Image by sanja gjenero

I am bringing this up because many in Internet Marketing are still relying on good old fashioned FTP to manage their web sites.

For your benefit, I’m letting you know that FTP is insecure because your username and password is sent to your web site using plain text. In other words, any script kiddie who is listening or sniffing out connections can see the logins plain as day.

Once they get a hold of that they can of course wreak all kinds of havoc on your site. One of the most damaging – in my opinion- is uploading files that loads malware onto your visitors’ computers. It can get you delisted on Google and give you a black mark on sites like WebofTrust.com (WOT).

Thankfully, you can solve this very easily. When you set up your FTP program to connect to your web site, instead of choosing FTP connection, choose SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol) or FTPS (Secure FTP).

Everything else remains the same. You don’t even need to download new software – unless your software cannot handle secure FTP, then it’s time to get another. The free Filezilla does support SFTP and FTPS.

Next time you connect, make sure you’re using FTPS or SFTP. Tape a reminder up on your screen if you have to. It is that important.

Image by Michal Zacharzewski

Well, you know how you can enter the “From” email address when you set up your email account? You entered the right address – your own but spammers enter your address. Because the default behavior for emails is to return undelivered to the “from” address, that’s why you are receiving the bounces even though you didn’t send it. It’s a lot like sending someone a letter via snail mail and using someone else’s address instead of your own as the return address.

Isn’t there a way to tell if this is in fact a hijacking and not something you’re doing wrong on your end?

Yes. It involves checking the email headers. Email headers tell a lot. They have information on who – or rather which computer initiated the email. So it is a simple matter to prove you are not the one sending the email. But by then, the damage is often done .

How do you prevent it?

For long time, there was little you could do about it. But now, it is easy to reduce the chances of hijacking if not eliminating them. If your web host supports Sender Policy Framework (SPF), turning it on will be a big step towards blocking people from hijacking your email address.

How does it work?

Quite simple really. It is a checkpoint that will only allow email to be sent from your own domain. When the recipient’s email server receives an email from you and tries to check if the email is legit, it will check the origins of the email. If it came from your domain, the email goes through. If it didn’t, then the server rejects the email. The result, the target of the spammer never receives the spam and your ‘reputation’ is intact.

How do you set it up?

On cPanel hosts it’s pretty easy. Just log in, look for an icon that says Email Authentication. Simply enable or disable SPF. If you are using Gmail or Google Apps to read and receive your emails, then you need to add Google on to the list of allowed domains. Under the spot where it says “Additional Hosts that send mail for your domains (A):”, click Add then enter aspmx.googlemail.com. Save and all is good.

Please be sure to test sending and receiving once you turn it on to ensure your emails are getting delivered to you and from you to the recipient. Last thing we want is to totally disable your emailing ability .

On their site, they say, “Don’t think, just write”

How true. Most of the time, we make blogging harder than it has to be. Write more, think less. Once you’re done you can always edit.

On the same token, sometimes all you need is a prompt. Something to put a little pressure on you – like this 60 second prompt and timer. At other times you simply need a nudge in the right direction to get your thoughts going. If that’s what you’re looking for, you might want to check out BlogEnergizer premium. We provide you with 30 blogging prompts every month – one for every day of the month. It even includes suggestions how you can monetize those posts.

If it is about using a subscriber’s name or pet’s name in the subject or greeting – then you need to upgrade your thinking. This list of 10 new, tech-powered methods of email personalization is bound to make your heart skip a little faster and totally excited about personalizing your emails again.

