• Niche Marketing – What Is A Niche?

    Date: 2011.02.23 | Category: Promotion | Response: 0

    The first step as webmasters we must take to become successful is to discover what our niche specialty is however, many webmasters still do not realize exactly what a niche is.

    In fact, from the webmasters I have spoken to it would seem that a ‘niche’ is just another word for the main topics of pornography, Teen, Asian, Fetish, Gay, Straight, the list goes on and, whilst this list is never ending they are all niches in themselves however, you need to look beyond the top level niche and start to develop a feel, a stance of your own as to what niche you will work on for example, Asian Midgets, you probably cant get more niche than that in this day and age however, realistically, the chances of you a) being able to find the content for this niche and b) Being able to find a sponsor are remarkably thin.

    That said, if you can find a niche that you like personally, whether that be she-male, midgets, straight or, gay, this will give you a solid foundation to market your sites on especially if you build on your already vast knowledge of what turns you on.

    Now, onto breaking down the niche you are comfortable working in..

    Lets say for arguments sake that you have chosen to concentrate on the ‘Gay’ market,, within this market (as with any other) there is a remarkable amount of ‘sub-niches’ and, these are what you need to build your business around whether you want to or not, the ‘sub-niches’ of any given adult market is where the $$$ can be earned.

    Now using the gay market as an example the first few niches that come to mind are:

    Twink’s – Young looking hairless 18 – 20 year olds.
    Bear’s – Hairy men over the age of 20.
    Hunk’s – Muscular looking guys in the age group of 20 – 30 .
    Straight Guys – Yes, that’s right, gay men get off on looking at straight guys.

    As you can see from the above four examples we can now start targeting our market audience a lot better.

    The next thing we need to do now that we have found the niche and the sub-niche we will be working is to look for a sponsor that complements the niche of our choice, this is the hard part. Many webmasters will go directly to the highest paying sponsor and throw links up to their ‘sub-niche’ pay site not even looking at the sites tour or members area. This is a huge mistake, the first thing you NEED to do is to look over the sponsors paysites and, more importantly, the sponsors site tour AND members area. What point is there sending your surfers who are after Twink’s if, your sponsors tour has images of a load of guys over the Twink age bracket?

    From this point on and, after you have chosen a suitable tour to send your traffic to you need to build up a flow of ‘niche’ traffic the chances are, if you submit your TGP gallery to an ‘all gay’ TGP that you will receive a substantial amount of unfiltered traffic making your hard work in choosing your sponsors tour worthless.

    So how do you choose a traffic source that is right for you? Simple, you need to experiment, start of with your niche TGP’s, Top Lists, Links Lists etc and see what happens, how much traffic are you being sent from your chosen traffic source and, more importantly, how much of this traffic is actually clicking through to your sponsors tour. Once you can get an idea of what traffic you are being sent from what traffic source you have won more than half of the battle already.

    Record EVERY possible detail about your traffic sources that you can, how much traffic they send a day, how many visits your sponsor gets, how many sales you made, what content you were using etc, etc.

    Once you have a working list of data to use you can start to abuse and filter your traffic like you would have not thought imaginable, if one of your sponsors has a higher payout on Bear traffic, then you instantly know what traffic source gives you traffic for that niche and, you can utilize that information to your benefit.

    The most important thing to remember however when marketing a niche is that you need to have patience, you need to use a process of trial and error and, more importantly, you need to experiment, just because TGP A sends you 100,000 hits of Twink traffic one day, it doesn’t mean you will get the same quantity of niche traffic the next.

    Article written by Le

  • Adult Webmaster Health

    Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: General | Response: 0

    Sounds to me like you are a webmaster. Most of us realize that working at a computer everyday can and often is, bad for our health in one way, shape or, form. However, how do we alleviate these potential problems with our health?

    Well in this article I will detail some of the things that can often affect the webmasters in our industry and how they can be solved.

