Author: Jeffro

Jeffrohttp://jeffc.meEnjoy writing about, talking about, and helping others with WordPress
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Blogging Challenge: A Political Post

Every week, Lorelle offers up a new blogging challenge for anyone that wants to try to improve their blogging skills. This week, the blogging challenge is about writing a political blog post. I don’t discuss politics that much because it’s no where near my area of knowledge but I figured I would make at least one political post that explains my stance. If this entire post seems like a giant rant, I’m sorry. But this is how I feel.

Going through high school, American Government was a class that I needed to take in order for me to graduate. It was the most boring class I have ever had the privilege of taking. None of the course material dealt with current day issues. Instead, it was mostly about court cases and things that happened in the past. Hell, I didn’t even manage to learn what the difference is between a Republican and a Democrat which I’ve managed to do on my own. They are both political lesbians that do nothing but catfight as their constituents are screwed in the process. I understand that the country is built upon a two party system, but whatever happened to WE THE PEOPLE? Too many times I’ve seen politicians place their party above what’s good for America.

Politics Suck

I constantly feel as if the United States Of America is slowly imploding. The only things people care about now a days are abortions, homosexuality, gay marriages, brittney spears, and paris hilton. I simply don’t understand why this is. At any rate, I have yet to hear any candidate discuss the issue of the American People being taxed to death. It would be nice to hear a representative of congress discuss the issue of the Income Tax and if it is actually against the law or not. Take poll numbers for what they are worth but they have consistently shown that the American people have lost faith in congress. It doesn’t matter who you vote for, we always end up being screwed and in no better shape than before.

Another problem I see in the great US of A is that the American people do not hold politicians accountable for their actions. Candidates do a lot of talking. When they reach that position of power, theres not a whole lot of action. We need to start asking elected officials why they haven’t kept their word. They say all sorts of things to get in office, then they don’t do a damn thing.

I think the fact that the majority of Americans don’t trust their own government speaks volumes. I wish a young, fresh, face without any political family ties or background would come in and provide a refreshing overhaul of the government and associated congress. Give Americans a different perspective. Unfortunately, greed, corporate ties, and corruption will keep this from ever happening.

To wrap up this entirely pointless rant, I don’t get involved with politics because it’s nothing but a giant mess that not even a mop the size of Texas would be able to clean up. I hate the fact that you have to swing one way or the other when all that matters is the American people. I do exercise my right to vote, but it’s getting tougher and tougher to go to the polls to vote someone else into office that will keep running the country deeper into the ground. So all in all, Politics suck!

Pop Goes The Web2.0 Bubble

This came across the feedreader the other day but only now am I getting the time to post it. This is a hilarious Web 2.0 video with a catchy tune. It basically highlights all of the discussion that has taken place about the web 2.0 bubble. I laughed so hard when they showed the valuation of Facebook and it was almost as much as Ford.

Download the MP3:
http://www.richterscales.com/assets/audio/rsrecordings/HereComesAnotherBubble.mp3

The Web 2.0 “bubble” had it coming. A Silicon Valley music video by the Richter Scales.

http://www.richterscales.com

Solo, video, arrangement and lyrics by Matt Hempey

Mixed by Bill Hare

Recorded by Jason Hunter & Charlie Forkish

Based on “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” by Billy Joel

Photo of Owen Thomas (Valleywag) by Lane Hartwell: http://fetching.net/

Guess What This Is

This came across to me via email and I thought it was very interesting. However, instead of posting the text that goes along with the image, I wanted to see if any of you could guess what kind of equipment this is. The first person to get it right earns 10,000 LEET points. If I see that no one is coming close to the answer, I’ll be adding hints to the commenting section of this post.

Take A Guess As To What This Is

2008 Top Ten Security Threats Maybe

WebsenseLogo

Websense has released a list of what they think will be the top ten security threats of 2008. This is a list of predictions so take them with a grain of salt.

