Not too long ago we put together a site for an up and coming company, 100% Clean. They’re starting to sign with some very impressive professional atheletes and are issuing press releases, so I figured I should probably mention them in the blog!

These guys were great to work for, and their campaign against performance enhancing drugs is a really fantastic cause. They’re launching a clothing line over the next few months, so if you’re reading this take a few minutes to check it out.

I recently finished a project for a new customer, Kiddos! Kids’ Salon, and I couldn’t be happier. I’m glad when we have the opportunity to depart from the corporate web sites to do something a little more fun, and I couldn’t be more pleased with the way this one came out.

If you have little ones and you’re in the area, I highly recommend you stop by and check them out.

My sincerest thanks to everyone for being a part of Danifer Web Services this year. It’s been a lot of fun and I’m glad that I’ve had the opportunity to share it with so many wonderful people. Best wishes to our customers, colleagues, friends and family this holiday season, and I wish you a happy and prosperous New Year.

From everyone at Danifer Web Services, happy holidays!

Thank you,

Keeton

Last week I attended a meeting for a group called the Grapevine AMBUCS – a charitable organization of businessmen in the Grapevine area. My original goal in coming to the meeting was to get involved with a local charity organization that was laid back and would be fun and easy to attend. I was particularly pleased with the AMBUCS because they were extremely friendly, fairly well organized, and I already knew a few of the members from some of the business networking events I attend.

From the Grapevine AMBUCS web site:

The Grapevine Chapter of AMBUCS is comprised of businessmen from the Grapevine and surrounding communities dedicated to creating independence and opportunities for people with disabilities. AMBUCS meetings, community service projects and special events bring our members together as friends. Some of these friendships last a lifetime.AMBUCS service opportunities provide individuals with the resources to help their community when and if they are unable to do this as an individual. Working together as a group promotes fun, friendship and most of all, enpowers the community and individuals in need.

Creating Independence for People with Disabilities by:

• Performing Community Service
• Providing AmTrykes to Children with Disabilites
• Providing Scholarships for Therapists

As of this week, I am officially an AMBUCS member and am proud to be part of their organization. If you’re interested in becoming a member yourself, would like to volunteer, or have questions about one of the upcoming events, please feel free to drop me a line anytime.

For more information on the national organization, please visit their site at ambucs.com. For the Grapevine local chapter, please go to grapevineambucs.com.

Today I received a very exciting email from the team at SpamBully.

If you’ve read my previous article on updating to Windows Vista, you know that I wasn’t able to migrate the SpamBully software to the new system. I haven’t tested it out yet, but this email suggests that the software is now ready to go!

Their Email

Dear SpamBully user,
We are excited to announce the release of SpamBully 4 for Outlook, Outlook Express and Windows Mail in Vista!

We are offering a FREE 1 year upgrade to users of SpamBully 1, 2, and 3.

SpamBully 4 has many exciting new features and enhancements to help you continue to keep the upper hand against spammers.

New Features and Enhancements Include……..

Auto-Delete – Now you can save time by setting SpamBully to immediately delete emails from known spammers on your Block list.

Review Window – Easily review emails SpamBully has categorized as spam and unsure from one simple window.

Fraudulent Link Detection – Detect links in phishing email messages that are from potentially fraudulent sources so you don’t accidentally give out your valuable financial information to thieves.

One Click Empty – Now with one mouse click you can instantly delete all of the spam in your Spam folder.

SpamBully 4 has also made even more improvements to the core features you have come to depend on daily……

Enhanced Allow/Block List – Allow or block email addresses, IP’s and words/phrases you choose from your Inbox from one simple location. From here you also have the option of auto-deleting emails from known spammers on your Block list.

Fight Back – Easily turn spammers in to their ISP’s and the FTC with the click of your mouse. You can also bounce spam back to the spammers who sent it.

Unsure Folder – SpamBully now can place messages it is unable to properly classify as good email or spam into a special folder. This saves you extra time from having to review your Spam folder.

Cellphone Forwarding – Forward only good emails to your cellphone.

Auto-Delete – Delete spam emails automatically as they download.

Bayesian Filter – Cutting edge artificial intelligence that knows which emails you’ve received are good or spam. Makes sure good emails make it to your Inbox.

Multi-Language Interface – Lets you easily convert the SpamBully toolbar into English, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Russian, and other popular languages.

Statistics – Comprehensive graphing and statistics shows you how well SpamBully is performing for you.