    RSI (Repetitive Stress Injuries) are the results of, as you may have figured out already, the effects of constantly doing the same movements over and over again using specific parts of your body. One of the most common of these that webmasters are aware of is CTS (Carpal Tunnel Syndrome) which is a result of typing a lot.

    So, how do you combat the effects of CTS? First and foremost, if you experience any form of pain at all, your first port of call should be the doctor, the pain you are feeling could be an indicator of a bigger problem. If you think your pain might be caused by use of the computer then an occupational therapist might also be a good person to visit.

    CTS is often attributed to use of your digits and poor hand positioning when you type one way to solve this problem is to go to Office Depot and purchase a wrist rest, this will ensure your wrist has ample support whilst you are working throughout the day.

    You might also like to try re-positioning your monitor, as a general rule of thumb, having your monitor placed about 20 inches away from your face will usually result in good posture and that in itself can often be a solution to the potential medical problems. One other thing on your posture, get a good chair, one with a high back may be good, these generally offer you more support and, can stop that awkward habit of leaning into your keyboard when you type.

    Eyestrain, Eyestrain is another common problem that the webmaster faces, often it leads to things such as excessive headaches, fatigue and, blurry vision, the most acceptable relief from eyestrain is the use of screen filter that will reduce the glare your monitor emits.

    There of course, some other things you can do to alleviate this problem such as, Adjusting your monitor so the top of the screen is no higher than eye level, as already mentioned, keeping the monitor a safe working distance from you, usually between 18 and 30 inches is recommended by doctors.

    We know computers are machines and tend to forget that our own bodies are complex machines which, should be looked after just as our computers should be, we often forget that sitting at the PC building what was meant to be a 10 minute site can turn into an hours worth of ‘online work’. Take some time every now and again to stand up and walk for 5 minutes, even if it is just to the local store to buy some more smokes, you are actually getting some exercise and, even though the tar in your smokes will end up killing you anyway, you’ll at least be able to work a little longer without getting any problematic computer related medical symptoms.

    This article is not meant as an alternative to visiting your physician and, should you think that any of the above are relevant to you then it is recommended that you visit your doctors without delay and follow any advice that they give you.

    Article written by Lee.

  • Are Your European Surfers Male Or Female?

    Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Promotion | Response: 0

    In Europe, the domain of the Web still belongs to the younger generation, with nearly 80% of European surfers under the age of 30. This is not surprising, as Europe is culturally quite different from the US.

    The older generation in Europe has typically been slower to adopt new technologies and habits compared to their American counterparts, and we can’t see this trend changing anytime soon. Cultural differences will limit Internet penetration among the older age groups.

    Female Internet usage still lags in Europe, with slightly more than 20% of Web users being women. Although this difference is less pronounced in the UK, on the Continent, males still dominate the Web scene.

    Our Target Audience

    What does this tell us? Well, first of all, it tells us that the European audience is growing more and more each and every day but, we already knew that, what we didn’t know however, until now, was just what percentage of European surfers could be persuaded to buy porn memberships or related goods from one of our sites.

    Most paysite owners will tell you that, on average the ages of their members range from 25-30 and, as such, the European market could potentially supply a vast majority of these signups if, they got the overall balance of their sites right.

    The Solution

    As you should already know by now, the European porn surfer has different expectations to its US counterpart, they wont give out personal information as readily as American surfers, this includes their email address so, this rules out sending them to ‘For Free’ programs, they are also getting really pissed-off at having to download dialer programs to access porn, heck, the average phone bill in Europe is almost double what it is in America, why antagonize these people even more? They know they are overlooked when it comes to porn surfing so we need to stop neglecting these surfers, get a site translated into a foreign language, broaden your horizons, tap into an as yet ‘untamed market’ I feel certain that if you take a few basic steps your bottom line can be increased significantly, it all comes down to this…..

    Do you have the balls to try something new?

    Article written by Lee.

