Ever search for something in Google and found your content on another site? I have, often. One of the more damaging issues to your blog is when your copyrighted content is stolen and placed on another blog - and here's the kicker - the content on the other blog has a higher pagerank than yours and is ahead of you in the search results! Quite frankly that's terrible as it negatively impacts your blog. Not to mention the annoyance when you note that the blog stealing your content appears to be earning advertising revenue, with excessive ads plastered all around it. I've posted about this subject before in "How to Deter Scrapers and Hotlinkers", which discusses a bit more of the hands-on and some web based tools you can use to help protect your content. Many of us have may have read all sorts of articles and other blog posts that delve into the legalities, copyright laws, rights and so forth. That's not something I'm going to discuss as I think there's too much discussion (and not enough action). If not, just take a look on Google and you'll find a plethora of posts on the subject. The fact of the matter ...

For years, I've always believed that keeping your data safe is critical. Without a safety net, there's no fast method to recreate years of blog or web site content additions and updates. I'm sure you'd agree with me right? Right! I've rarely had any issues until recently. Do you want to avoid some of these costly issues for your blog? As some of you are aware, I recently experienced two disasters that effected my blog and how I worked. The first disaster resulted in the initial loss of my blog (and several hours of work it took to write the initial content). The second resulted in the near-loss of data on my computer and a loss of my Internet connection. Both issues lost me time and cost me money. Issue #1 - Software Related The web server was configured to automatically create file and database backups every 24 hours. I even received the daily email messages, indicating the backups were created; and faithfully downloaded the new backups each day. Shortly after a I launched this blog, a scripting issue on the server caused all databases to be dropped (deleted). Normally it would be a simple fix to use the existing backups to restore ...

I spoke with a new blog owner yesterday, who almost lost a fair bit of content as the result of an intrusion. Additionally, he was locked out of his own site (which prompted the phone call). Fortunately I was able to help him avoid any further damage to his content as we were able to stop the unauthorized access in it's tracks. But what could he have done to avoid or mitigate any loss? What steps can we as bloggers take to help safeguard our valuable content? In my opinion, one issue is to maintain your own server. Do not host your blog on a shared server hosting account. Shared hosting accounts mean just that - other people (whom you don't know) also have accounts on the same server, it can increase the likelihood of an incident. To give you one simple example, I was using a shared server for a quick small web site development project about six years ago. The hosting company had some issues with the server and left it in an unprotected state (they were working on it at the time). I remember logging in (via FTP) that afternoon and had full access to the files of ...

When I launched my first blog (a Linux based niche blog) at Ubuntu Linux Help, initially I did not have much content. As content built and traffic grew, I ended up writing some posts that went viral. Three of them were: Top 100 of the Best (Useful) OpenSource Applications. Why I Quit Windows and Switched to Linux. Why is Linux Faster than Windows? I enjoyed the traffic those posts provided (and still provide to this day) as they helped my blog grow. I think they were popular because they provided a valuable resource as well as elicited fair bit of discussion, as some of the posts and resulting comments were very outspoken and opinionated. One of the above posts (Why I Quit Windows and Switched to Linux) was a very personal story describing some of my career experiences and how they effected my professional life and thoughts. Imagine my surprise when I found another blog with the identical content on it. So much so, that the author who scraped my content claimed it as his own! At that time I had more than enough technical knowledge to initiate actions that would catch-out scrapers, but I’d not yet fully experienced some of the nitty-gritty administrative ...

Your domain name is an important (and critical) feature to your blogging success. Without a registered domain name, nobody would be able to access your web site. Additionally, to ensure your maximum exposure (search engines and the like), your domain should be: easy to remember be related to the content reinforce your branding not easy to confuse easy to spell All too often someone has spent the time to thoroughly research their domain name and had someone register the name on their behalf. Another scenario is that the developers have researched and registered the domain. But what happens if the relationship breaks down or the developer’s business closes? I’ve often encountered domain name issues , as well as mediated such disputes between clients and their former site or blog developers. Invariably the scenario involves a breakdown in communication in which the rightful owner realizes that they don’t have control over their domains. In other cases the domain name is held for ransom and in others the original developer is no longer in business, among many other scenarios. Recently I was contacted by a client who needed more cost effective and responsive hosting. The primary issue at hand was that the original developer had passed away and there ...