Challenge Emails – Email a special password to an unfamiliar sender that they must type in before the email is allowed to your Inbox.

Try the new SpamBully 4 for 14 days.

Download your copy from:

http://www.spambully.com/download.php

The first time you open Outlook, Outlook Express or Windows Mail with SpamBully 4, it will easily allow you to import all of your SpamBully 3 settings.

We are offering users of SpamBully 1, 2, and 3 a FREE 1 year upgrade to SpamBully 4.

You can instantly get your SpamBully 4 code at:

http://www.spambully.com/upgrade4.php

We truly appreciate your continued support!

————————————————————————–

You are being emailed this announcement because you have purchased either SpamBully 1,2 or 3.

If you do not wish to be notified by SpamBully when new versions or upgrades are available, please click the link at bottom and you will be instantly removed fromour updates email database. SpamBully does respect your privacy and your wishes, we do not sell our customer lists and we will not email you with SpamBully updates that you do not want.

Axaware, LLC
2153 Wealthy
#150
Grand Rapids, MI
49506

If you haven’t been in a while check out import-duty.com, one of my import/export related web sites. I recently redesigned this one with a new WordPress template and added in an email collection utility and some saleable products.

This site has excellent page rank and has generated a steady stream of traffic for import duty and import tax related terms. I’ve decided to develop it a bit further and try to help importers answer that all important question, “how much is import duty?”

What is a Link Exchange?

In order to promote web site visitors to their sites, many web site owners choose to participate in link exchanges. A link exchange is an agreement between two web site owners wherein they agree to add a click-able link to each of their sites in order to promote each other and share traffic.

What are the Benefits of a Link Exchange?

The primary benefit of a link exchange is for unpaid search engine positioning. Search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and MSN are believed to count the number of incoming links a site has from other web sites in order to determine it’s relevance when returning search engine results. It is widely believed that the more incoming links a site has, the higher it will rank for a given search term.

The secondary benefit of a link exchange is an exchange of traffic from one web site to another. By participating in a link exchange, web site owners actively promote their web site elsewhere on the internet in order to gain more visitors from incoming links.

Although generally overlooked, link exchanges also provide value to your web site’s visitors. Assuming that you are planning on linking to sites that have content related to yours, you are providing your visitors with additional resources.

What are the Problems with Link Exchanges?

The link exchange system is prone to abuse. Many sites automate link exchanges with other web masters to generate thousands of incoming links. These incoming links are less a “vote of confidence” from another site and are generally annoying to visitors looking for real information. Here’s a sample automated link exchange request from Merchant Service Group

How can I get the most out of link exchanges?

This part can be time consuming, but it’s definitely worthwhile. Stick to the following for best results:

• Have a web site worth linking to. Fill your site with useful content for your readers and for those sites who would link to you.
• Don’t automate your linking process. Instead, hand pick sites that compliment yours and contact the owner in a personal way. Mention who you are and what you like about their web site. I always write an individual email to each potential link exchange partner. It’s definitely more time consuming, but in the long run it has better results.
• Contact sites that are relevant to your area of expertise, but not direct competitors. An example would be a veterinarian’s web site linking to one for a pet groomer.
• Don’t go overboard. A few choice links from the right people will get great results.

Is there any terminology I should know?

This is not a comprehensive list, but should get you started:

• URL: the address in your address bar. It normally looks something like http://www.danifer.com/blog/what-is-a-link-exchange.html.
• Anchor text: You can use any text to link to another web site. What you use for anchor text is believed to have an impact on search results. This is an example of anchor text. This is a good place to insert keywords relevant to the site you’re linking to.
• One way link: Not a true link exchange, but rather an incoming link to a site that is not reciprocated.
• Banner/Image: You can use an image to link to a site rather than anchor text.
• Alt Text: When an image is used, alt text can be added to signify what the image is about to visually impaired or graphics disabled browsers. This is a good place to insert keywords relevant to the image you’re using and the site you’re linking to.

What about buying links?

The jury is still out on this one. It definitely makes the process easier, but it might not achieve the results you’re looking for. If you’re going to buy links, do so in moderation and don’t blow your budget. There are more proven ways you can spend money to improve your traffic.

I’m ready. What do I do now?

Here’s how the link exchange would normally work:

• Contact the site you would like to exchange links with.
• The two of you agree where you would like the links placed and what you will be linking to.
• Communicate with your web master where the link should be placed, what it should point to and any other information you worked out with the link exchange partner.
• Confirm that your link exchange partner has posted your link.
• Check back occasionally to make sure nothing has been changed.