  • Building A Surfer Trap – Stage 8 – Final Stage

    Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Traffic | Response: 0

    Ok people we have hit the final stage in our surfer trap, Stage 8.

    All we are really going to do in this stage is a brief recap over what we have done so far along with checking that our trap is working properly.

    In order for us to check our trap is working properly we need to upload it to our server if we haven’t already done so, therefore, you should do this now.

    Once the surfer trap has been uploaded we now need to go to the first page, the Multi-Site FPA.

    Depending on how you set up your Multi-Site FPA you should either get a pop up or not.

    You should also have a counter AND a banner exchange code loading at the bottom of the page below your ‘no thanks’ link.

    If this works how you want it to then this stage is working ok.

    The next thing we need to check is that ALL of the links off this Multi-Site FPA are working so expect to get a lot of pop-ups while we check this.

    You should click on each of the Single-Site FPA’s in turn ensuring that for every one you have a pop-up console appear.

    In addition to checking the Single-Site FPA links you should now click on the ‘no thanks’ link along with the counter code and the banner exchange code on your Multi-Site and Single-Site FPA’s.

    If these all load fine then this stage of the checking is complete.

    Next, we need to close down any and all of the FPA’s we may have open including the Multi-Site FPA.

    You should now be left with a couple of consoles, again, follow the links on your consoles including any to the counter you chose along with any banner exchange code you utilized on your consoles.

    Again if these work how you expected them to, this section of the checking process is now complete.

    For the next step, you need to log into your counter AND banner exchange account, you want to make sure that you have gained additional impressions and rankings from your banner and counter impressions and clicks.

    Be aware however, that some counters and banner exchanges will not count multiple views and click from the same IP address so you may only show one or two additional clicks, impressions, or rankings. This is perfectly normal.

    If your accounts have gained additional ranks, impressions, and clicks then this stage is completed.

    Close down your consoles, you should now get the blur consoles that you created (if you used them) again, as before, check that all of the links from this consoles work.

    If they do then you now have a fully complete Surfer Trap to use.

    So, what next? Well there are a couple of options, you can mirror this surfer trap to experiment with your sponsors different tour pages, link your first mirror to the second tour page, your third to console free tour pages, etc.

    Another good thing that you can do is to create additional Multi-Site FPA’s however, this time, create them by niche so where we have a general Multi-Site FPA at the moment you could use this same method for a Gay, Asian, Teen, etc Multi-Site FPA using the same methods we did when we created this trap.

    You should always sign up for a new counter and banner exchange code for each variation of your surfer trap. This way, you get to see performance based on a new working model enabling you to decide which version of the trap works best for you.

    I hope this tutorial has given you some insight into how we can generate, filter and trade traffic whilst marketing our sites effectively and, that it has given you some ideas on how you can implement even the simplest item provided to you by your sponsor to generate sales.

    For those of you who have been following this tutorial I would like to thank you and wish you all the best with your new found marketing skills.

    If you have any questions as always, feel free to post on the forums and we will endeavor to help you out.

    Article written by Lee.

  • Designing Your Site With Link Popularity In Mind

    Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Traffic, WebDesign | Response: 0

    To get good traffic, your website needs to be popular, to be popular, your website needs links, to get links, your website needs to be popular. Annoying isn’t it :)

    Almost everyone agrees that link popularity is critical for your website’s visibility, traffic, and thus successfulness. It is something you need to have. As I pondered the ways of establishing and improving one’s “popularity”, eventually all come back to one central issue, your website must be designed to be popular.

    Link popularity is a basically the measure of links pointing to your website and is meant to be a measure of the best websites. Theoretically those websites that have the most links pointing to them must be important and thus worth the visit. Unfortunately, there are a lot of folks out there that have created programs to “boost” your popularity artificially and all they have done is create Spam and muddy the overall picture. The search engines and directories are keeping a close eye on these programs.

