It is true. What really happened is a case of DNS hijacking. Now, I am not sure where you are, but if you have set up a couple of websites before, you know that at some point in time, one of the steps you do is to change your domain’s DNS settings. That way instead of a ‘Can’t find site’ screen, people see your web site.  In essence, you are connecting/linking up your domain with the computer that hosts your web site. This connection can be changed at any time if you have access to change it. It is a lot like a forwarding address. If you move a lot, you may decide to use one of those mailbox services so that your address stays constant but your real address changes as you move. Incidentally, that’s how some web design companies hold their customers’ domains hostage when the customer switches hosts. And that’s another story.

Back to DNS hijacking. Knowing this, if a hacker can literally point your website or anyone’s website (how about whitehouse.gov) to their own site or some other compromised site where they can unleash a boatload of hell on your systems, why not do that instead? I think it makes a ton of sense for them. And that’s what DNS hijacking is about. Twitter was one of the more prominent sites that have been hit but there are countless more unfortunately, our servers have not been spared either.

You know what is bad about this? As a website owner, there is little to nothing you can do because the hijacking often takes place in an area beyond our reach – like your web hosts’ upstream. This is not something you have access to But I guess you can look at it in a way that you have help to deal with it. No matter what, changing passwords is always a good thing.

Image courtesy of John evans

There is no one particular reason. I did it more to test things out and installed it on several blogs. Some blogs, it went through without any problem, but this one for reasons not made known to me the import didn’t go through in the beginning and I had to get support to work on it. They were reasonably speedy on the case so that was good.

Once imported, comments would appear both on Disqus and also saved in WordPress database. That way, if you ever turn it off, you won’t lose your comments. The comments area now loads a Disqus page in a frame.

What I like about Disqus as a blog manager.

• Reply by email LOVE this. If I have to choose one reason for staying with Disqus, this is it.
• Social network trackback. I got tired of making tweetback plugins work. I appreciate the hard work put in by devs of such plugins unfortunately none I tried performed reliably. Since all this is handled by Disqus, I have one less plugin installed and one less issue to stress over.
• Managing multiple sites’ comments from one interface. That’s always nice. I wish I could do both. Write and manage comments from one interface. Yeah I know you can use things like ScribeFire to write, but I am too much in love with WordPress’ new image cropping feature. Besides, managing blogs from one place is always good. That’s why I am seriously debating switching my blogs to WPMU. Not all sites (yet), but perhaps the smaller more content focused blogs.

So far all seems good. I have noticed some quirks here and there. Once the comment came in really late but it showed up inside the WP database and this week, I noticed one comment not on Disqus at all yet is in my WP database too. Maybe it was triggered by their upgrades a few days ago. Not sure. 99% of the time the comments come through without a hitch.

This is my wishlist for OO. That ‘check updates’ include the latest branches as well not just the versions inline with current version used. If you don’t use OpenOffice and still want to open/convert these files, check out my previous post for options.

I call checklists my 2nd brain (ok, maybe 3rd or 4th) because my motto is, Stop hogging those RAMs in the brain for information you don’t need to store. Put it in a checklist and let it remind you. A clear mind thinks faster – just like our computers

Here’s a comprehensive blog setup checklist I created by request from Patrysha. Thanks Patrysha!

If you like mind maps, this blog setup map is for you. If you’re more of the linear text person, download the blog setup checklist PDF.

Image courtesy of Ivan Prole

WordPress by default allows you to select which authors to assign the imports but not which category to import the content to. The export file actually contains the category information each post belongs to. Since we know that information is in the exported file, why not get the file right to begin with?

You could edit the exported file but that’s kinda doing things the hard way especially if you have lots of posts to import. The easier way is while on the old blog, move all the posts into a special category – this category may have to be created and should be the same as the one you want in your new blog. For example, if you want the old blog posts to be imported to a category called ‘travel log’, create this category in your old blog, move all posts in there.

The built in bulk edit option in WordPress will be handy for this. I did find this has it’s quirks. So if that doesn’t work too well for you, you might want to try a plugin like Bulk Move to help you achieve that.

After you’ve moved all posts into the category you want, then generate the WordPress export file. When you import into your new blog the posts should appear in one category.

It is no secret that I do recommend and have been using Aweber for many years. It is the first time in my experience with them it has happened. Yes, it has been irritating because I feel a responsibility to my subscribers. I believe I too have been a victim because an address that is only used for one thing and never had spam for the longest time, is now flooded with spam since December. If you’re one of those affected, I’m sorry and truly understand the frustration. The sad fact is, there was nothing I could’ve done before it happened, nothing I could’ve done when it happened and nothing after. Despite all that, I am still glad I didn’t personally have to manage that nightmare. Here’s why:

This incident clearly displays how the spam business has changed or grown up if you can call it that. While there will always some who use viruses on your computer and similar tactics, they now realize that it takes a lot more attacks to get a few addresses. Why not hit the guys with a boat-load of addresses already on their systems? Mailing list providers will of course be among the top targets. But it won’t be long if they haven’t already, before they sniff out and try their luck on any web site or company who runs their own mailing list system. Like a WordPress mailing plugin or a mailing list script. Not saying this to scare you, but to inform you of the realities. Wouldn’t be doing my job otherwise. If you do choose to run your own mailing list systems be ultra careful over securing it and who has access to your system. Be vigilant because you can’t point your finger at a third party.

Images courtesy of ivan petrov

I’ll admit guilt to that. Especially for project managers, task managers, to do list and organization software. Don’t ask, because I don’t even get why I covet these programs so much. I just do.

Then last week, a video I was watching opened my eyes. Why, I had overlooked a free software option which I uninstalled months ago because I didn’t imagine I could use the software in a brand new way. Ok, so it isn’t brand new but it is new to me. If only I had taken time to think outside the box a little. So much time evaluating new software could have been saved.

