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Webpage Cloaking and Daggering!

Cloak and dagger is a term sometimes used to refer to situations involving intrigue, secrecy, espionage, or mystery. In historical European martial arts, the term can be taken literally, and refers to wielding a dagger in one hand and a cloak in the other. The purpose of the cloak was to obscure the presence or movement of the dagger… Use of the cloak and dagger was considered a “dishonest” method of combat because of its deceptive tactics.

Web-page Cloaking and Daggering are related Black Hat SEO and White Hate SEO techniques, respectively. SEO, of course, is Search Engine Optimization. There are many misconceptions about what is and isn’t Cloaking, as well as some people who think that cloaking and Daggering is actually the same. Daggering is not the same as Cloaking. They are very different and that is what this post is about.

Cloaking

Cloaking is a black hat search engine optimization (black hat SEO) technique in which the content presented to the search engine bot (crawler, robot or spider) is different from that presented to the user’s browser. This is done by delivering content based on the User-Agent HTTP header or IP addresses of the user requesting the page. When a user is identified as a search engine bot, a server-side script delivers a different, deceptive version of the web page, one that contains content not present on the visible page, or that is present but not searchable. The purpose of cloaking is often to trick or deceive search engines, so they display a page when it would not otherwise be displayed (black hat SEO).

Daggering

Daggering is a white hat search engine optimization (white hat SEO) technique in which the content is blocked or presented to the search engine crawler (also called a spider, bot or robot) based on a websites whitelist or blacklist. This is done by delivering content, or delivering a 403 Forbidden header, based on the User-Agent HTTP header or IP addresses of the bot requesting the page. When a bot is identified as a blacklist (or non-whitelist) search engine bot, a server-side script delivers a 403 Failure header (or sometimes a 404 File Not Found or 410 Gone header). Daggering is related to other forms of user authentication, except that instead of using a user name and password, the user_agent and/or requesting IP Address are used. The purpose of Daggering is prevent the use of valuable resources by non productive search engines or other bots. This white hat SEO works by reducing the load (CPU seconds and bandwidth use) and thereby possibly making the page respond faster. Google does use response time as one factor in their SERP ranking algorithm.

The Internet Term Daggering was coined by Lan Tait, after an unruly bot took down his site for a couple hours.

Not Cloaking

There is a number of misconceptions about what Cloaking is and is not. Here is a short list of some things that Cloaking is Not!

  • Delivering dynamic content based on cookies or authentication. For example, a “Hello Percy” type of personalized message.
  • Delivering dynamic content base on geographic location. For example, providing different shipping charges to people in Germany and those in Japan. Google uses IP Geographic location to deliver AdSense Ads.
  • Daggering or Blocking anyone, or anything, from accessing the content of your website.  Anything would include any bot, crawler, robot, spider, or human.  It could include IP Address Ranges, time zones, languages, countries, regions or continents!

Sitemap Myths and Truth!

  • A sitemap will boost my SERP Rank.
  • A sitemap is needed for good SEO
  • If it is in my sitemap, then it will be crawled and included in the Search Engine Index.
  • If it is not in my sitemap, the Search Engine will just ignore it.
  • With a sitemap my pages will be listed in the Search Engine Immediately!
  • What I put on my sitemap is more important and has a higher priority.
  • Sitemaps are a requirement on the Internet.

Have you ever heard, or thought, any of the above? If yes, you are normal and have studied the issue of sitemaps on the Internet. However, you may be surprised to find out that All of the above are myths!  Nothing could be farther from the truth!

Continue reading Sitemap Myths and Truth!

Micro Stupid Names (MSN) Again!

The Micro (and soft) Stupid Names (MSN) is at it again…

First they wanted people to think they were Live, but that was dead.

They had a fling, with Bing, but couldn’t come close to Google the king!

Then bought up Yahoo, for which we cried boo-hoo!

It’s all talk about Tiger … we know it’s a pussy cat!

