reported and discussed.
What’s the purpose of it? Why are people or companies doing it? The only feasible answer I can think of is that it’s for money.
Whether it’s so or not, I”m connecting the dots between this and something that was getting a lot of play and publicity several months ago - spyware, adware and browser hijacking. There’s a simple explanation of what is at the Spyware Warrior Blog:
If you are not sure what browser hijacking is, then it’s (probably) never happened to you. It is also called home-page hijacking. If you open your browser and it automatically goes to a webpage that you did not designate, then you have a browser hijacking.
A particularly high profile case that did a lot to bring the entire issue to public attention was when WhenU was banned from Google for cloaking. That and more by
Again, there can be no other reason behind browser hijacking (or anything similar, for that matter) - it’s got to be for money. In some cases advertising on sites is paid for by number of impressions or views. More likely in these instances, whether it’s contextual advertising being inserted on other people’s sites, hijacking of people’s browsers, or hijacking websites’ Google listings, it’s PPC income.
I’ve experienced having a computer infested with a driveby download, and when examing the sites I was hijacked to, which included installing a toolbar and changing my start page - beyond repair - it was clearly PPC, with both U.S. and offshore entities involved. The site where I picked up the driveby download was one of those “directory” type sites that was ranking nicely at Google with content scraped from other sites, except that the links did not go where you’d expect they would; instead they were PPC redirects. From what I saw personally there is a lot of second-tier and some unknowns, but it can have broader implications
I’m not the only one seeing the SERPs filled with so-called “directories” that are nothing more than pages made up of content taken from other sites - titles and descriptions. A good number run Google AdSense, and with a lot there’s PPC mixed in to the blend. To some degree the same thing is happening with ODP clones.
These two phenomena may seem unconnected, but as the saying goes, ” all roads lead back to Rome”. The fact that the motivation is the same and that they have common characteristic - hijacking - to me, demonstrates the same type of mentality and thought process. I can’t help but think that to some degree both these roads might just lead back to the same crowd.
Right now, even though there’s legislation pending, there isn’t enough muscle power to enable any government agencies to really do anything about these things, at least not from the consumer/browser end of it. There might be more hope on the end of it that concerns ill-gotten, fraudulent PPC clicks. Unfortunately, it will take legislation being enacted and there’s no organized voice among victims loud enough to be heard.
There possibly would be some glimmer of a possibility of a voice being sounded from one of the several internet marketing organizations out there; but looking at the diversity within them, would that voice be heard, or even allowed to speak, in the midst of others in their numbers who more than likely are involved in perpretrating some of what’s going on?
In my opinion this is not a Google issue for how they handle 302’s or sites that hijack others. At its root the responsibility lies at the feet of the PPC search companies who are compensating their affiliates for clicks they send, regardless of how they’re gotten. They get their money, the affiliates get their piece of the pie, and the only losers are the ones who pay for clicks that are worthless and fraudulently obtained. Sure, the individuals or companies are responsible for their own actions; but if no one was paying them to do what they do, they wouldn’t be doing it. Simple as that.
I don’t know where conscience enters into this whole thing. Is such a thing as conscience even a valid concept when it comes to business and money?