1. Olympics – new cyber attacks, phishing and fraud
Event-based attacks and scams are popular, and with the whole world watching, the 2008 Olympics may fuel a surge in cyberattacks. As the Olympic torch burns, Websense researchers predict the possibility of large scale denial-of-service (DoS) attacks on Beijing Olympic-related sites as political statements and fraud attempts through email and the Web surrounding the Olympics. Additionally, Websense predicts compromises of popular Olympic news or other sports sites -attacks designed to install malicious code on end-users’ machines and steal personal or confidential business information.

2. Malicious SPAM invades blogs, search engines, forums and Web sites
Websense predicts that hackers will increasingly use Web spam to post URLs to malicious sites within forums, blogs, in the commentary or “talk-back” sections of news sites and on compromised Web sites. This activity not only drives traffic to the infected Web sites but also assists in the purveyor’s site sitting higher on search engine rankings, increasing the risk that users will visit the site.

3. Attackers use Web’s ‘weakest links’ to launch attacks
The Web is an entanglement of links and content. The advent of Web 2.0 additions such as Google Adsense, mash-ups, widgets, and social networks along with the massive amounts of Web advertisements linked to Web pages have increased the likelihood of ‘weak links’-or Web sites and content that are vulnerable to compromises. Websense predicts that attackers will increasingly exploit the weakest links within the Web infrastructure in order to target the greatest number of Internet users. Most vulnerable to these attacks are search engines and large user networks such as MySpace, Facebook or other social networking sites.

4. Number of compromised Web sites will surpass number of created malicious sites
The Web as an attack vector has been steadily increasing for the last five years and now attackers are using compromised sites as their launching platforms-even more than their own created sites. Compromising sites-particularly, sites well-visited by end-users, such as the Dolphin Stadium attack that occurred a few days prior to the 2007 Super Bowl XLI in Miami., provides attackers with built-in Web traffic and minimizes the need for lures through email, instant messaging or Web posts.

5. Cross-platform Web attacks – Mac, iPhone popularity spurs increase
With the brand popularity and growing use of iPhones and Macintosh computers, Websense researchers predict attackers will increasingly launch cross-platform Web attacks that detect the operating system in use and serve up code specifically targeting that operating system instead of attacks based on just the Web browser. Operating systems that are targeted now include Mac OSX, iPhone, and Windows.

6. Rise in targeted Web 2.0 special interest attacks-hackers targeting specific groups of people based on interests and profile
Web 2.0 has spawned a proliferation of Web users that visit chat rooms, social networking sites, and special interest Web sites such as travel sites, automotive, and more. These sites provide attackers with potential victims that fall within a certain age group, wealth bracket, or people with particular purchasing habits. In 2008, Websense researchers predict targeted attacks will rise toward specific social networking or special interest sites that have a higher probability of delivering a payoff.

7. Morphing JavaScript to evade anti-virus scanners
Hackers are upping the ante with evasion techniques that use poly-morphic JavaScript (Polyscript) – which means that a uniquely-coded Web page is served up for each visit by a user to a malicious Web site. By changing the code every visit, signature-based security scanning technologies have difficulty detecting Web pages as malicious and hackers can extend the length of time their malicious site evades detection.

8. Data concealment methods increase in sophistication
Websense predicts an increased use of crypto-virology and sophistication in data concealment including the use of stenography, embedding data within standard protocols, and potentially within media files. Toolkits widely available on the Web will be used to embed proprietary information and steal data.

9. Global law enforcement will crack down on key hacker groups and individuals
In 2007, large-scale Internet-based attacks garnered the attention of law enforcement officials around the world. Websense anticipates that through the global cooperation of enforcement agencies, in 2008 the biggest crackdown and arrests of key members of a hacker group will occur.

10. Vishing and voice spam will combine and increase
The vast cell phone user population has grown into a lucrative market to exploit with spamming and “vishing” for financial gain. To date, researchers have seen an increased number of vishing attacks but not a lot of spam-or pro-active automated calling. In 2008 Websense predicts that “vishing”, or the practice of using social engineering and Voice over IP (VoIP) to gain personal and financial information and voice spam will combine and increase-users will receive automated voice calls on LAN lines with voice spam to lure them to input their credentials through the telephone.