Are we to believe they’re a heavy weight sumo? That they’re now calling Kumo?

Anyone remember Hotmail? It was a super fast, super fantastic (Hot Mail!) public email server, that ran on Linux!

Microsoft bought Hotmail, and tried to run it on Windows Servers.

Ha Ha, was that a joke?

Of course Microsoft denied Hotmail was running on anything other than Windows … Until it was proven!

Do you remember what an air-conditioner and a computer have in common?
They both stop working when you open Windows!

Now they bought Yahoo, the ONLY search engine besides Google who ever was the #1 Search Engine.
But Yahoo ran on Linux servers then!  Google Runs on Linux Now!

“Every #1 Search Engine in the History of the Internet, has run on Linux Servers!
Does that make a difference?”

~ ~ Lan Tait ~ ~

Bing is now dresses in a pretty new Yahoo party dress, does that make Yahoo Bing’s Bling?

“Every time you use Google, you’re using a machine running the Linux kernel.”
Chris DiBona, Google

For the longest time Windows ( When?Doze ) would not run without the FreeBSD IP Stack, basically what Linux gives your for free.  Anyone know if Microsoft ever was able to get there own working?

So what am I ranting about?  Right now I am having to go through a bunch of sites, and disable sitemap pinging to Yahoo on both custom PHP scripts and WordPress Plugins.  Yahoo doesn’t exist anymore! Yahoo gets all of it’s data from Microsoft’s Bing now, so to get on Yahoo, you need to feed Bing.

Is it even worth it?

I think I hear Google getting bigger!

Choosing Basic Website Colors 2011

It is helpful if we can plan and choose some basic website colors before we start coding our website. Here is a way you can do this…

First what color do you want, it is a simple question, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet. Remember our primary and secondary colors, well, they apply here. Don’t worry, if you want something else, it is no problem. I suggest you start with a middle color, from around 4′s to 6′s as this will allow you to have complementing colors easily… Then we will build a table…

Basic Black

#000000

The code for the above black square is:

<table style="font-weight: bold;">
<tbody>
<tr><td style="color: white; background-color: #000000;">#000000</td></tr>
</tbody>
</table>
#432100

The only difference between this code and the first is this is #432100 instead of #000000.

Complementary Colors

Now to make some variations, we will just ad 222222 to our code of #432100 to get #654322 so our code is:

<table style="font-weight: bold;">
<tbody>
<tr><td style="color: white; background-color: #432100;">#432100</td></tr>
<tr><td style="color: white; background-color: #654322;">#654322</td></tr>
</tbody>
</table>

And it looks like this…

#432100
#654322

Expanding From Dark To Light

So lets extend that some more to get this…

<table style="font-weight: bold;">
<tbody>
<tr><td style="color: white; background-color: #432100;">#432100</td></tr>
<tr><td style="color: white; background-color: #654322;">#654322</td></tr>
<tr><td style="color: white; background-color: #876544;">#876544</td></tr>
<tr><td style="background-color: #a98766;">#A98766</td></tr>
<tr><td style="background-color: #cba988;">#CBA988</td></tr>
<tr><td style="background-color: #edcbaa;">#EDCBAA</td></tr>
</tbody>
</table>

And that looks like this…

#432100
#654322
#876544
#A98766
#CBA988
#EDCBAA

No Conflicts

You will notice that just by adding 222222 to any color that we get colors that go together. Just start with any color that had no number greater than 4. You could also add 111111 instead of 222222 and that would give you more colors to work with. Like this…

