The real battle here has turned out to be the moving of the database. There is a synchronize function built into phpMyAdmin that should do the job if I can figure out the right data to fill in the blanks. I have done web searches and looked at the phpMyAdmin documentation, but everything that I have found is above my level. If I don’t find something that I can understand maybe I will write something up (before I learn enough so that what I write will be above a beginners head).

I looked things over and saw export and import options and thought that things would be easy. These seem like they would work fine with lighter weight databases but there seems to be about a 50 MB limit and my database that I need is over 250 MB. I had thought of a possible work-around, but it was going to be a lot of work, and this is just the beginning as I will need to move a couple of other sites to the new space as well.

While poking around in phpMyAdmin I noticed a synchronize tab. I investigated and it sounds like it will do what I need to do. There are some settings that are a bit unclear so I will need to gather a bit more information. I may even need to make a couple of calls to support as the new space is with a different hosting company.

Stay tuned for another episode in the saga of the great website transfer, soon! As soon as I get this working I will even give you the new address (link) so that you can check out my labors and see if you can find any problems.

When one first embarks on a journey as a Hobby Webmaster one of the first things to do, if the hobby gets serious, is to open a hosting account. I started out on free space offered by my ISP, but soon outgrew that generous allowance. Many would be fine with the amount of space offered by that account, but I like pictures and music, so the file sizes can take  up too much space. The word ‘unlimited’ begins to sound good when you know that there will be a lot of big files that you may wish to host.

I opened a hosting account on one of the *unlimited* hosts. I did read the TOS, but the fine print there didn’t ring any bells. I have recently run into the limits of my unlimited hosting account, so I will be buying additional hosting and moving some sites – a new adventure.

What are the limits to unlimited hosting? There are a few things listed in the terms of service documents that can get you into trouble. These limits are entirely within reason and should cause average users no problem, but they do exist. There are specific limits placed on resources usage. The shared hosting environment must allow all sites hosted on the server to have a reasonable level of service. If one account is a resource hog it can affect other users on the server. The specific resources are CPU usage and Memory usage, although the CPU usage is the most critical today because of relative low memory prices.

There will also be a (large) limit on the number of files hosted within the account. My current account has an absolute limit of 200,000 files and I am pushing that limit. The limit that has caused me problems is the number of tables in the databases. There is also a maximum size for databases, but that is not yet a problem.

I first ran into problems a few months ago. At the time I deleted all unused databases and disabled one unused forum. All was well with the world. Then a couple of my installed softwares came up with updates. I ran the updates without questioning the outcome. Soon my sites were locked again because I had exceeded my number of tables limits. The updates had added tables as part of their update process. I disabled my other two forums because they now have over 60 tables each. Deleting those tables (after taking a backup) got me back under the table limit and the sites were live again in just over one hour (the time to investigate the problem and decide what to do – the sites were live immediately when the hosting company had done that table audit and lifted the lock).

When the problem first arose I investigated options. The real solution to the problem is to go for VPS hosting. I am not quite ready for the expense of that option at this time. The short-term solution will be another shared hosting account and moving some of the sites to the new account. That will be a new adventure and I will try to document it here.

There must be a file path problem, although it is not obvious. I compared the file path to the path to the css file and it seems the same. I suspect that the script is building the page in the root directory and that the css is looking in the root directory instead of in the images directory in the template folder. When I finish writing this installment I intend to check out that possibility. I have run into such confusion in the past with other scripts.

The distraction that I mention in the title had to do with my article directory based sites. I have wanted to add a social bookmarking widget to the pages. When I hit the brick wall with the SB script I decided to take care of that situation. I picked up a script from AddThis.com and proceeded to add it to the various sites and sections. This involves pasting the script into the template and making the necessary adjustments to the css file.

On most of the directory sites I put the buttons into the top nav bar. Some of the other sites had too much in the bar already, so I decided on an alternate location. On those sites I put the script at the top of the left nav column. The changes to the css file depend on the location of the buttons, so I had to formulate the appropriate rules for the two locations that I used.

In some ways I like the nav column location better than the nav bar location. In the nav column pages I put the buttons inside a box with a thin red border. This should serve to call attention to the location and to the buttons. Either location should be within the first scan on opening the page, so both should work ok.

I asked my authors opinion in a blog post, so I will see if any of them are paying attention. When I make a new post to the blog I update the subject line on my article approved emails. Most of them probably end up in spam folders or are filtered from the regular emails, but I do see some author traffic to the various sites.

And now, back to the salt mine!

The assault had slowed in recent days from a height of four or five an hour to yesterdays level of just over one per hour. Then today to just one for the day and that is not uncommon. It was probably still a registration bot, but probably a loner and not part of a herd.

I get an email notification each time there is a blog registration. I will know if the attack resumes.

It is hard to make sense of it all. Subscribing to this blog gains no special favors. I still moderate all comments, but I am not even getting a load of comment spam. Comments are closed after 14 days so there are only a few options, but there were no comments waiting moderation when I logged in to make this post. The subscription form does not allow a URL to be listed, so there is no real potential for backlinks. When comments are open they are open, one does not have to sign in to comment. Why someone would build a script to auto-register at blogs is a mystery to me.

I am going to ask some friends. I may even really do that research. I’ll let you know if there is a good answer. What do you think about this??

I am not sure of the value of  blog registrations. I will have to research the intent if I find the time. My thought is that there is hope that comments will be automatically approved for registered visitors, but that is not the case with this blog or any of my blogs. I do manual approval of all comments on all of my blogs. I also have Akismet activated on my blogs. If there are a high number of comments flagged as spam I often just dump the spam folder.

I also limit commenting to the first 14 days that a post is active. This has reduced the spam load significantly.

Comment spam is a problem for any blog. If care is not taken there will be many meaningless comments and long link lists. People are always looking for the easy way out to build backlinks to their sites. Comment spam is the scourge of the blogosphere.

I noticed the effect of this script a few days ago. I am assistant admin on a forum that manually approves all applications in order to limit the amount of forum spam to which users are subjected. The number of applications has roughly doubled, with half showing the signs of this script. This roughly doubles the time required to perform my duties as asst. admin.

Scripts of this type have been around for a long time. I don’t know if this is a new script or if the forum URL just got added to a list somewhere. It rather appears to be a new script because the users leave tracks and the trail only goes back to around the 5th of January in most cases.

The tracks that the script users leave are IP addresses and email addresses and user names. It appears that the script may generate a user name for the account. My guess would be that the script allows for the addition of multiple email addresses. If the users are on dynamic IP addresses these can also change.

There is a service called StopForumSpam that maintains a database of forum spam offenders. I use this service when checking applications before approving good ones. The users of this script soon are identified and added to the SFS database. It is available to search by user name, email and IP addresses. I have seen as many as 200 entries into the database for some of these applicants.

Users hope to get an account for the website link that is available in the profile. I suspect that most of the applications that I approve register for just that reason. If they keep a low profile and do not post or spam forums they are unlikely to make the SFS list. The ones that do spam the forum I will report to SFS and ban from the forum. These automated registrations mostly get banned by IP and email address.

My world would be a better place without this script. Unfortunately, I don’t expect it to go away any time soon.

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.

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 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.