    Design: When getting a request or thinking about making one for a link exchange with a website, look thoroughly over the website first. The website’s theme or topic and general layout is the first thing to look at. Sites with themes or topics that are related to or compliment yours should be your main link partners. You do this to get targeted traffic.

    Just as you evaluated someone’s website, others will be doing the same to yours. Make sure you know what your theme or topic is and that it clearly encompasses the whole website. Stay focused; do not try to cover everything.

    Next, check out the links page or resource area. If they do have one, is it easy to find within the site? Does it seem to be part of the site or just a page off to the side? Are their linking rules available, clear, and easy to follow? Do they accept links from any website or are they choosy? Being part of someone’s well constructed links program, no mater what size, can be a very beneficial thing indeed.

    Again, the same goes for your website. You want to let other webmasters know that you want to exchange links and which type of website you will accept requests from. Make it easy for others to link with you.

    The last set of questions to ask yourself about any website is:

    Is it easy to navigate
    Does it have too many graphics (slow loading)
    Is it pleasant to the eye
    Does the information seem to be organized in a logical fashion

    What has been covered so far deals with what the visitors see; if visiting the website is a pleasant experience then people will stay and look and possibly come back. The final area to cover is what the search engines see.

    The underside (the source code) of the website is just as critical when designing or linking with a website. The search engines are the ones that read this and if it is not done properly then the website can not succeed. Below are a few things you need to consider in your source code and any potential site that has asked to be linked by you.

    Does the website contain frames
    Does it use the headers, titles, meta-tags, and alt tags properly
    Do the keyword location(s) and density seem appropriate and “optimized”

    The latter two issues mentioned above are critical, for they are the backbone to traffic production.

    Content: The information you have is just as important as how you set it up on your website. The more popular websites or the ones with good link popularity are those that have valuable information or resource(s) for its audience after all, they fill a niche! People will visit, stay, return, and recommend a website if it has the content they want or need.

    “Content is king.” A well-designed and organized website might look good but if it does not deliver anything of value, it will not be successful. Whatever subject matter you have on your site, make sure you have something of interest and importance to add to the subject, if you do and you promote it well, you and your site will be successful. In this context, it (content) does not just refer to images, why not add some stories or interesting links to news articles to improve your sites ‘popularity’.

    In addition to information, resources like mailing lists, surveys, polls, classified ads, forums, etc. are all things if used appropriately can add value and fresh content to your website which, in turn will assist you in interacting with your sites visitors.

    In conclusion: Take the time to design and optimize your website properly for the search engines. Make sure you have something of value or importance to add to whatever area your website is in. Provide resources and other tools, which your visitors could use and will make them come back. Be proactive and interact with your visitors. Websites that are dynamic and active are the best ones. All of this might take a little more time to get your website up and running, but it will be worth it.

    For yours or any website to be popular, it needs the links and to get the links, it needs to show the other webmasters that it is worthy of a link. It seems everyone today has a website, but not everyone has put together a website that adds value to the Internet community. Take a critical look at your website and any website you might link to and ask yourself…………….

    Would you bookmark it?

    Article written by Lee

  • Golden Rules For Finding A New Domain Name

    Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Domain Names | Response: 0

    We all know by now that domain names are being registered at an unbelievable rate and, whilst the vast majority of ‘decent’ domain names have already been registered there are still some god domains to be registered and, this article will give you some insight into how you can choose an effective domain for your business purposes – regardless of what they are.

    Avoid Play On Words.

    Whilst sitting at a bar you come up with an idea for a domain www.4play.com and, at the time this might seem like a great domain name to buy however, before you head to your favorite register and purchase the domain stop to think about the long term implications.

    Let me explain this a little more using the example www.4play.com lets think about this, every time you mention the domain in a conversation people are more likely to head across to www.foreplay.com or www.fourplay.com first as a type-in. This is also true of the other abbreviation styles of ‘internet slang’ remember the days of the ‘dot com’ registrations, you know domains such as www.dotsex.com looking back now, these seem ridiculous to have been registered however, at the time they were popular but they died their death years ago.