#432100
#543211
#654322
#765433
#876544
#987655
#A98766
#BA9877
#CBA988
#DCBA99
#EDCBAA
#FEDCBB

Here is the code for that last table…

<table style="font-weight: bold;">
<tbody>
<tr><td style="color: white; background-color: #432100;">#432100</td></tr>
<tr><td style="color: white; background-color: #543211;">#543211</td></tr>
<tr><td style="color: white; background-color: #654322;">#654322</td></tr>
<tr><td style="color: white; background-color: #765433;">#765433</td></tr>
<tr><td style="color: white; background-color: #876544;">#876544</td></tr>
<tr><td style="color: white; background-color: #987655;">#987655</td></tr>
<tr><td style="background-color: #a98766;">#A98766</td></tr>
<tr><td style="background-color: #ba9877;">#BA9877</td></tr>
<tr><td style="background-color: #cba988;">#CBA988</td></tr>
<tr><td style="background-color: #dcba99;">#DCBA99</td></tr>
<tr><td style="background-color: #edcbaa;">#EDCBAA</td></tr>
<tr><td style="background-color: #fedcbb;">#FEDCBB</td></tr>
</tbody>
</table>

The Final Step

This looks pretty good! Just pick your colors from this chart and you will have a website that looks really good!

The Real World

For this example I went and Picked a Starting Color, Baker’s Chocolate (bakerschocolate) #5C3317

This number has primary numbers and secondary numbers. Primary numbers are the odd position numbers, the 1st, 3rd and 5th numbers from the left. Secondary numbers are the even position numbers, the 2nd, 4th and 6th numbers from the left. Below, the red numbers are primary and the black numbers are secondary. Below is our bakers Baker’s Chocolate number with the primary numbers in red and the secondary numbers in black…

5C3317

The first thing I notice is my 1st primary number, 5, is more than 4 by 1, so I reduce ALL numbers by 1.

In case you are not always dealing with hex numbers:

A = 10
B = 11
C = 12
D = 13
E = 14
F = 15

Therefore, 5C3317 – 111111 = 4B2206

4B2206

We now have all our primary numbers less than 5 (0-4)!

We now look at the secondary numbers. We want them to be less than 6 (0-5)!

Now we see on our chart above that “B” = “11″. “B” is the largest of the secondary numbers. To make “B” a “5″ we must subtract 6. So we will subtract 6 from ALL Secondary numbers, but no less than zero (No negative numbers!).

B-6=5, 2-6=0, 6-6=0 – Notice that 2-6 is really equal to -4, but as was said, we stop at zero, no negative numbers! So we put these back in and we get…

452000

#452000

Our Chocolate Website

This color, #452000, should give us a Chocolate Brown that is just a bit darker that our original Baker’s Chocolate. Shall I call this Dark Chocolate? It looks like this…

#5C3317 ~ Baker’s Chocolate
#452000 ~ Dark Chocolate

Now #452000 is a good starting point for our table of adding 2′s to make our website colors!

Dark Chocolate Heaven

#452000
#674222
#896444
#AB8666
#CDA888
#EFCAAA

Dark Chocolate at TuKōd.Com ( www.TuKod.com )

Side By Side

I realize this looks a lot like our chart above using #432100, so here they are, side by side…

#452000 #432100 #420 #442200
#674222 #654322 #642 #664422
#896444 #876544 #864 #886644
#AB8666 #A98766 #A86 #AA8866
#CDA888 #CBA988 #CA8 #CCAA88
#EFCAAA #EDCBAA #ECA #EECCAA

All The Same

Now if you are looking at these four columns and think they all look the same, I agree!

  • Column #452000 is our Dark Chocolate example above!
  • Column #432100 is our first example, just counting backwards, 4,3,2,1,0, Zero! Can’t go lower than zero. This is our first example.

Primary Numbers

452000
432100

You will notice that they have the same primary number, 420. Well as it turns out, you can just use the primary numbers, like #420! Just add 222 instead of 222222 to get the lighter colors.

  • Column #420 is using just the primary numbers in the Three Number Color Format! I just added 222 to lighten this number!

However, the browser doesn’t really use the Three Number Color Format directly. What it does is when it sees three numbers, it doubles them. Therefore #753 would be Exactly the same as #775533!

  • Column #442200 Shows you the exact interpretation of the Three Number Color Format in Column #420! In other words Column #420 and Column #442200 are exactly the same colors!