1. Send specially crafted emails to only those who clicked a link or opened your last email.


Image by Rob Owen-Wahl

2. Send reminders or follow ups to those who didn’t click or open your last email.
3. Send to those who clicked on the link but didn’t take action e.g. download the freebie or order your product.
4. Send a special email to those who subscribed through a specific page.
5. Let those who opened your last email be automatically entered into a contest/drawing.
6. Send a special offer to those who clicked on a specific link.
7. Followup with those who have not opened or clicked your messages in a while
8. Reward those who are long time subscribers e.g. 6 months to over a year for being a loyal reader
9. Email only those prospects who are referred by affiliates and help out your affiliates by using their URLs in your messages
10. Delivering offers based on where subscriber is located – create holiday offers that are relevant to their user’s own country

Your next question to me is probably how to achieve all that. It is easy, if you have an Aweber account. If you have recently signed up or are under the new pricing structure, this is already available to you. All you need is to use it. Not sure where to get started? Check out their documentation. Their blog also has a ton of great email personalization examples and ideas.

If you are still using the old Aweber account, you will have to upgrade – depending on your list numbers, this could cost you more – it usually will but if it can help increase your sales or affiliate recommendations (it should), it is a worthwhile investment.

Still trying to decide which mailing list provider you should go with? This capability in Aweber should seal the deal for you.

Why online backup?

You may probably be already backing up manually or automatically to an external drive. You should continue doing that. But also add a backup to an external site like online backup because, if anything happens to your home office (touch wood), you will still have your data. Examples of what could happen: Fire, flood, earthquake, Tsunamis, or just about any kind of natural or unexpected disaster. I think, this is a huge issue.

Why Mozy?

Well because it is super, super affordable. Only $4.95 a month. It is even less if you opt for 1 year or 2 year payments. You’d think you’ll be seriously limited to how much you can backup for that little right? Nope, you can backup unlimited amounts of data.

Mozy is also a simple set and forget system. You tell it what you want to back up – yes, you can select which files/folders you want – tell it when to backup and it will sit quietly in a corner and do the rest religiously, every day.

Oh yes and it works on a Mac too (although I’ve never tried the Mac option because I don’t use it that much)

If you need multiple computers, you can purchase backup for more than one. Right now I have a plan for two computers. If you have a small office, you might want to consider Mozy Business which can backup files from network attached storage drives too.

How Do You Restore Your Files If Your Computer Crashed?

It is very easy as well. Get the Mozy desktop software installed and set up on your computer, using it, you can select the files/folders you want to restore. One thing about restoring this method is, it could take some time – like days. Especially if your connection is rather slow. If you’re in a hurry, or you are trying to restore a lot of files. Mozy recommends restore by DVD for restoration of files over 20GB’s For a DVD restore, you will need to pay FedEx shipping costs and $0.50/GB processing fee. If you’ve totaled your computer this would seem like a small amount.

I’ve recently restored about 7GB of data, took me about a day running in the background. I doubt I will use DVD restore unless something drastic happened to my computer/home office of course. The nice thing is, if you just need that one file/folder, you can restore that only so you can continue to work and move forward while you start a new restore for the rest of the non-urgent files/folders.

Click for larger image

Verdict

I’ve been using this service for a few years now. I really like it. I’ve heard some people switch from Mozy to Carbonite and I’ve also heard of people switching from Carbonite to Mozy. I have only used Carbonite for a very short time and never went for their premium service so I can’t give you an objective opinion. At this point, I have no reason for switching and think it might all simply boil down to how each of these services fit into your work style.

Notes: I pay full price for Mozy’s services. No payment is received for writing this post but the post does contain affiliate links.

Image by Szorstki

As WordPress is being used more and more as a content management system, the role of Pages become clearer. Most of the time, I’d use Pages for opt-ins like this one and this. Pages are also good for newsletter subscription thank yous, or special landing/offer pages that you don’t link to from the main areas of your site and only release for specified groups of people.

Removing these Pages from your site is a small issue – you can either edit your theme or use a plugin to remove the links but try searching your site using WordPress’ built in search. You’ll find it pulls up matching Pages that you don’t want people to see. Not great.