    Think Investment.

    A good ‘commercial’ domain must be able to distinguish itself from the competition, there are several ways to achieve this for example:

    Consider Your Target Audience.

    Aim your domain at a specific, yet broad market audience. use tools to narrow down what your customers (surfers) are looking for, narrow this list down to a select few domains and then, narrow the list down some more.

    Follow Trends Or… Create Them.

    If you are serious about picking a good domain name or two then be prepared to invest the time required to get a good domain name. Research the latest trends on the internet, see what products or services are ‘hot’ and will be around long term and also see which domains are just a flash in the pan.

    A good example of ‘long term’ domains would be www.europeanwebmasters.com which i registered several years ago when, in all honesty, the foreign markets were not even thought about however, you cant go to any forum nowadays without someone asking about the international marketplace.

    Act On A Whim.

    In complete contrast to my opening statement in this article, if you think you have a solid business idea, act on it, the chances are someone else will also think of the same idea as you and, if you don’t get the domain name first, they will.

    Alternative Buying.

    So you have decided that you do want to buy www.4play.com before you make your purchase have a look at what other variants of this domain are available, for example, you might like to check registrations of www.4-play.com, www.for-play.com, www.forplay.com, etc etc.

    If you have a great business idea, make sure you have all of your bases covered, just because you are starting a new craze, that doesn’t mean the domains will be available for registration tomorrow or next week.

    By purchasing all the variants of the high quality domain you have thought of you are, in effect, eliminating all of the competition you could face long term.

    Don’t Cyber-Squat.

    If you are a serious domain buyer, avoid tailgating on other peoples domain names unless of course, it has enormous potential for example, if someone has registered a generic domain such as www.123456.com but failed to register www.123-456.com why not register the available domain? You are not impeding on anyone’s property rights and, you might benefit from some mis-typed traffic at the same time. As with any type of mis-typed domain, before you register it, seek legal advice, a few dollars spent before registering the domain could save you thousands afterwards.

    Fools Rush In.

    Don’t automatically buy the first domain name you think of, think on it some more, sleep on it if you have to, ask your family and friends on their opinions. Although the really good domain names have virtually almost all gone, its better to carefully think out each and every domain name purchase you make and save yourself some money long term than to rush in and buy a domain that wont be any use and have to register a new domain to take the place of the first.

    In addition to the above don’t sit on a really good domain name idea forever because, forever comes a lot sooner than you may think.

    Hopefully this article has given you some useful information in respect of registering new domain names and you can put this information to good practice when buying domains. Article written by Lee

  • How To Use ALT Tags On Your Sites

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

    One simple technique can improve your search engine rank, make site navigation easier, and increase the accessibility of your site to disabled visitors. Yet, as many as 78% of sites don’t use it! Boost your site’s profile with human visitors and search engine spiders with the <ALT> tag.

    Inserting ALT Text

    Adding <ALT> descriptions to your <IMG> tags is quick and easy. You don’t have to do any complex HTML coding. If you can describe your image or link, then you can add ALT tags to your code.

    We’ve used some examples below:

    <img src="thumbnails/porn.jpg" 
      width="100" height="78" ALT="Explicit Teenage Sex Pictures">

    You can also include an ALT tag when your image is a link:

    <a href="porn.html"> 
    <img src="thumbnails/porn.jpg" 
    width="100" height="78" ALT="Explicit Teenage Sex Pictures"></a>

    Ideally, your ALT text descriptions should be complete sentences, rather than a list of keywords or obscure phrase like “company logo small 2.” Remember that all visitors are likely to see (or hear) some version of your ALT text so be sure that it’s meaningful.

    Optimize ALT Descriptions For Search Engines

    Besides helping human visitors, ALT descriptions help you rank higher in some search engines. AltaVista and Google are two of the search engines that use ALT descriptive text when they rank Web sites. The growth of search engine/directory partnerships means that a high rank in one engine can often translate into an improved rank on its partner sites.

