Here are some links from Chris Brogan for good sites to help you with optmizing you site. We’ve already been using the first for some time:

Website Grader from Hubspot. This tool is a really great way of seeing how you stand with typical SEO and social engagement scoring. Start here. This is also a favorite with Carl.

Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide (pdf). You can use this to understand the basics behind the scenes on how search engines like Google see your website or blog.

Google’s SEO Report Card (pdf) – Useful for knowing what Google sees when they look at your site. A lot of what’s covered in here is measured by the Website Grader tool mentioned above.

WordPress SEO. If you’re using WordPress for your website or blog, this is a really useful resource. It’ll take a while to pore through, but you’ll find some value in it, for sure. My friend, Yoast, also has a WordPress SEO plugin that you might find useful.

Chris also use Scribe (affiliate link) to help him with his SEO on his site.
Carl also uses the Search Engine News and the analyzers provided with it.

Certain web sites are now providing personal information on YOU including private information (such as your credit card info). They do this by, among other things, farming data into their database from multiple social networks and other sources. One such site is http://www.SPOKEO.COM. Try it out – enter your name and see what info is there on you. Since this is illegal and the current administration has no interest in protecting your personal data, we suggest you hackers out there that are running the white bot nets take these jokers down.

To remove your listing from SPOKEO, first search the site on your name. Then copy the URL to your clipboard. Go down to the bottom of the page and click the Primacy option. Paste your URL from the Clipboard to the text box there and follow the directions. Better check again occasionally.

Remember that some social networks, such as Facebook, run with NO secrecy. This includes the various games on this site. ANY information you put there (including credit card info) is not secure.

Warning:
We encourage everyone to read this about a new security threat from CNN, of all places:
http://weblog.infoworld.com/gripeline/archives/2009/01/is_it_safe_to_w.html?source=NLC-GRIPE&cgd=2009-01-27

This refers to a plugin they offer, Octoshape Grid Adobe Flash Plug-in, which is more than a Flash Plug-in. I turns you computer into a part of a peer-to-peer network. Read the license agreement carefully. Not cool.

The level of spam is increasing dramatically, yet hosting systems and the Bush Administration are wimpys in all of this. One particularly agressive spam host is netplace.ru, with an email address of support@netplace.ru. LOTS of illegal spam comming from this guy. We suggest millions of users stomp this host until they die with multiple botnets.

Another one from Romania that causing a lot of problems is: rdsnet.ro. Here’s the documentation for those wishing to kill it:

Project HoneyPot

The users must pick up the war here. Our black list of illegal spamming hosts is at:
http://www.creatingnewworlds.org/stopspam.pdf.
We’ve also added a few wimpy registrars there that are part of the spam game.

Here are a few good web sites for developers:

Lost your site?
You try to pull up your site on the Internet and it won’t come up. Is it your computer, the network, or your server? A quick way to find out is to go to http://www.alertra.com. For free, they will attempt to reach your site from various cities around the world and tell you how much time it takes to reach your site from each location. They also offer a subscription service if you want them to continuously monitor your up time.

Are You On a Spammer Black List?
Your mail may be filtered by various servers if you are on one of these black lists. This site will check your IP on those lists and verify your IP is good. Go to http://rbls.org.

Who sent that Spam?
So you got illegal spam. Do you know how to trace it to the source host? Use your email program to read the header. Although much of the header can be forged, those lines beginning “Received: from…” are very difficult for a sender to forge. Check your email program to find out how to read the header, then look for those “Received: from…” lines going top down – remember, the header is tracing backwards through the various relay points. The last one is generally the one with the IP of the sender’s host. Here is an example of the last “Received: from…” line from an illegal spam today:

Received: from source ([59.23.108.165]) by exprod7mx54.postini.com ([64.18.6.10]) with SMTP;
Tue, 06 Jun 2006 09:04:12 EDT

This spam is from a host at 59.23.108.

Take that IP and go to http://www.samspade.org or http://www.netsol.com or http://www.tucows.com to find the spammer’s host.

Any email listing on this registrar is often non-functional or, in some cases, an abuse email listing that generates only an auto-reply. The best way to stop the spammer is to put the IP on your own black list (as we do) and make it available to hackers for their fun. You have to take charge of your own spam problem.

How is Your Internet Speed?
What’s your true Internet speed? You can use the web site at http://bandwidthplace.com/speedtest/ to test your site and get your speed.

How’s Your Firewall?
This site will test your firewall, check to see you have no reverse DNS (generally, you do not want reverse DNS), and tell you your current IP. All free. This is Steve Gibson’s famous Shields Up site”
>https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2.

How’s Your Anti-Virus?
GFI will test your anti-virus protection free at:
http://www.gfi.com/emailsecuritytest/, but don’t expect to past this. They sell the really good enterprise-level stuff, so your home system may not pass this one.

Note: the anti-virus and firewall testing tools will NOT damage your system, but if you are on a network you should check with the network administrator first. He may get worried if he or she sees someone trying to get through the network defense system.

We maintain a black list of IPs and domains that have spammed or phished us. This list is saved on our local computer in Microsoft Access and periodically uploaded to a MySQL table on the host that is made available to hackers, the FTC, and (when relevant) to individual state Attorney Generals. In mid-January this system failed and we’ve been working with Microsoft and various MySQL forums to try to resolve the problem.

The problem is resolved now and the black list is now again online. You can find it at:
http://www.creatingnewworlds.org/stopspam.cfm
We’ve kept the local Access table updated during this time, so no information was lost. We encourage others to create their own black lists and distribute them until authorities are willing to take the lead. We will post more details on how we do this later.

