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 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!

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.

I have a very specific design for the Mixer in a Box site. I use an adaptation of an image of a SAC channel strip as the base image for the header. I have the site name in the label area of the channel strip. I wanted to maintain the look and feel of the site with the user report pages. This required rebuilding the header section of the template.

I started experimenting with moving various elements within the given framework on my test installation and have re-arranged the various elements on all of the installs to more closely resemble the other sections of those sites. The Mixer in a Box site required a rebuild rather than a simple re-arrangement.

The original header is table based and has two rows of two cells. I replaced the first row with a div. I could also replace the second row with another div and I suspect the second table that is used for the main section of the page could also be easily replaced with a div. That would just require a bit more fussing with the controlling css file. This has been a good little exercise and the result seems very good. As I write this the page is not yet linked from the site as I have some pages to complete before I am ready but if you want to check it out you can find it at:  Mixer in a Box/SAC User Reports

The script comes with the title in the upper left cell, the quick links in the upper right, a welcome (name) in the lower left and a site search box in the lower right cell. I have juggled these elements in all the locations that I have used the script. Basically, if you think of the quick links, welcome, and search as a triangle I have rotated everything one step counter-clockwise.

For this site I left the quick links and welcome sign in the second row position to which I have moved them on the other pages, but I did not want the site search in the header section. I moved it down to the main section above the content box on the right side. I have also been adding a Google translate widget to my sites that attract international visitors, so I put this on the left above the nav column as I have done on the main site. This gives the page a nice balance.

The first site had received a few articles from one of the delivery services, but when I went to sign up for my second directory I noticed that the service had been paused. I think that this happened when I changed a preference on the site.

The two latest article sites have not yet begun to receive articles. That is why it is toe tapping time, waiting for the flow of articles to begin in two cases and resume in the third. One of the new article pages is in a very active category, so I expect to have a good bit of content when the site is approved.

I am not expecting a whole lot from the one article distribution system. I have seen several complaints of slow or no delivery from them. That’s ok though because the articles that I have seen on their site are not of the highest quality. I will keep my eyes open for other delivery services and hand pick some articles from the major directories as well.

The site that has delivered a few articles does have very high standards so the quality of the articles is good. I do care about the quality of the content, not just the quantity.

The new directories are Computer Articles, dealing with computer hardware, software, and games and Internet Marketing Articles, dealing with Internet Marketing, Online Business, and Self-Improvement. Check them out if you get a chance.

I found a few articles that are in the ballpark and posted them to the site. I intend to move some of the existing reprinted articles from the main section of the site to the new directory section. I have a list of topics for more articles for the main site and for blog posts to the Live Sound Mixing Tips blog associated with the site. I may add a forum to the domain as a fourth major section, as well.

I rearranged some of the elements from the defaults and like the resulting presentation better. I moved the search box up into the header section and the quick nav down to the nav bar to the left. I put the welcome xxx that was on the left over to the right end of the bar. I had added a couple of links and the header was looking crowded, plus this format maintains the look and feel of the various sections of the site better.

There is a bit of work to set up one of these scripts. I have not found a way to make the modifications once. It appears that much of this is built on the spot by the installer script. Most of this resides in the database. I have not been able to find files that correspond to much of what I do to upgrade the sites in the script directory that I downloaded. Perhaps a better understanding of php would help there. Unless the script pulls files from the ArticleMS server at the time of installation the data should be in there somewhere, but knowing where to look is the problem.

I have used php extensively in the form of includes and scripts, but I really know nothing about php coding. This script is teaching me a few new things as far as using php, but I am still mostly in the dark. I may have to break down and learn a bit more.

Check out the new installation at Sound Articles and tell me what you think.

I am to the point that I feel I can continue with a few more installations. I would state my position as having reached a plateau but with considerably more to learn before reach a full understanding of what is going on with the script.

On the test installation I have implemented a hack to improve the SEO friendliness of the script. I would have hoped that the code would have been included in the current update cycle as it does improve the SEO of the pages. Applying something that I learned through this exercise I was able to control the display of an ad in the side bar that I only want to appear on the front page of the directory.

I will go apply what I have learned to the two real installations and then will probably install a few more instances on other domains this week. Once these get rolling I can see some potential.

I added real tracking and fake ads to the test install. There is no reason to inflate my ad display numbers while I work on the site.

I considered rebuilding the site without tables, but I probably need to know more about the script and the operation of the directory before I do that. The header section has four cells but I think the main section only uses one primary cell, so that is not too bad. They are using css for most styling, and that is a good thing. If I do rebuild the site without the tables it is just a mater of replacing a few files to update/upgrade the site. The pages are all dynamic so it is just the templates and css that needs to change.

Feel free to check out the test install at my Local Articles site. There is actually a bit more content there than on either of the real sites right now. Tell me what you think either there or here.

There are two function calls (I think that is the term) that are used in the php programming of this script. I have successfully used one of those options, the $Block call, to replace the functionallity that I have had with include files. I had tried to use an include for my tracking code and that had not worked. I am not sure exactly why that is the case, but the block call does work in this situation. I can do much of what I was doing with my includes with the block function.

The other call that is mentioned is a $This call. From the minimal information available in the interface it appears that the call can be used in more places than the block call. The information listed in the user interface assumes more knowledge than I have, and probably more than most people that would install this script have. This is not too much of a problem for many because they will not customize the script or will use a premium skin to change the appearance.

I will need to get a bit more familiar with some of the php coding conventions to make best use of this script. I have no objection to that, I have been thinking that it is time to get further into php anyway. Shortly I will know more about php. I am beginning to see the power available, but will probably just learn enough to tweak existing scripts rather than writing the next WordPress.

I had an instance of the article exchange script on The World SoapBox site. While it gave me lots of content I was not enthused about all of the affiliate links that came with the script. I may not have as much content for a while, but I won’t be adding to someone’s empire either. I do need authors, so stop by The World SoapBox with your latest rants and articles on the way things are today.

The second instance went into my Live Sound Wiki domain. This domain is intended to be a knowledge base about sound. I am seeking authors to post articles there as well. I hope to get some support from the industry.

I am continuing testing and tweaking the design there, but I expect to set the script in motion on at least two other sites soon. I am also making a list of other of my sites that may benefit from an installation.

This has also caused me to think of another possible ebook to offer either through Before You Buy or Selling. That will depend on how the script works out in practice.

Stop by the test location and see how the script is working for me. Leave me a comment there under the ‘Initial Impressions‘ article.