    Search engine algorithms calculate the number of times keywords are repeated and give higher rank to pages that use them often. Keywords in the ALT descriptive text help you increase their frequency on the page. Search engines assume the terms are more relevant and important if they’re used in the page content, not just listed in the META tag.

    For instance, the descriptive text in the example code uses keywords and keyword phrases from the META keyword tag: Explicit Teenage Sex Pictures. Since these are relevant to the site’s content, they’re easy to include as descriptive text.

    If you’re having problems choosing relevant, targeted keywords, refer to this article, How To Pick Your Keywords. It provides helpful tips about selecting keywords and using them to improve your search engine ranking.

    Make Your Web Site Sticky

    ALT tags help you promote your site in another way too: they help make it “sticky.” Sticky means that visitors stay at your site longer so they see your advertising and purchase your memberships. Visitors who feel comfortable at a site will stay longer – and hopefully return more often to make further purchases.

    Disabled visitors who use text-only or spoken word browsers rely on the ALT text for clues about the image’s content and function. This can be a lucrative audience: they represent a worldwide audience of 750 million and spend twice as much time online as the average user. But it isn’t just a disability issue: ALT tags make your site more accessible to everyone.

    Visitors see your ALT text while the images are downloading or when they mouse over images. The descriptive text helps them decide if they want to wait for an image to download or move on to a different page. If your image is also a link, then visitors can read the explanatory text and quickly jump to the section they want.

    Site navigation is easier, so impatient visitors are less likely to leave the site.

    Don’t Follow The Crowd

    ALT tags are a small addition to your HTML code that can make a big impact on your site. Since many of your competitors don’t use them, give your site and edge and include them on all images.

    Article Written By Lee

  • JavaScript Know How

    Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Scripts | Response: 0

    JavaScript can be one of the most useful additions to any web page. It comes packaged as standard in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and, Netscape Navigator and allows webmasters to perform field validations, mouse-over’s, pop ups and a whole entourage of other nifty little features on our sites.

    In this article we will show you how to:

    – Display the browser name and version number
    – Change the text in the status bar of the browser
    – Use an input box to get text from the user
    – Use a message box to display text to the user
    – Change the title of the browser window

    Before that, however, we need to know how to setup our web page so that it can run the JavaScript. JavaScript code is inserted between opening and closing script tags: <script> and </script>, like this:

    <script language=”JavaScript”>

    –> JavaScript code goes here <–

    </script>

    These script tags can be placed anywhere on the page, however, it’s common practice to place them between the <head>and </head> tags. A basic HTML page that contains some JavaScript looks like this:

    <html>
    <head>
    <title> My Test Page </title>
    <script language=”JavaScript”>

    function testfunc()
    {
    var x = 1;
    }

    </script>
    </head>
    <body>
    <h1>Hello</h1>
    </body>
    </html>

    For the examples in this article, you should use the basic document format I have just shown you, inserting the JavaScript code between the <script> and </script>tags. When you load the page in your browser, the JavaScript code will be executed automatically.

    Displaying the browsers name and version number.

    The “navigator” object in JavaScript contains the details of the user’s browser, including its name and version number. They can be displayed in a browser using the document.write function:

    document.write(“Your browser is: ” + navigator.appName);
    document.write(“<br>Its version is: ” + navigator.appVersion);

    I run Windows 2000 and Internet Explorer version 6, so the output from the code above looks like this in my browser window:

    Your browser is: Microsoft Internet Explorer
    Its version is: 4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0b; Windows NT 5.0)

    Changing the text in the status bar of the browser.

    To change the text in the status bar of a browser window, just change the “status” member of the “window” object, which represents the entire browser window:

    window.status = “This is some text”;

    Using an input box to get text from the user.