Best of luck to would-be link exchangers! I hope you found some of this worthwhile.

Keeton

Here’s an example of an automated link exchange request. Although written in a generically personable way, this is obviously an automated program or bulk distribution email.

As a web site owner I find this kind of thing annoying. Not only is it spam mail, but I believe bulk link requests like this are actually harmful to both the originating site as well as those that link to it.

If you’re not sure what all this is about, please check out this related article: What is a link exchange?

Here’s the email:

I came across your website http://www.itintl.com, and would like to propose a link exchange between our sites. *company name removed* provides an array of *service description removed* to retail*potential clients removed* . *service description removed*

Please consider adding our link to your site on your page: http://www.itintl.com/rss/itintl.xml.

Here is our linking information:

Title: *Anchor Text Removed*
Description: *description removed*
URL: *URL removed*

========== Begin HTML Code ================

<a href=”*URL removed*” Target=”_blank”><b>*Anchor Text Removed*</b></a> *description removed*

========== End HTML Code ================

Let us know when our link is placed and we will post your link in the proper category of our resources page listed here: *description removed* .

Please be sure to include your desired title and description. Your link will be posted within hours, however, in some rare cases it may take longer. Please feel free to let me know if you have any questions.

Thank you for your consideration,

*contact information removed*

If you would like not to receive any further communications from *company name removed* , please respond to this email with “Remove” in the subject line.

One of my customers received this notice from ICANN and had some questions. Read the email from GoDaddy, his question, and my response below.

Email from GoDaddy/ICANN

From: accountupdate@godaddy.com
Sent: Saturday, September 29, 2007 9:18 PM
To:
Subject: Important ICANN Notice Regarding Your Domain Name(s)

***********
Important ICANN Notice Regarding Your Domain Name(s)
***********

Dear Name,

It’s that time of year again. ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned
Names and Numbers) annually requires that all accredited registrars (like Go
Daddy) ask their domain administrators/registrants to review domain name
contact data, and make any changes necessary to ensure accuracy.

To review/update your contact data, simply:
+ Go to www.godaddy.com/?isc=
+ Click on the “ICANN Domain Confirmation” icon at the top of the page
+ You will be taken to a landing page and asked to enter your Domain
Information Key: XXX-XXX-XXX-XXX-XXXXXXXXXXX
+ Enter your key and click “Go.”

Next, simply review the contact information for each domain name. To make a
correction, log in to “My Account” with your customer number or log in name
and password. Click “Manage Domains,” select the domain to update, then
click “Contact.” If you find that your domain contact data is accurate,
there’s no need to take action.

If, however, your domain contact information is inaccurate, you must correct
it. (Under ICANN rules and the terms of your registration agreement,
providing false contact information can be grounds for domain name
cancellation.) To review the ICANN policy, visit:
http://www.icann.org/whois/wdrp-registrant-faq.htm

Should you have any questions, please email us at mailto:support@godaddy.com
or call our customer support line at (480) 505-8877.

Thanks for your attention and thank you for being a GoDaddy.com customer.

Sincerely,
GoDaddy.com Domain Support

If you are the domain administrator of more than one GoDaddy.com domain
account, you may receive this notice multiple times.

The Question

Hi Keeton,

Is this something I should worry about or just a clever marketing thing?

Thanks,

Name

My Response

Hi Name,

This is not clever marketing – ICANN is actually an official organization that regulates domains. All they are asking you to do is log into your account and make sure your contact details are up to date. If they haven’t changed since last year, no updates will be needed.

Hope that helps,

Keeton

I recently purchased and installed an ssl security certificate on my private web server that hosts nearly 40 of my own web sites. Since more than one of those sites sells products, I need to use the ssl certificate on multiple sites. Rather than buy certificates for each one, I instead opted to process transactions on a secure subdomain of this site (secure.danifer.com) and alias the other web sites to subdirectories of the secure subdomain.

For example, instead of making https://howtoadvertise.net/shop I’ll use https://secure.danifer.com/~howtoadvertise.net/shop to accept encrypted data for credit card transactions. This way I won’t have to buy a separate security certificate for each site.

The problem

I couldn’t figure out how to configure the Apache2 virtualhost file to match both the fully qualified domain name as well as a sub-directory of the secure domain. I’ve worked with hosting reseller programs using the common Cpanel setup and I know it’s possible, I just didn’t know how to do it myself.

