Category: Reading Room

BBSpot asks: Which OS are You?

Read’m and weep girls! Not bad considering some of the other possible results.

As I pointed out in my previous article, “where the heck is my domain name?“, nothing ruins one’s morning worse than waking up and finding your (former) domain name for your church now redirects unsuspecting visitors to a grotesque gaggle of naked Russian women.

And just to drive the point home, I’ve collected a series of articles that I hope will scare the boogers out of you enough to go check the ownership and status of your church’s domain name(s) — and then tatoo the expiration date to your forehead and arm.

• Defend your domain from Web porn – If you don’t know when your church’s or organization’s Web domain expires, you might want to check — before pornographers do.
• Adult Site Operators Increase Hijacking Of Expired Domain Names – Over the last several months, domain name speculators have begun to register lapsed domain names that were previously owned by commercial entities, non-profit organizations, religious groups and local governments. In many cases, the speculators link their new names to adult content.
• Google and dmoz lose expired domains fight – I often see domains which are in different dmoz and google categories (children, news, disabled people, church, government ..) with porn content … Seems to me like people register expired domains which are still
  in dmoz and get high PR for their sites from both, Google and dmoz categories.
• Christian Web sites being ‘hijacked’ by pornographers – Christian ministries are inadvertently becoming purveyors of smut as pornographers “hijack” expired Web sites, either to lure unsuspecting visitors to pornographic sites or to earn a profit by selling the URL back to its original owner at an inflated price … The Indiana Baptist newspaper is among the latest victims of a scheme that has affected various ministries, non-profit organizations, government agencies and political leaders.
• Sites Forlorn When Reborn as Porn – Small town governments, church groups and the Ohio State Senate have Web addresses that have been hijacked and held ransom by pornographers lately in a growing trend. By Jeffrey Benner.

One of my more frequent reads, the Register, is running a very informative series of article entitled “Where the hell is my website?.” The third installment in this series, “A punter’s guide to keeping hold of your domain” offers several points you should print out and keep by your computer. Or at least keep in the notebook or folder you use to manage your site. You do keep such records and notes don’t you?! More on that later.

The bottom line is that some of you lose your church web sites because you lose control or ownership of your domain name. So, here for your convenience, are just the bullet points without the excellent explanations offered in the aforementioned article with some emphasis on one particular point I find VERY important.

Meaning, when you get a chance, read the article. In fact, read the entire series or you too might find yourself dying a thousand painful deaths when you wake up one morning, type in your church’s domain name, only to find yourself redirected to a pr0n site:

• Do NOT let your domain expire
• Make sure you are listed as the Administrative and Technical contact
• Make sure those contacts are correct
• Do NOT let your domain expire
• Go to a reputable registrar
• Try to choose a registrar with an online control panel
• Check the registrar charges
• Do NOT let your domain expire
• Get a registrar that locks a domain
• Check the registrar’s security
• Do NOT let your domain expire
• And if it has already expired?

Here is an interesting article by way of UC Berkeley’s Computing and Communications newsletter. It offers an exhaustive description of the various methods one can employ to fend off evil spammers (yes, I know those last two words are redundant).

Here are some bullet points of the various tactics you can employ on your church web site:

• return your address through JavaScript
• accepting email via contact forms
• obscuring addresses
• requiring authentication to view private pages
• redirecting harvesting tools

Now go read the article and read the pros and cons of each of the above methods.

Mark Pilgrim reverses a previous position on CSS hackery by handling browser differences with mod_rewrite. The end effect is that each page links to two stylesheets: mu.css and om.css. Everybody gets mu.css, and the bulk of his styles are defined there. But for browser-specific workarounds, om.css gets redirected based on rules Mark set up in his .htaccess file.

An interesting approach I’ll be keeping my eye on. Meanwhile, here’s some more goodies on mod_rewrite we’ve previously discussed here at HealYourChurchWebSite:

• Link Rot vs. mod_rewrite – round 1
• Son of Not So Simple Redirect
• Not so Simple Redirect (non mod_rewrite)

Here’s a must read article I found via boyink … title says it all – Gorilla Usability : evolt.org. If you’re currently or about ot develop a church web site, you MUST read this article. Whether you agree with all the techical points or not is less important than asking yourself the following questions:

• Do You Know Your Users?
• What Is Gorilla Usability?
• So, How Do I Start?
• We’ve Got Volunteers. Now What?
• Now Comes The Fun Part
• Almost Ready?
• Get to Work

Yes, there will be a test. Those who fail will pay the consequences in low/no visits and an immediate redesign.

Top Ten Web-Design Mistakes of 2002

Every year brings new mistakes. In 2002, several of the worst mistakes in Web design related to poor email integration. The number one mistake, however, was lack of pricing information, followed by overly literal search engines … As the Web grows, websites continue to come up with ways to annoy users. Following are ten design mistakes that were particularly good at punishing users and costing site owners business in 2002.

Well, I agree with the pricing thingie, but I’m having issues with points #3, #7 and #10. Of the third point, he misses the fact that most of us living and surfing in western cultures read left to right, top to bottom, which the real motivation behind not wanting to scroll right then back to left. That said, I do agree, what’s with the 805px width?

Regarding for issues #7, and #10, of the former, I think he overblows the impact of slanted/poorly scoped FAQs. Usually we just ignore them. For the later point, I dunno. Generallly when I want to see someone’s bio, I click on a link saying “bio” or “about me.”

That said, I can see what Jakob Nielsen getting at, so its not like the list needs a re-write – though it could be extended. For example, one issue he avoided, which I suspect may have to do with his relationship with Macromedia, is the overuse and abuse of Flash. Especially for menus … so much for “open in new window” or “open in new tab” there.

Suppose I should drop Vincent a line and see what he thinks of this year’s top 10 Bozo no-no’s.

MSNBC – WASHINGTON, Dec. 18 — Federal regulators are creating new protections for people plagued by unwanted telemarketing calls, establishing a national “do-not-call” list that consumers can use to keep their phones from ringing with sales pitches.

Well all I can say is, it is about stinking time! And I’ll be the first in line to sign up. I cannot stand telemarketers. When I purchase phone services – it is for MY use, not theirs. If they’re willing to pay me to use my line, then we can talk about it. Otherwise, they’re stealing, waking me up from naps, waking up my daughter from her naps, interrupting my dinner and yanking me out of the shower. And for what, to sell me new windows – even though I had them all replaced just 3 years ago? Go away – and take your spammers with you.

Oh, btw, here’s the info you need to receive less commercial advertising mail (that would be U.S. Snail Mail), you can register for The DMA’s Mail Preference Service (MPS), which allows you to “opt out” of national mailing lists.

Now if we could only get the same relief for our email.