Archive for June, 2007

Domain Hostile Take Overs are a real life tragedy, when your Web Host is hostile, and you can’t access your emails and what not. When the WHOIS DATA of the Domain Registrant is unaccessible, people who are with Mal Intent hack into the EMail Account and deliberately Transfer the Domain to another Registry without proper authority. They then change the Domain Name Servers and put the site involved to a link mongering page.

One trouble we commonly hear, is that BACK ORDERING. Back Ordering is when you fail to renew your domain on time and it goes into REDEMPTION PERIOD where it can cost anything over $150 to redeem the domain and after 30 days, it’s released back to public domain. I have had a lot of my domains taken over many years ago when I was dead broke, and it was Network Solutions as the only registrar then. One of my cherished domain was Gizmo.NET which is really a real deal. A hard way to get the domain back is to file for IDRP, or International Dispute Resolution Policy for infrigement of the patent or copyright. So, there is a sort of protection against CyberSquatters alike.

One good process is to RENEW THE DOMAIN UP TO THE MAXIMUM, normally for 10 Years (nine if it’s still live) and for domains like Tonga (Somewhere.TO), you can buy a TOnga domain and pay for a .TO Domain for US$25 a year for 100 years, compared to $50 a year. Only good thing about .TO domain is that it’s BUILT IN with WHOIS PRIVACY!

Talking about WHOIS PRIVACY and Domain Name Accuracy, GoDaddy has been known to DELETE DOMAIN NAMES that does not have accurate details.Meaning, if you use a fake or inaccurate / nonrespondent email address and/or mailing address and telephone number, and someone complains about it to GoDaddy or ICANN, the domain will be deleted.

So, now we have talked about Contingency Planning for DOMAIN NAME.

But what if we use LIVE SYSTEMS? How do we utilise a FLIP? And WHAT IS A FLIP?
That is in Part 3

As part of what I preach, I am synchronising my Servers and Databases across the whole Network, From London to Boston,Mass USA and another Synchronisation to my servers in Dallax,TX and Robins Nest FL, plus to Malaysia and Singapore.

So, don’t mind me…there will be some synching to be done..and hickups!

This is part one of the Series on Management and Proper contingency planning of your Websites.

Open Structure consists of you knowing where everything are, what they do, by the subdomains and such, and also main importantly, what to do in an emergency.

Emergencies can be classed as :
Deliberate Denial Of Service or DDOS Attacks (aka Hackers Bombardment)
Suspension of Domain Services
Server / Service Provider Outage
Natural Disasters
Domain Hostile Take Over.

DDOS are normal, and like an example is Comment Spamming. A Good process is to remove the naming sequence for WP-COMMENTS-POST in your INDEX or PAGE.PHP to something else. It’s located in the form entity.

Suspension of Services can occur when a rouge script, hacked or unintentional overloads the resources and takes over more than 30 seconds of Processor Time in each instance. This is a norm in any Hosting Environment. The Limit may also be 30% of the SINGLE CPU LOAD at any one time. If you utilize FEEDS or XML Calls, a delay in your uplink feed causes this issue predominantly. So, do a remote call as a CRON JOB instead.

Sometimes, it may be also our own fault, like internal ads showing some sort of Pornography. This will lead to suspension. Another mistake is PayPal auto payment system failed to debit the funds from our account or credit card due to Non Sufficient Funds (NSF) or Credit Card companies not authorising them for some stupid reason what so ever.

Server Outage can occur as this relies on Network Attached Storage devices failing due to Corruption on the Data heads of Hard Drive Failures, as it will break down even a Raid-10 system. Powweb had this issue last year, and killed the entire network , even with Load Balancing in place, as a good load balancer,only distributes the load thru within the cluster of servers but they still dependent on the NAS, and as we all know it, NAS uses Hard Drives, and they are made of spinning moving discs and motors and rotors. To get a Raid rebooted or remounted back can take HOURS, depending on how much damage was the corruption, and with the provision of a proper snapshot of the data embedded within. What is made worse, that the Database Servers also rely on this, and any non-async of the data will kill the clusters.

Natural Disasters like Flood and Earthquake causes alot of damage. In California alone, a single shock can cost the population over $20Billion in damages. Even with a shock proof building and power generators backed up, the Power Grid and Telephone lines are in the ground, and a knockout at the Exchange will kill the feeds. It’s no good to hear that an ISP has 30 or 100 connectivity to the outside world when a 5.0 on the Richter Scale will kill the city Telecommunications Backbone.

Even a knock on the Far Eastern Plates, like what happened to Taiwan recently killed ALL the UPLINK UNDERSEA CABLES at that point of time. We know that most of the economy now depends on Asia , and without the Net Access to our clientele there, we are roasted!~ Some ISPs are better equipped with redundant systems and routes, and a tertiary communications layer is enabled. Though its very technical, but it’s quite simple to implement, but costly, at the rate of about $10,000 a minute.

Hostile Domain Takeover is when your nameservers are changed and sites removed , due to either NON PAYMENT of RENEWAL FEES or simply, being taken over.

Enough Nightmares already??

I know alot of you have heard about Bloggerwave , which is a new Paid Per Posting advertising company which is silimar to PayPerPost or Amazon’s Blogitive. So , this is another means of advertising for you, the marketer and a form of revenue to you, the small time blogger.

For now, I can only see the top earners hitting a few hundred dollars being them promoting internal projects, but it’s a good start. Only downside to the place is that you can only place 5 blogs, which restricts you to what you can do. At least we know that alot of those leeches won’t spoil the market by flooding the Marketplace with nil traffic blogs, created on free sites only to earn advertising revenue.

For me, it’s just another cuppa coffee, especially with the latest deal I had with a client, investing $5000 upfront for the exclusive of their product being featured on the pagefronts, and any interstilial ads. Which is great. And that is just for ONE WEEK ONLY, Network Wide. Earnings Per Click? About $300! That’s alot of moolah, and someone’s paycheck in Malaysia!

Want in? Join in. I’ll be promoting that soon enough.Anyway, all are subjective to the standard disclosures and disclaimers. Errors and Omissions Excluded. (E&OE)

Seems the Google Pagerank servers are early this time. And according to my monitors, a lot of the datacenters are either Offline or Unranked at these instances. Normally, they install new codes and run a new archive to monitor changes to the content of the webpages staticly stored.

So, what do you need to do?

Clean the place up. Run a Keyword checker, weighing in the absolute heavy weights and place them into the META KEYWORD TAG. DomainTools can calculate the accuracy of your SEO Placed Tag and weigh them against the standard Stanford Whitepaper Criterion for SEO Accuracy and show you the percentage accuracy for that whole site, overall.

Releasing the karma from old links by doing a NO-FOLLOW for links over 6 months or so (120days is optimum) and adding the DO-FOLLOW for comment link after 60 days would do some tricks to it. Updating old static posts or so new fresh ideas or updates will make the Search Engines love you more.

So, my advise is, do a proper clean up before you get your rewards. They are in a “transition” period, so best is to game the system immediately.

This is Me,azrin for SEO Engineering 101.