The solution

As it turns out, all I needed to do was make use of the Apache2 ServerAlias directive. Here’s the line that makes it work:

AliasMatch ^/~(.*) /home/public_html/$1

Which matches https://secure.danifer.com/~username to the public_html directory for any username on the system. Pretty slick!

Here’s my complete virtualhost file:

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName danifer.com
DocumentRoot /home/public_html/danifer.com
ServerAlias www.danifer.com
AliasMatch ^/~(.*) /home/public_html/$1
ErrorLog “|/usr/bin/cronolog /home/apache_logs/%Y-%m-%d-danifer.com-error.log”
CustomLog “|/usr/bin/cronolog /home/apache_logs/%Y-%m-%d-danifer.com-access.log” combined
CustomLog “|/usr/bin/cronolog /home/apache_logs/server_logs/%Y-%m-%d-server-access.log” combined

#Redirect non-existing requests to the homepage
ErrorDocument 404 /index.php
ErrorDocument 500 /index.php
ErrorDocument 403 /index.php
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:443>
ServerName secure.danifer.com
DocumentRoot /home/public_html/danifer.com
AliasMatch ^/~(.*) /home/public_html/$1
ErrorLog “|/usr/bin/cronolog /home/apache_logs/%Y-%m-%d-danifer.com-error.log”
CustomLog “|/usr/bin/cronolog /home/apache_logs/%Y-%m-%d-danifer.com-access.log” combined
CustomLog “|/usr/bin/cronolog /home/apache_logs/server_logs/%Y-%m-%d-server-access.log” combined

SSLEngine on
SSLCertificateFile /etc/apache2/ssl/ssl.crt
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/apache2/ssl/ssl.key
SSLCertificateChainFile /etc/apache2/ssl/ssl.crt

#Redirect non-existing requests to the homepage
ErrorDocument 404 /index.php
ErrorDocument 500 /index.php
ErrorDocument 403 /index.php
</VirtualHost>

As part of our company identity project, we’ve added a logo to the Danifer Web Services portfolio! See it on our homepage or check it out below.

This is a follow up post to my earlier report on the Domain Listing Service mailers my customers have been receiving. Looks like they’ve modified their product a bit, but are still using the same deceptive, high pressure bulk mail to sell it. I can’t speak to the quality of the Search Engine Submission product they’re promoting, but I’m again disappointed in the sales strategy.

Thanks to Linda for alerting me to this issue with her email:

Recently I received a bill from the above-referenced company for $75.00. It was not for domain name registration so much as for a website address listing for search engine submissions. When I looked them up on the internet, your website with the correspondence regarding the bogus bill to one of your clients popped up. Thought you might like to know of their latest scam.

Sincerely,

Linda

Another email, this time from Heather:

We were sent an invoice for $75 to renew our domain and unfortunately we sent the check to Domain Listing Service Corp. Would you happen to have a telephone number for them.

Thank you,

Heather

Here’s one from Patricia:

Thankyou soooo much!!!

I was this…… close to sending in my payment of $65 to this ‘domain listing service’ when I got suspicious of no phone#, and found your site. If you need my help in getting these guys, let me know! Thanks again.

It looks authentic and it does say ‘NOT A BILL’, but a solicitation and I’m not under any obligation to pay the amount (?).

This one from Shelley:

Thank you for confirming my suspicions about this company. Their solicitation looks like a real bill and I was almost ready to pay it. Luckily I read the statement and realized it was only a solicitation and not a bill. I am sure that many, many people just send them the $75.00 thinking that this is their domain server. When I went on their website to complain there was no link to customer service to complain.

While searching for info on this company, I came across your website. Thank you again for the heads up.

Shelley

This one from Jane:

Appreciate your putting out this message. It is too late for us. We are a small organization, and were in between treasurers when this arrived. It got passed from one treausrer to the other, and none of us thought to research it. I am the one who would know if the charge were out of line, or sounded fishy, and I did not even see the letter. We got charged $65. We have since received a similar letter from another service, Liberty Names of America. They may or may not be legit, but it is a much higher rate than we pay. My treasurer is looking to see if the letter survived from DLS. If he can’t find it, I would be interested in having a copy from someone. I plan to make a police report.

This one from Stan:

Here it is January 15, 2008. Just received what looks like an invoice for $75 from Domain Listing Service. Since I never heard of them I went to Google. When I google the name I get your blog. Nowhere does it say “this is not a bill” What a scam!