Out of this list, 2, 3, 4, and 6 peaked my interest. Number 2 is actually a given. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out. Number 3 though is interesting if you think about the implications of a possible attack against MySpace or Facebook. I can only imagine what sort of payoff a hacker would receive if they managed to attack something like Facebook. I mean, imagine what kind of data the hacker would retrieve if they managed to grab a database off of one of the Facebook servers. I think that information would be quite valuable to someone.

Number 4 is also interesting in that, botnets normally rely on turning your individual PC into a zombie to do their bidding. But what if the hackers actually used something like a web botnet. This botnet would consist of web servers across the world which serve some of the most popular web pages on the net. Imagine what kind of problem we would be dealing with if a slew of stealth applications that were laying dormant on web servers were to wake up all at once and infected your machine because you loaded a web page from that server. Suddenly, the odds would tip in favor of the botnet authors and the web would be in deep crap.

In the end, looks like hackers will keep evolving their techniques and we will have to hope that the good guys (white hats) are keeping pace. Should be another interesting year for security.

Analyze Your Feed With Visuals

BlogPerfume Logo

BlogPerfume has developed a cool program called Feed Analysis which providers bloggers an at a glance view of just how well their FeedBurner feed is performing without having to do any sort of calculations on your own.

By the use of Feed Analysis, the number of subscribers for each month is neatly shown on the column chart. You can also view the number of subscribers, hits, views and clicks for every single day from the line chart. The best/worst day of the week is also available which is displayed on the pie chart. And also, Feed Analysis can give you an estimated value for your blog / site according to the number of your subscribers.

In order to use Feed Analysis, you need to visit the Feed Analysis page and scroll down to the text area box where you can type in your FeedBurner Feed URL. The box on the left is the amount of time and data that will appear in the graphs.

FeedAnalysis Input

Some important things to know before you use this tool. BlogPerfume states that, they do not store your data on their server. Everything is generated via the client side. Once you close your browser window, the data will disappear.

The application is free to use and if your blog is under 3 months old, the tool will still work. However, the prediction values may be a little off due to insufficient data.

Since this blog has been around for at least 6 months, thats the amount of time I chose.

After generating the report, I was greeted with a bunch of boxes that told me the same thing;YOU NEED TO UPGRADE YOUR FLASH PLAYER. Thanks for letting me know. After visiting the Adobe Flash Player website and upgrading my player, I ended up seeing a bunch of beautiful graphs and charts which highlighted my success or lack thereof.

Here are the results of my analyzed feedburner feed.

FeedStats

  • Estimated 1 Banner Ads Value: $7 / month
  • Estimated Blog Worth: $417 – $834
  • Monthly Increase Range: 16-30 Average Increase / Month: 23
  • Total Increase(Last 3 Months): 61 Monthly Increase(Last 3 Months): 20
  • Growth Rate (Last Month): 13.01%
  • Average Subscribers (Current Month): 139
  • Predicted Subscribers After 3 Months: 201
  • Predicted Subscribers After 6 Months: 290
  • Predicted Subscribers After 12 Months: 603
  • Best Day of A Week: Tuesday
  • Worst Day of A Week: Saturday

Feed Analysis may not be complete and perfect at the moment because it is in an early stage. We need your opinions and suggestions so that Feed Analysis can evolve to provide more accurate stats and prediction. Any suggestions and opinions are welcome. If you have amazing formulas, please feel free to leave a comment or contact us directly.

If you’re interested in viewing my specific report, complete with graphs and visuals, click here. BlogPerfume is also quick to remind us that the data may be incomplete, due to the tool being at an early stage of development. If you happen to use the Feed Analysis tool on your own blog, I’d be interested in knowing your results.

Create Free PDF Invoices With InvoiceMachine

InvoiceMachineLogo

InvoiceMachine is a Web 2.0 based application that allows you to create slick looking PDF invoices in a short amount of time.

The first step in the PDF creation process contains a form where you type in Invoice From and Invoice To information.