The Point Is…

The Point Is… The Computers precision is much more exact that what most humans can actually see. So for basic website design, Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff!

Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff!

To Code @ Tu Kōd

I love writing Computer Code. In Nu English To Code is spelled Tu Kōd! Tu Kōdis so much fun, I think of it in terms of Dark Chocolate (85% Cacao Dark Chocolate is my Favorite!). So I decided to make the To Code at Tu Kōd ( www.TuKod.com ) into a nice Dark Chocolate site, so go there to see this in action.

Vegetation is Green

I have a website for Vegarians. A Vegarian is a person who loves the Symbiont Circle of life we share with Vegetation. They usually eat about +95% of their food as plants. But where as a Vegetarian may be focused on animal welfare (not eating flesh), or a Vegan’s focus is on an animal rights (not using any animal products like eggs, dairy, fur or leather), a Vegarian’s focus is on Vegetation and the good health we get from them!

Anyway, what could be better for a website like this than Green. So for that website I started with a nice Green #224400 and made this table of colors…

#224400
#446622
#668844
#88AA66
#AACC88
#CCEEAA

Dollar Bill Green

Likewise I give advise to a website called Money Making Entrepreneur ( www.MoneyMakingEntrepreneur.E143.Net ). It is about people who want to use a website to earn a Money Making Income. An Entrepreneur is a person who start a business in order to make money and usually other reasons as well. What better color to start with than Dollar Bill Green!

Dollar Bill Green is #85bb65 so this time I made it the middle number. Adding and subtraction 222222 to get this table…

#205500
#417721
#639943
#85BB65
#A7DD87
#C9FFA9

Side By Side Green

Let’s take a look at Vegarian Green and Dollar Bill Green, side by side…

Vegarian Dollar Bill
#224400 #205500
#446622 #417721
#668844 #639943
#88AA66 #85BB65
#AACC88 #A7DD87
#CCEEAA #C9FFA9

Vegarian Green at Vegarian ( www.Vegarian.org ).
Dollar Bill Green at Money Making Entrepreneur ( www.MoneyMakingEntrepreneur.E143.Net ).

 

 

Welcome Back 2011

Hello my friends and readers!  I say welcome back because I, or at least my posts, have been missing for about four months now.  I do not want to bore you with the details, but in a nutshell… A doctor discovered a serious case of osteomyelitis between my teeth and nose.  In case you do not know…

Osteomyelitis (osteo- derived from the Greek word osteon, meaning bone, myelo- meaning marrow, and -itis meaning inflammation) simply means an infection of the bone or bone marrow. … In general, microorganisms may infect bone through one or more of three basic methods: via the bloodstream, contiguously from local areas of infection (as in cellulitis), or penetrating trauma, including iatrogenic causes such as joint replacements or internal fixation of fractures or root-canaled teeth. (wikipedia)

In my case part of a root canaled tooth was smack dab in the middle of all this mess… Continue reading Welcome Back 2011

“To Code” the New Atahualpa WordPress Theme

My wife really hates “to code!”. That what she calls it when she has to do a PHP patch to some plugin or download she has.

It seems some developers love to “patch” or “bug fix” instead of releasing an already patch version… Likewise, some WordPress developers would rather you go to their website and download the latest version, and manually install it, rather than using the WordPress.org automatic update… Maybe they are hoping while you are there you will make a donation. Indeed, some developers not charge a sort of “support tax” before you are allowed to ask any questions! Mainly because they would rather you paid them for their paid version… Which may be why they do not support automatic updates from inside of WordPress for anything but the very simplest site… Continue reading “To Code” the New Atahualpa WordPress Theme

WP Multi-Network Plugin Fix for WordPress

I love small powerful WordPress Plugins.  The kind that get the job done with a small amount of code.  One of the things that actually convinced me to install WordPress was a little plugin called WP Multi-Network.  Currently we are running about three dozen blogs (including this one) across almost as many networks!  WordPress and the WP Multi-Network plugin has done a beautiful job, until this morning!