While there are plugins like Search Unleashed which can help you do that, they often do a bit too much than you need it to. That’s true for me. I don’t need or want extra features, just to remove Pages from the search results. Here’s the method I am using. You enter this code in your theme’s functions.php file – or create the file if the theme doesn’t come with it. If you change themes, you will only have to copy it over to the new theme’s functions.php file.

function mySearchFilter($query) {
if ($query->is_search) {
$query->set('post_type', 'post');
}
return $query;
}
add_filter('pre_get_posts','mySearchFilter');

If there’s a plugin you like and there isn’t any feedback yet and still worried, here are my views on plugins and the latest versions.

They are usually OK if it’s a plugin that does something simple like something that allows you to add a tracking code or add code to your headers and footers. These plugins don’t hook too deeply into WordPress and don’t mess with the internals. If it were something more heavy that adds some major new features, then I’d start being more cautious. Remember, many plugins in the directory are created and distributed for free on the developers’ dime. So give them a little time. Some are quick about it, some are not. Usually, I would not install or use a plugin that looks dead like they haven’t been updated in about a year or more and there has only been one version with no updates from the time it was released.

Most of the time, I work with text files so an open source tool like WinMerge has worked really well. WinMerge also can compare folder contents. What if you want to compare documents?

For Open Office, open the first document, then go to Edit >> Compare Document >> look up the 2nd document to compare with.

For Microsoft Word 2007 which I do not have I was told you go to Review >> Compare

What if you have neither? Diff Doc might help. It can do DOC, XLS, PDF, HTML, Powerpoint and still retain its formatting – that’s the claim. The price is quite hefty though at $199 per copy. They do have a free download so you can evaluate if it is the right tool before putting down that chunk of hard earned cash for it.

Camtasia is celebrating their 10th birthday. They are offering 10% off multi-user licenses (5 or 10 user license packs) for Camtasia Studio, Snagit and Snagit/Camtasio Studio bundles. Most of us only need one license but if you could pool a few people together to make one purchase, it might be worthwhile. Offer expires Dec 7, 2009.

ZoneAlarm 2010 – depending on which version you choose, get it for 28% – 50% discount.

RoboForm Pro – it is supposed to be a Halloween only special but we swung by the website today and still see the banner is up for 20% discount. I highly recommend this one of you don’t already have it.

Because the files are also backed up using Mozy to their servers and I can restore them anytime. Yes, the external drive was backup and storage. I also had Mozy come back to do a 2nd backup. Scenarios like these are exactly the reasons why you should have an immediate on-site backup so you can get to that data immediately. Mozy is like extra insurance so if both the hard drive and external drives fail, there’s one more fall back. Also, if (God forbid) something happens to the home office, I can always get my data off from Mozy.

How does it all work?

It’s quite simple really. After signing up with Mozy, you download and install a piece of software. Using the software, you tell Mozy which files and folders you want to back up. You don’t have to select everything. As a matter of fact, I don’t. I only select the folders where I save my data to and email folders.

Next, you tell is when and how often it should backup your files and it will do it’s thing in the background all on its own.

Have a lot of Gigabytes of data and worried about cost?

That’s what is nice about Mozy (home). They weren’t kidding about the unlimited, for a flat $4.95 a month.

What you need to know

When you first install the Mozy desktop software and start backing up, it could take days to backup all the files you want it to. There are several factors at play. Like you can choose when the software should backup so it won’t interfere with the times you are using your computer the most. Another factor of course is your own Internet connection. If you have many Gigabytes please do sign up ahead of time and let it do it’s thing. It took me around 5 days to get everything backed up. Once you get through that, then the daily backups are quick because it doesn’t do it all over again, simply backup what has changed or is new. So… if you think your drive is failing or are facing a time crunch, I don’t think this will work too well.

Does it work on Mac?

Yes, they released a new Mac version recently.

Can you backup your external drive?

Yes, if you hook it up directly to your computer. But if your external drive is one that is attached to the network (plugs in your router), then that would be considered a network drive. Network drives can be backed up if you use MozyPro for business.

I have been a customer for more than 2 years and been a happy camper so far. It already saved me once. If you want to try it out, you can get a free account with 2GB worth of storage.