The problem, we discovered, was a major fault in Microsoft Access. Several users have discovered and reported the problem; but Microsoft has done nothing at this time to fix it. The problem is in the module msjet40.dl. It apparently started causing problems when we updated our Windows 2003 SP3 to SP4. Some users resolve the problem by reverting to older SPs, but Microsoft asked us to stay with SP4. Instead, we had to replace the msjet40.dll module in Access with another MSjet40.dll two versions older, using version 4.0.62180. (Some users, apparently, succeed by going back only one version.) The problem with replacing, however, comes in that the protection scheme in Windows prevents you from putting older modules in newer versions of the program. So you have to go into the registry and turn this protection off before you can replace. And there is no standard rule on this.

Thanks, Microsoft, for your help. But wouldn’t it be better for you to just fix the problem.?

Some of you have noticed that our black list of spammers doesn’t work at the moment. If you want to hack these IPs at the moment, just email us from our contact form and we’ll email you the ACCESS file. Meanwhile, here is what happened.

The black list is kept on a local database on our Windows 2000 system and it drives a MySQL database on the Linux host using a MySQL driver 3.51. We recently updated our Windows 2000 SP3 to SP4 and got all those security fixes installed. Now the SQL driver doesn’t work. Yep, I uninstalled the driver and ACCESS and re-installed both. The error message when we try comes from ACCESS is that the OBDC call failed. It use to work. No additional messages. The system is a Dell workstation. Dell has no clue as to what happened. It is, of course, a Microsoft problem. Microsoft wants $245 dollars to tell me what happened. That’s more than my Windows 2000 cost. And what they will probably tell me for $245 is to reformat my disk and reload Windows and all my programs. (Yes, our data is all backed up.) I’m willing to bet the register is corrupt and that is the problem.

Do you want to know why Microsoft has all the security problems that it does? It isn’t the number of Windows systems out there, but rather the register design. Vista won’t help Microsoft unless they are serious about fixing Windows, and Microsoft has lost trust on that.

Summary
To quote Cringely from the 1/9/2006 issue of Infoworld:

Desktop Linux is looking more attractive every day.

Our host system is a Linux. We couldn’t afford to run our web site on a host that crashes like Windows does. At the desktop level, Microsoft is now competing with Linux, Apple (now using Intel processor chips), and soon GoogleDos. Why should I have to pay for a Microsoft problem, such as my ACCESS problem?

The answer, I would think, would be for Windows’ users to rise up with a class action suite. This was suggested in Inforworld 1/9 by Dave Rosenberg. When do Windows’ users get compensated for Microsoft’s mistakes?

Meanwhile, we are loading the SQL driver onto another system and hope to have the black list up again soon. Our responsibility is to our clients first, so this is considered non-productive and may take some time yet. Please be patient or ask us to email the database. We’ve sent a printout to the FTC, but the Administration and the FTC are pretty dead the next few years.

A new virus threat has been identified that could affect any version of Microsoft Windows. It is particularly dangerous in that it can be carried in an email attachment and can be tripped from simply visiting a web site that contains the virus. For more information see

Info on Microsoft Virus
Be sure you are using anti-virus and that it is up-to-date and avoid unfamiliar web sites.
Microsoft plans to have the patch to fix it on 1/10/2006. For more see.

We are constantly amazed at how many users ignore basic security issues on their computer. The end result is ALWAYS loss of critical information that can’t be recovered and extraordinary expenses rebuilding the system when basic security steps could have saved everything. The three basic security tools you should ALWAYS have on your system are the antivirus, firewall, and spyware eliminator. You should also have a strong backup system.

Anti-Virus

The antivirus tool should constantly monitor incoming and outgoing email for viruses. This tool is uses on a subscription basis. You install the basic tool. Every few days it should automatically update its virus dictionary. Once a year you purchase the subscription update. The tool should be (1) Installed (2) Active and (3) Updated. Don’t receive any email until this is done. It only takes a few seconds online before the first virus will hit you.

Firewall

A firewall protects against some malicious user from hijacking your computer and using it for their own purpose – which could include downloading proprietary information from your system or crashing your system. There are two types: hardware and software. Use both. A router is a small piece of hardware used to connect two networks. Without that router, you are an organic part of the Internet network and your system is available for anyone. The router contains a firewall and separates your computer from the Internet network. With broadband access, the router (with its firewall) protects your network, even if you have only a single computer in your network. Very cheap for the protection they give.

A hardware firewall in a router, however, can’t protect you from viruses on other computers in your network. It’s best to have the software firewall in addition. Norton’s Security product, for example, contains both the antivirus and a software firewall.

Anti-Spyware Product

Finally, a spyware eliminator (Anti-spyware) protects against advertising cookies and trojans. It’s a third class of software that adds security to your system. Microsoft now has a free Anti-spyware product you can download from their site free at:

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx

Backup

Also, don’t forget to have a strong backup system and use it. We suggest using a product like Partition Magic to partition your physical disk into two or more virtual disks. Instead of just “C”, you now have “C” and “D”. Then put all your data (DOC, TIF, XLS, etc. files) on the “D” drive. If your system crashes, you only have to reformat and rebuild the C drive. Your data is intact.

If the physical disk crashes, however, you will still lose the data. To protect things here, purchase and external drive or perhaps even one of the keychain drives. Copy the D drive to this drive using the USB port or through a network.

To prevent data loss and expensive recovery of the system, be sure you have these on your system.