Step 1

After filling out the details, step 2 provides you with an opportunity to provide an Invoice ID, the Invoice Date, Currency, Tax, P.O. Number, Tax, Shipping, The Payment Due Date, the kind of invoice this will be, how many invoices to create and the final price. The final price is automatically calculated when you type in a shipping amount, this includes the tax if you set one. At the bottom of the page is an area where you can include additional notes that will be attached to the PDF file once its created.

Step 2

Step 3 is the fun part as you now get to pick and choose one of 4 themes that will encapsulate your PDF. The choices are Simplicity which is different shades of grey. Then there is accul, which is a grey/peach colored theme, Blue Pear which features blue and grey and finally, Goblin which features light green and grey. For my example, I decided on adding a little color so I chose Blue Pear.

On this same page, there is an option to type in custom Footer Text. By default, there is a link back to invoicemachine.com but apparently you can change that to suit your purpose.

Step 4 takes all of the information you typed in via the previous steps and processes your PDF file which you can then download. Click on the image to see a full view of what my invoice looked like after the website created it.

I don’t do a ton of work that requires invoicing clients but I can see how something like this could be a blessing for freelance workers. All in all, the site performed admirably well and it did what it supposed to without having to jump through hoops. It was fast and easy just as advertised and if you have a hard time creating PDF invoices manually, this site is worth bookmarking.

WordPress Plugin Updates

Digging into my Plugin area today, I noticed a few plugins that required updating and figured I’d let you know about them in case you have update notification turned off.

First up is Google XML Sitemaps which is now up to version 3.0.2.1 The changes for this release are:

  • Fixed wrong XML Schema Location (Thanks to Emanuele Tessore)
  • Added Russian Language files by Sergey http://ryvkin.ru

Next up is WP AJAX Edit Comments WP Ajax Edit Comments is now up to version 1.1.2.1

  • Added Italian Language file. Thanks Piplos
  • Added Russian Language file. Thanks Sergey.

Simple Pie has also released update and is now up to version 2.1.2 SimplePie Plugin for WordPress

  • 2.1: Added support for feed post-processing, better error handling, and fixed issues with installing in the wrong location.

Live Comment Preview is now at version 1.8.2

  • The 1.8.1 release fixes a bug in 1.8 that affects those who have WordPress files setup in a different directory than their site url. If you have any problems with this release, please post a reply with a description of the problem and any error messages you are receiving.

Last but note least, QuickPost, the Tumblr like plugin for WordPress has been updated to version 0.6

  • 0.6 – Finished Safari Support; Added stripslashes for titles that have apostrophes; Minor Change to Blockquote formatting

Interview With Steven Hodson Of WinExtra.com

winextra.com logo

This week, I had the pleasure of conducting an interview with Steven Hodson, author of the WinExtra.com blog. WinExtra is one of those blogs that I continuously find myself reading within my feedreader. Although Steve is a cranky old man, he makes a ton of valid points that I think a lot of bloggers would steer away from posting. I want to thank Steve for taking the opportunity to answer these questions and I hope you guys enjoy the interview.

Jeff: Steve. Tell us a little bit about yourself and why you chose the name, WinExtra for your blog.

Steve: Myself – well I’ve been involved with computers and technology for jeez it has to be going on to pretty well close to 15 or 20 years now. when I first started serious computer type work Windows was nothing more than a stub used by programs like PageMaker and Corel both of which I used to create a small downtown magazine. From that point I got involved with programming with Clarion for DOS as my first language and then progressed (or some would say digressed :) ) to Visual Basic.

During this time I also got involved in running a BBS (Bulletin Board Service) as part of FidoNET. My first and longest used BBS software package was called Maximus and that was all configured with Notepad .. there were no such things as graphical interfaces then unless you counted ASCII color codes :)

As for WinExtra. It first started out as a set of NNTP newsgroups that was originally intended as a backup in case the newsgroup I hung out in at the time got pulled by it’s temperamental host. Which in the end it did and I saw WinExtra slowly grow into a very tight knit community which is what you see even today in our forums. The blog part of it came afterwards as I really wanted to have a platform where I could express my own opinions without alienating so to speak the newsgroups which by this time had for various reasons been moved to web forums software.