Dig up your old software. You probably own a lot of tools and software that can be ‘re-purposed’ for another use. Recycle, Re-think, and best of all, save that money. It’s the first step to a more profitable bottom line.

Image courtesy of Ervin Bacik

I’d love to have your continued support for the next year and many years ahead. Hang on to your hats because I’ve got many new things up my sleeve. One’s coming up in January

Instant Graphics Creator. I purchased access to this because I wasn’t creative enough to come up with all those nice Web 2.0 graphics for order buttons, headlines and stuff. It has really served me well, allowing me to add a nice polished touch to sales pages in a heartbeat. It’s not all that expensive either. I just wish they’d hurry up and get the other pro graphics ready which has been promised for months.

Wishlist member plugin. This works very smoothly for creating membership sites with WordPress especially if you already have a shopping cart or order processing system like 1ShoppingCart or Clickbank. Not so great if you are only using PayPal because there is (at time of writing) no affiliate module. BUT for keeping the members content straight with multiple level and drip access it works pretty smoothly on the servers I’ve installed.

LiveScribe Pen. Yeah, I know what you’re saying, I’m not paying $150 or $200 for a pen. No pen can be worth that. Oh yeah. I didn’t think it was too but that has completely changed. 

Pretty Link Pro. Really like this WP plugin and the possibilities it provides.

Delavo. This is a huge really powerful shopping cart. Actually, with all the plugins, I’m not even sure it can be called *just* a shopping cart anymore. Delavo is the successor of Fantasos and JV Manager which I have been using for many years. I’ve added more plugins to make the system even more robust – this will give me the tools I need to put into action some of the new services I am planning for 2010. You’ll have to either subscribe to my newsletter or watch this blog closely for news about those but they are coming and a lot of it is made possible with Delavo. There’s just a ton about the system it is not quite possible to cover here. But you can check out their free ebook to find out more about it. I’ll give you fair warning. John does tend to get lengthy in his writing plus, you can expect those emails to come. However, there is a method to his madness. His messages are an acquired taste. I’ve been on his lists for years now, many of them I ignore and don’t agree with but there are gems in between.

Still Under Review is eCoverCreator. It came out just after Thanksgiving and so is fairly new. I have already some experience with it and even created BlogEnergizer’s 2010 Blogging Calendar with it. I will post a followup about the finer points on this script soon. For now, to keep it short and sweet, I like it

Well there you go! That’s my short list If you check them out, please keep in mind that there are affiliate links used. While it may skew my favor a little bit, it doesn’t take away from my personal experiences about them which I freely share with you.

Did you find some tech gems too? Let me know what are your best tech investment of the year. I really look forward to seeing what cool stuff I’ve missed.

I also wanted to use it as a tool to convert handwriting to text and did extensive research on this point before purchasing. That part was super important to me. At first, I was rather discouraged to find out this was not a built in feature but it is possible because for an extra $30, you can purchase MyScript which is a plugin to do just that. I purchased this in store at Target and really lucked out because the box had an activation code in it free. It was for a limited time only unfortunately, so when my husband purchased his, it didn’t have the free license.

The text converter works pretty well. I use it write blog posts which is awesome. A totally liberating experience because that means I am no longer chained to any computer desktop or laptop and carrying a pen beats carrying a laptop or a netbook.

I also like the ability to do pencasts – this means, writing out a mindmap or checklist (or just about anything) while talking out loud – so it becomes a type of whiteboard. You can upload the pencasts to Livescribe.com, make it public or invite selected people to view the video. This is a great way to illustrate ideas with your team members or even teach people something new.

Annoyances

Like I said, the pen has its share of annoyances. Actually not the pen itself but the desktop software that makes the rest of it work can be a real let down. A few things that disappoint me are:

Organizing your notes. You have to make a little mindset shift in how you use your notebooks. Everything is organized by notebook and you cannot organize the pages within each notebook as you like. So let’s say you wrote about email marketing ideas in pages 43 and 13 . You cannot group pages 43 and 13 together. The good news is, there is a search feature and through the user forum, I learned how to categorize these related pages by tagging them. On top of every page, I make sure I write tags on them e.g. email marketing, ideas so now, when I search for email marketing, I’ll get a list of all pages where that keyword appears. You can make more specific codes of course that way your search becomes more accurate and you can search through the notes faster.

No Page deletion. You read that right. Once you write on a page, you cannot delete it on your computer. I guess it make sense in some ways because technically, once you write on that piece of paper it is used up. On printed notebooks, this is consistent with the way physical notebooks are used. But on printable notebooks where you can replace a page where you messed up physically, it is not possible on the software. If you print a page, use it, then trash it and reprint the page and write on the page again, you’ll end up with overlapping text on the same page. There is no work around on this yet at time of writing. While this is perfect for recording every word you write, you might want to be careful about what you write with the pen because at this point, it is literally permanent . You can trash the whole notebook of course but who wants to do that?

Sharing pencasts outside of Livescribe.com community web site. As of right now, this is still not possible. Yes, you can absolutely share the videos with the general public, but you cannot host the pencasts on your own. A work around is to record the pencast with your screen capture software like Camtasia or Jing, but you will lose some of the nifty features of the pencasts. It is not a deal breaker for me.

Overall, there are many bits and pieces of plusses here and there that make giving up this pen a little difficult for me. One of the things that’s nice is, I can write down my brainstorm and thoughts on this so on it’s own it is a great resource for my own business – something to look back upon and see my mistakes or an idea I may have forgotten. On a personal note, I’ve also started using the pen to write a diary to pass on to my children. That’s going to be interesting.