I have recently noticed that there are many blog registration notices coming in. In many cases there are more registrations than visitors logged to the sites by Google Analytics.  To me, this indicates that there is a script out there that registers for blogs, probably hoping to add spam comments without mediation. I have all my comment preferences set to mediate all comments anyway, so it will make no difference as far as the appearance of my blogs.

This may be an update to one of the auto content spamming softwares or a new software that has recently been introduced. I have not done any research beyond noting that I am getting a lot of user registration notice emails recently. Since it might be a sensible addition to the auto commenting software I suspect that an updated software is the culprit. If I get interested enough I may research this a bit. If I do I will let you know my findings.

I have had my second server space compromise in less than a year.  This is one of the less fun aspects of operating websites! My sites are (unfortunately) not high traffic sites, so the value to the hackers is somewhat limited.

The first break-in happened on my main hosting space right at the end of last year. A visitor informed me and I cleaned up the major portion of the damage over the next couple of days. The first action that I took was to change and strengthen the password to the account space. There were a few nooks and crannies that I missed and about six months later someone ran across one of those and reported it to the hosting company.

The hosting company locked the space and informed me. I called support and they provided me a scan of my space with a list of infected files, over 200, that I had missed when I was going through my original clean-up. Many of the files I just deleted because they were unnecessary. The remainder I cleaned up. I reported back to the hosting company and the space was promptly unlocked. In all my sites were unavailable for about two hours.

On the First of September my ISP informed me that the hosting space provided with my account had been compromised. I was not even aware that the space was still active. I seem to recall a communication from them a few months ago that unless I took specified action my space there would be terminated. I took no action and did not really care about the space.

When I checked the space all of the html files had been tampered with. I deleted all of the files and changed the password for the space. The dates on the affected files were the 29th of August. The ISP stated that they had received complaints about the space, and that is even more amazing than the break-in. I do not recall having any pointers to that space anywhere on the web. Considering the construction of what was there it is almost embarrassing that anyone had seen it at all.

I will probably put up a link directory on the space pointing to some of my real sites. Any bots that happen by would probably like that! This would provide some off site backlinks to some of my real sites, and that could not hurt. Maybe I will check some of the other free spaces that I had set up and do something similar there if they are still available. This could be the start of something big.

The hackers place infected files on the server when they gain access. Most are probably working for bot herders looking to compromise additional computers to add to their bot networks.

The take away from this is to use strong passwords everywhere. Most password protected spaces are protected for a reason. It is also important to use different passwords on your accounts. That way if a password is compromised on one space you don’t have to worry about what other spaces may be at risk.

I have established a sub-domain based article directory at InformationPlease.HeresTheSite.Com. This is to replace the instances of the Article Exchange directories that I decided to terminate.

I am using Submit Your Article as the main  source of the articles at the present time. SYA is an article distribution service. They do claim to manually check articles so the quality is better than with some of the article directories. While the service is not perfect it is the best that I have seen. Most of the articles are up to the Ezine Articles standard.

I am using the ArticleMS directory script with this site. I am accepting direct submissions and invite authors to consider submitting to the site. Your quality original articles would help us both out. For you it will mean a backlink to your site, and for me it would be one more reason for people to visit the site. I can’t offer strong page rank at the present time as I have just established the site, but I am working on promoting it and page rank will build with quality content and traffic.

Visit http://www.informationplease.heresthesite.com/ today and check out the new site!

Things have been busy on the article directory script front! I am having fun with the ArticleMS script and I got feed up with the Article Exchange madness.

I had put up two installations of the Article Exchange directory. The developer was hosting the articles on his server but I suspect that he ran into bandwidth problems as the installed base for his package grew. There were a couple of outages and updates to correct the problem. Somehow the first worked, possibly through a change in servers or hosting accounts. The recent update was a change in operating procedure. The files were shipped out to the installations.

When the script was rewritten I only installed it on one of the webspaces that I was using. I was not happy that while I had three spaces to display ads the promoter of the script had 20 or more of his affiliate links on each page. Then the full impact dawned on me. The articles are stored in flat files instead of a database. This makes the installation very easy as no one has to set up a database to which the script can connect.

The down side is that each article adds at least one file to the count on your server. With a CMS and database solution very few additional files are stored on the server. My hosting service is not concerned about file size, but they are concerned about the number of files in an account. They complain that too many files can slow down the server. This article directory script was about to cross the twenty thousand file threshold. Had I set up both installations that would have meant nearly forty thousand files and growing.

I had begun to work with the ArticleMS script and liked the results. I decided that the Article Exchange script had too many negatives so I choose to delete my remaining installation. It took the server several minutes to delete all of those files. I wish that I had put a clock on it, but I played a couple of games of solitaire while I was waiting for the job to finish. I have added a few more instances of the ArticleMS script and still expect my file count to be down by over nineteen thousand when the new numbers come out on Sunday.

I am finding the ArticleMS script to be reasonably easy to work with. My WordPress experience probably helps to some extent, but there are some major differences as well. The admin panel is much more basic than in WordPress, but I have found most of what I need. I have adapted the script to several purposes.

I am using it as wiki software on one site. It has a ‘trusted author’ setting in the privileges section that allows for editing other’s articles. Using that setting can make this very similar to wiki software. Since it has a file uploader I have set it up as a photo sharing section on a couple of sites. I can match the look and feel of my static pages and WordPress blogs to a great extent and can add cross linking between the sections of the sites. I am also using the built in RSS feed to place summaries of the recent articles on the home page of a couple of sites.

All in all this script is a nice addition to the tool chest.