The name WinExtra came out of the fact that pretty well everyone in our fledgling community were Windows users and I wanted to be able to add something extra in the way of a helpful community.

Jeff: What is your definition of a blog?

Steve: Wow .. hmm … the term blog has changed so much over its relatively short life span. In the beginning it was just a way for folks to have a place to bitch about their lives and the things going on in it. Then is was discovered to be a great way to quickly share news and ideas but for me blogging is a way to be a part of a larger conversation; whether it be the post itself which maybe was prompted by another post or from the comments that go along with a post. I am a strong believer that the comments can be just as important as the post they are a part of and that a blog that doesn’t allow comments isn’t a blog. In those cases it is no different than some soapbox in the town square with people walking by either ignoring what is being said or just shaking their heads as they walk by.

Blogs are an incredible way for us to learn but learning is a two way street which is why comments are important as they add to the learning experience. by shutting them off all you are doing is preaching.

Jeff: Why did you decide to use WordPress versus the other Blogging platforms that are available?

Steve: I looked at several others and for awhile when I was running my own server I was using dasBlog; which is an excellent ASP.NET based blogging package. But when I was forced to shut down my server due to finacial reasons I had to find something that could run on a Linux system as that was the cheapest hosting I could afford at the time. So I looked at MoveableType, WordPress and a couple of others. WordPress won out for two main reasons – ease of setup and the incredible themeing and plugin support system out there for it.

Jeff: Do you make a sizable income or any income at all from blogging? If so, is this income generated by ads?

Steve: The truth of the matter is I only just recieved my first AdSense check two months ago and that was after 11 months of blogging. I have tried many of the other types of ad networks out there but unless you are getting 1,000’s of page views a day you can forget making a living at it in the beginning.

I don’t agree with doing pay for post type stuff so I don’t see any income for that type of work. I’m not saying that it isn’t a viable way to make money – it just isn’t something I am comfortable with.

The one thing that I will say regarding making an income from blogging is this – if you are expecting to make a good living from blogging within the first year you can forget it. The only people who can do this are people who already have a name recognition factor walking into the blogging world. The rest of us – well it is going to take working at it day in and day out .. it will take time and a lot of work in order to build up enough of a reputation so that advertising can bring you in a viable income and the sooner you can lessen any reliance on AdSense by selling ad spots yourself the better off you will be.

Jeff: Do you believe as a blogger, that other bloggers can make money via their blog while still maintaining an avaenue of trust with their readers?

Steve: It depends entirely on how they are making that money .. but in general I believe so. However the true judges of trust factor will be the readers themselves and to a lesser degree the other bloggers within your area of blogging.

Jeff: What do you think is the best part of blogging?

Steve: The learning and sharing. It’s a simple as that.

Jeff: Who do you think is crankier? Yourself or tech pundit, John C. Dvorak?

Steve: John who??? :)

Jeff: For those that don’t know, could you tell us what this term “A-List” represents in the blogosphere?

Steve: The A-List first originated as a term for the top 100 bloggers as listed by Technorati. while Technorati has slowly been falling out of favor the term A-List still hangs in there as a way to identify the so-called blogging elite and the mover/shakers of the tech blogosphere.

Jeff: I see you use FeedDemon, as do I. Why do you use FeedDemon as your preferred RSS reader over something like Google Reader?

Steve: I actually have two favorite readers. FeedDemon is my main one but it is followed closely by one called FeedGhost. As for my preference of using a stand-alone reader over something like Google Reader it boils down to a couple of things. Besides the fact that I just don’t like Google Reader; and I have tried it a couple of times, I also am not comfortable with any third party knowing what my reading habits are or being able to use my reading habit as part of any database used to feed their advertsing money machine.

Jeff: How do you feel about RSS and what sort of impact has this technology had on the blogosphere in general?

Steve: RSS; or even XML, has had an incredible impact on our ability to share information in a true cross platform manner and I don’t think this is just regulated to blogging. I think we have only begun to scratch the surface of what things like RSS is going to bring to the technological table.