I woke up this morning ready to add a new blog on a new domain we just acquired, phlife.org.  pH Life will be a blog about the eating part of the New LipHe Lifestyle (say that “New Life Lifestyle”).  Besides the normal meaning of pH, the balance between Acidity and Basicity, we are considering that pH Life can also mean Philippine Life or Potentially Healthy Life!  So I was looking forward to adding this site when all of a sudden, I could not find the WP Multi-Network plugin menu.

“What’cha gonna do when they come for you, Bad Bugs, Bad Bugs!”

Back in WP3.0.x everything was working fine…  I did the update to WP3.1.1 and even checked to verify I could view and log into all sites – it was all working good!  However, I did not check the Super-Admin menu… I had not need to do that since all the sites were running just fine…

A quick check to the WordPress.org plugin site showed no updates.  In fact a post on the forum showed me someone else was also having problems.  The vote for the version 1.1 plugin and the current WP3.2.1 showed just one vote, for broken!  So, I decided to hack the plugin code and see what I could find.

Scroll to the bottom to get the complete replacement file!
Continue reading WP Multi-Network Plugin Fix for WordPress

Atahualpa Easy Header Fix

The Atahualpa Easy Header Fix has many great features including…

  1. It protects custom header images, logo images and favicons during updates (even automatic updates).
  2. It is backwards compatible with all Atahualpa settings (it breaks no functionality).
  3. It works for Single Sites and Multi Site Sites and WP Multi Network Sites.
  4. It allows automatic updates of Atahualpa (from WordPress.org), which will not delete custom image files. (Truly automatic if merged into the Atahualpa code.)
  5. It includes uploading all per-site graphics, the headers, the the logo and the favicon.
  6. All image files are uploaded via the WP media uploader (no FTP access is needed).
  7. It uses standard WordPress functions to find the upload directory.
  8. It allows Sort and Shuffle modes for Multi Site and Multi Network as well as Single site mode.
  9. It allows Normal Default Settings for Atahualpa to function in a normal way.
  10. This Fix makes only nine very tiny changes in five easy to upload files with full documentation.

All in all it is a very nice Fix, super easy to use, stable, and, hopefully it will be considered for permanent inclusion into the Atahualpa Core Code. Continue reading Atahualpa Easy Header Fix

Monster Upgrade ~ WordPress 3.13, Atahualpa 3.6.7 and others!

June 7 2011 ~ This has been kind of a rough year for me. My best friend died, then my longest friend (42 years) died, then my brother (and also my friend of 57 years) died. Kind of a hard year… And updates have fallen behind… Continue reading Monster Upgrade ~ WordPress 3.13, Atahualpa 3.6.7 and others!

WordPress MultiSite, WP Multi Network, Atahualpa Mod, Ultimate Working Sites

If you are using the Ultimate WordPress MultiSite, WP Multi Network, Atahualpa Mod on a Working Site, we would like you to add your site here! Please Be Specific with the Following information:

  1. WordPress Version Number
  2. WordPress MultiSite Mode (sub-domain or sub-directory)
  3. WP MultiNetwork Plugin (Yes or No)
  4. Atahualpa Version Number
  5. Atahualpa Bug Fix Numbers
  6. Atahualpa Ultimate Mod Version Number
  7. URL’s (Web Address) of at least two sites that are running on the SAME WordPress MultiSite Site with Atahualpa.

Here is an Example:

  1. WordPress 3.1.2
  2. Sub-Domain MultiSite Mode
  3. WP MultiNetwork Plugin (Yes)
  4. Atahualpa 3.6.4
  5. Atahualpa Bug Fix 364- 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08
  6. Ultimate Mod Version 2.0
  7. http://alantait.com/
    http://alantait.net/
    http://fgbmfi.net/
    http://franciskong.acts-29.net/