    Just like in traditional windows applications, you can use an input box to get some text input from the user. The “prompt” function is all you need:

    var name = prompt(“What is your name?”);
    document.write(“Hello ” + name);

    The prompt function accepts just one argument (the title of the input box), and returns the value entered into the text box. In the example above, you get the users name and store it in the “name” variable. You then use the “document.write” function to output their name into the browser window.

    Using a message box to display text to the user.

    You can display a message box containing an OK button. These are great when you want to let the user know what is happening during their time on a particular page. You can use a message box to display the “name” variable from our previous example:

    var name = prompt(“What is your name?”);
    alert(“Your name is: ” + name);

    The “alert” function takes one argument, which is the text to display inside of the message box.

    Changing the title of the browser window.

    To change the title of a web browser’s window, simply modify the “document.title” variable, like this:

    document.title = “My new title”;

    One bad thing about the “document.title” variable is that it can only be manipulated in Microsoft Internet Explorer. Netscape’s implementation of JavaScript doesn’t allow for modification.

    In Closing.

    As you can see from the examples in this article, JavaScript is a powerful scripting language that can be used to enhance a visitor’s experience with our site. However, you shouldn’t use JavaScript too much because in some cases it can annoy visitors and send them packing before your site even loads!

    Article Written By Lee

  • Redirecting To A Different Page Using JavaScrip

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Scripts | Response: 0

    There are times when a simple JavaScript redirection from one page to another can come in handy and, the following JavaScripting will enable you to do this.

    When a page contains this javascript, it will be redirected to another page that you specify in the “window.location=”. You can change the number of refresh seconds by changing the “move()’,1000 to the number of seconds you’d like.

    Example:

    1000 = 1 second
    2000 = 2 seconds
    3000 = 3 seconds

    Place this JavaScript code between the <head> and </head> tags

    <script language=”JavaScript”>
    <!–hide from old browsers
    var time = null
    function move() {
    window.location = ‘http://www.yourdomain.com’
    }
    //–>
    </script>

    Place this JavaScript code in your <body> tag

    <body onload=”timer=setTimeout(‘move()’,1000)”>

    You should now have a page that will redirect to a new url when it loads in the surfers browser window.

    Article written by Lee

  • Why Have More Than One Index Page?

    Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Search Engine Optimization | Response: 0

    The first thing you should do when you start designing a web site is to create an index page. You would think that this is a basic knowledge in web design, but I still encounter web sites that are lacking in this.

    If there’s no index page, and if the web host server has not set a directory access limitation, any visitor will see a directory listing of all the images, html pages, CGI-scripts, and other files in the directory. Everything will then be accessible for reading and downloading, and the CGI-scripts will also be executable!

    So, for a basic security it is most important to have an index page in all your directories, whether they contain only pictures or garbage. In the directories that are private or containing things other then HTML pages, the index pages need only to print out a text like “access forbidden” or something in that spirit. In the directories containing one or more HTML pages, one of the pages must be named “index.html,” whether it is a page with real content or for security reason.

    If you have a directory specifically for CGI-scripts, it will run a higher security risk, because most of the times these directories are called CGI-bin, or a variant of that, and anyone who is after your scripts is undoubtedly familiar with this and can access the directory by typing the directory name in the targeted site’s URL, if it’s not properly protected by an index page. Imagine the horror when someone uses your mailing list program to Spam all your subscribers or decides to sell your email list. It’s quite a big business in selling email lists. A large email list is worth thousands of US dollars nowadays.

    I could have done all these things if I had any bad intentions when I accidentally bumped into an unprotected site. Actually, I bumped into two unprotected, huge subscribers lists in the last two months, which prompted me to write this article. But of course, I did the proper thing and emailed the web sites’ webmasters about their oversight. You would think that these professional looking and operating web sites with email lists of respectively 8,000 and 15,000 subscribers would know better.

    Even if your site is made by a web design company, make sure all your directories are protected. In fact, one of the two unfortunate web sites I uncovered is a web design company. So, check out your site for this unnecessary security gap, right now.

    Article written by Lee

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