Jeff: You’ve been blogging for quite some time and as I see it, you have a good following of loyal readers. Based on your experiences and your knowledge, if you were to take a TOP-DOWN perspective on where blogging is heading, what would it be?

Steve: I think we are going through a shake up of the blogging world as we speak. It may only be the beginning but it is a shakeup all the same. We are seeing the creation of new media (blogging) conglomerates that are growing to equal many of the old media corporations. This part is were we will probably see the most changes whether it be through mergers of competeing blog networks or the purchasing of smaller popular blogs. Secondly we will see successfull independant blogs that are able to financially support the owner of the “brand” – which is really what will set the successful independent apart – they will be the ones who have understood the whole concept of becoming a brand of which the blog is a part of. And lastly we will always have those who blog for nothing more than the pleasure of blogging – this is what I would call the foundation of our blogosphere because without those who write for the passion of writing the rest of us wouldn’t be here.

Once again Steve, thanks for taking the time out of your day to answer these questions. I ended up learning a thing or two and I bet the readers of this blog will have done so as well. If you haven’t already, please visit http://www.winextra.com and make sure you add it to your feed reader. You’ll be glad you did.

Splog And Blog – Tell The Difference

If you are a blogger, chances are, you have either dealt with spammers already, or will be doing so in the future when your blog becomes more popular. These days, spammers are using any means necessary to get their links on your blog. These tactics include link filled comments, bogus pingbacks and bogus trackbacks. What I’m going to focus on within this article is deciding, whether a pingback or trackback is coming from a legitimate blog or not.

The example I use in this post will be from a random site that is attributed to a bogus trackback url that was found on a Mashable.com post. I won’t be directly linking to the example site because that is what those spamming bastards want. Determining whether a blog is fake or real is easy once you figure out the patterns. Granted, these patterns change from time to time, here is a collection of tactics I use to determine if a blog is fake or not.

What Is The Difference Between A Splog And Scraper?

Special thanks to Lorelle who stopped by and added her definition for these two terms in the comments section of this post.

A splog is a “spam blog”, a blog with little or no purpose other than to promote or sell something and make the blog owner money. The content is usually made up, or duplicated throughout the different posts, or a collection of post titles and excerpts from a variety of keyword matching posts in a link list.

A scraping blog is a blog that uses an automatic tool, often a WordPress Plugin, that snatches the content from legitimate blogs, called “scraping”, and uses it as its own with no original content. Some present the content in full posts, a big copyright no-no, or as an excerpt, often as you mentioned, with the “Charles wrote something interesting today” lead-in.

Also, according to Lorelle, “A scraping splog is the worst of both types.”

Precautions First:

When you discover that someone has linked to your post, the first thing you should do before visiting the site to check it’s authenticity is to make sure you have popup blocking software turned on as well as anti-virus software. I use something called Ad-Block-Plus which is an awesome FireFox extension. I highly recommend it. The reason for these precautions is that, it doesn’t take much for you to be infected with something. Especially if you run a Windows based machine that doesn’t have the latest security updates.

Checking The Theme:

The first thing to check for when visiting the source of the trackback URL is the blogs theme. A lot of spammers will generate a blog with the default theme and in the case of WordPress, this theme is called Kubrick. Here is an example of what I’m talking about.

Default WordPress Theme

Kubrick is actually a fantastic default theme for WordPress. Quite a lot of people end up using this theme. I also wanted to mention that spammers do use different themes other than Kubrick. In fact, I’ve noticed many of the sploggers are now using themes other than Kubrick. This is when it’s time to evaluate the content of that particular site. But before we move on, I want to show you something that appears on this blog that should never appear on ANYONES blog.

Adware On A Blog

Don’t worry, this is only an image. This is what I found on this particular example of a splog. If you were to click on this banner, you would probably be infected with some sort of adware or trojan even if you were protected by software. No blog should ever have an advertisement like this displayed on their blog. This is a dead give away to get the hell out of there before it’s too late.

