Category Archives: Discourse.net

Blog Changes

Posted on August 17, 2010 by Michael Froomkin

I've enabled gzip compression on most pages on this blog. This should be seamless to everyone, but please let me know if you get an error message that might be related. Amazingly, all I had to do was add

<? ob_start("ob_gzhandler"); ?>

to every page. You can test the results at the web page compression tester.

I've pretty much decided that I'm going to port Discourse.net to WordPress fairly soon. Why?

1. The sp*m-fighting tools available to me on that platform are a whole lot better than what I'm using now.

2. It will standardize me on one platform — every other blog-related project I do, from class blogs to Jotwell is on WordPress, and it will be a little easier to have that consistency.

3. I've gotten tired of the current dowdy look, and changes will be easier on WordPress, which supports themes (and widgets) much better than this ancient version of Movable Type.

The move raises three issues I need to resolve:

First, how to convert the archives to be compatible with the new system while maintaining compatibility for existing incoming links. That problem is complicated a bit by my frequent use of Textile 2 formatting when I write posts. It's not real clear to me that wordpress has a functioning and maintained plugin for this — it's Textile 2 plugin seems like it might be a bit of an orphan. I may have to hire help for this.

Second, what should I use for the new design? (I realize most readers use the RSS feeds these days, but I still care.) Graphic design is not my strong suit. Suggestions? Please?

Third, how will my shared server react to a blogging platform that serves up each page individually rather than creating static pages? WP-Super Cache here we come…

Posted in Discourse.net, Software | 4 Comments

Partially Rehabilitated

Posted on August 15, 2010 by Michael Froomkin

[Update 8/16: Seems I was too optimistic. See comments for details.]

I've managed to get Google to notice this blog again.

Google's reconsideration process doesn't take as long as the “several weeks” they warn it might, but it did take about ten days for them to get around to it the last time I asked. Being an impatient sort of a person, I thought I'd try to shortcut it a bit.

I created an XML sitemap using the nifty free sitemap generator at auditmypc.com. In fact, I only created a partial sitemap stopping at about 13,000 entries. The program would have done more, but they were in all relevant ways duplicates and I lost patience as it bogged down my computer. Once the monster was ready, I uploaded it to Google via the webmaster sitemap tool, and all of a sudden, ta-da!, Google admits discourse.net exists.

And searching Google for links:discourse.net now returns “About 708,000 results” although some of the first page results are a bit odd.

I suppose a page rank other than a question mark can't be that far behind?

Earlier entries: That's Odd (7/6), Google Woes (8/3), No Joy From Google (8/12), Got 'em (8/13).

Posted in Discourse.net, Internet | 2 Comments

Got ’em

Posted on August 13, 2010 by Michael Froomkin

I found the hack.

Someone managed to change the .htaccess file on this site to add these three lines several screens below the rest of the file (so it didn't show up if you opened it in an editor):

RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (Googlebot|Slurp|msnbot)
RewriteRule ^ http://arbat.or.**/ [R=301,L]

…where the ** above were in fact the letters “at”.

That URL in turn redirects to a sub-page of a blog at triares.com.

I've changed all my passwords to the site; now I think I'll give a couple of days and see if they come back before asking google to reconsider me again…

The reason it took me so long to find this is that I usually use the spider simulator to check what google sees. But I guess it wasn't a good enough emulator; only when I used the true google-bot in the webmaster tools did the problem reveal itself.

Of course I have no idea how they got in. But I did find similar code in other sites under the same user, none of which were production sites, so I just killed them. I'm hoping it was something in one of those that hadn't been updated quickly enough that caused the problem.

Earlier entries: That's Odd (7/6), Google Woes (8/3), and No Joy From Google (8/12)

Posted in Discourse.net | 3 Comments

No Joy From Google

Posted on August 12, 2010 by Michael Froomkin

Google 'reconsidered' discourse.net, but nothing seems to have changed.

In digging around, I did find one weird thing that I am sure is connected to my problem. If you search on google for “link:discourse.net” (a search that should show all pages that link to here) you get … nothing at all.

Since I know there's at least one link to here out there, that is weird.

Posted in Discourse.net | 2 Comments

Google Woes

Posted on August 3, 2010 by Michael Froomkin

Discourse.net's problems with Google have worsened. First page rank went to one (from seven). Then it went to zero. Now it goes to a “question mark” which means that Google thinks something is wrong with the site.

Google webmaster tools says things are basically fine. Similarly, searching Google itself for “discourse.net” doesn't reveal the signs of a hacked site. There isn't some pile of sp*m showing up as far as I can tell. But there isn't much discourse.net showing up either — lots of things seem to have been removed.

Does anyone have a clue as to what might be going on or what if anything I can do about it?

Posted in Discourse.net | 2 Comments

It’s Sticky ‘Round Here

Posted on July 9, 2010 by Michael Froomkin

Traffic may be down by a third (that's all?) but Discourse.net still places in the top five for amount of time that readers spend on the site, aka “stickiness,” at least according to Paul Caron writing at TaxProf Blog.

I guess I'm flattered that this is worth two minutes and thirty-eight seconds of your time.

Posted in Discourse.net | 4 Comments