Checking Out The Content:

Lets take a closer look at the content posted within the image up above. That post generated a trackback URL on Mashable.com, a very popular website covering social-networking and all that jazz. A good score for the spammer as they are sure to receive some sort of traffic through that backlink. Within this image, the title of the post matches the title of the original post on Mashable. The next dead give away is the text “By Charles“. There is no one on that blog by the name of Charles. In my experience, the spammers software automatically places a random name into the Author Field of the post. This author name usually links to the original post but in this case, the author name is not linked.

Another suspect of a splog is the related content. In the screenshot, you can see the title of the blog is Social Sites News. And since they linked to Mashable, you would think this blog is about social-networking and web 2.0 stuff. So why then, is there a link near the top of the page, to an article about Great Barrier Reef holds drug key to diseases. The reason is because, these spammers use software that resembles search engine spiders. They crawl content across the internet that contains a predefined list of keywords. Once an article is discovered that contains a keyword, the software scrapes the content, and then links to it, generating a trackback or pingback url. Here is some evidence that further substantiates my claims.

Categories Of Keywords

Each keyword this splog is targeting is labeled as a category. This is just a sample of the categories listed on this splog. I recognize the fact that there are bloggers out there that blog about A LOT of different subjects and each one of those subjects can be a category. Thankfully, there are other attributes that play into the matter as to whether the site is legit or a splog.

Checking The URL:

I’ve actually taken some flack for this section of the post. I’ve had numerous people tell me that the question mark and the obscure link text is nothing more than proof that the blogger in question doesn’t know about SEO friendly URLs. The 99% claim is not in general, that was a number based on my own experiences.

The question mark that is sometimes included in the URLS that these sploggers generate is nothing more than evidence that either the blogger doesn’t know about SEO friendly URLs, hasn’t bothered to change them, or at the very least, a potential sign that the blog may be that of a splog.

I’ve also been told by Jonathon Bailey to look at the actual domain of the said blog. According to Jonathon, many sploggers are using .info domains because of their cheap price. However, sploggers will use anything they can get their hands on in order to achieve their goal which usually consists of making a profit.

The Default Meta:

I’ve been informed that the default Meta block that is displayed by default on every fresh install of WordPress is not an indication of anything. At first, I thought the login link was a security issue, but Lorelle has reminded me that if someone wants to try to login to gain access to your administration panel, they probably already know the login link thus, making my LOGIN link security issue a moot point.

Blog Postings With Many Misspelled Or ReArranged Words:

Words that don’t make sense, are scraping splogs which run the stolen content through a spinning process, which “translates” the content to make it “different” from the original while staying the same and often injects ad links into the content or keywords that match whatever it is they are selling.

Conclusion:

This is by no means the end all be all of ways of determining a legitimate blog from a splog. These are all tactics that I use for this blog in determining whether a trackback or a pingback is actually legitimate. I will admit, I did comment on a blog one time, thanking them for linking to me. At first glance, they looked pretty legitimate but instead, I found out they scraped the content of a Mashable post and published the entire article word for word. Since the Mashable article linked to me, this splogger also linked to me. After that experience, I told myself that I would closely examine any other site that linked to me to determine it’s legitimacy.

If you feel up to taking on these bastards head on, you can check out a post that Lorelle ( How to Stop Content Theft: The Best Tips ) published on her blog which has tips and suggestions on how to report these time wasters.

I wanted to take this time to remind you that as a blogger, it is your responsibility to ensure that these crappy spammers don’t fill your blog with porn links, or links that would otherwise put your readers in danger. I’m sure Mashable tries to do a good job at combating spam and deleting bogus trackback URL’s, but as my example up above shows, they can’t get every one of them. As a reader, if I were to click a URL on Mashable.com which clearly looked related to the article in question, and that site ended up infecting me, I sure as hell would hold Mashable.com responsible for the infection. Wouldn’t you? If every blogger did their part with their own blogs to combat this problem, I’m pretty sure that spamming blogs would become a business model not worth pursuing.

If you disagree with anything you read in this post, or if you have some additional tips, feel free to post them below.