One of the plugins that I use, and have used for sometime, is Bad Behavior. I like this plugin as it provides a first-line of defense against link spam. This plugin works by analyzing the delivery method of the spam, instead of just the content.

I have been very happy with how it has stopped hundreds of attempts to spam Technically Easy. Unfortunately, I had an issue with Bad Behavior preventing me from accessing Technically Easy from an Internet Explorer browser. I could easily access my blog from Firefox on the same machine, but I couldn’t using Internet Explorer. I decided to look into the problem, and here is how I solved it.

The Problem

As mentioned above, I couldn’t access Technically Easy using Internet Explorer 7, however, on the same machine I had no trouble accessing my blog with Firefox. The problem was the request was stopped by Bad Behavior, which I knew because of the message that was displayed, shown below.

The one thing I like about Bad Behavior is that it logs all the blocked attempts, so that is where I looked first.

Like many other blocked attempts, the request I submitted from Internet Explorer was logged as well. The error that was displayed in the log file is shown below.

The interesting part of the error was the “User Agent was found on blacklist”. It is interesting because I am using a standard Windows XP Pro machine with Internet Explorer 7, and nothing else. The one thing, however, that did stand out was the “http://bsalsa.com” portion of the user agent. I decided to do a little research online.

The Solution

It didn’t take me long to find a solution to my problem that worked. I simply performed search for “bsalsa.com” in Google and checked out one of the results. It appears that the user agent information for Internet Explorer as modified in the Windows registry. To correct the problem, I used the following steps:

1. I closed any open Internet Explorer browsers I had open.
2. Next, I opened the Windows registry by typing “regedit” at a command prompt.
3. I then navigated and expanded the following key: “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\User Agent\PostPlatform”.
4. On the right, I saw a value starting with “User agent:”, which matched the one displayed in the log of Bad Behavior.
5. I removed the value from the registry by left-clicking the value and pressing “Delete”.
6. I closed the registry, restarted Internet Explorer, and then loaded up Technically Easy. It displayed without a problem.

This solved my problem when accessing Technically Easy through Internet Explorer, because of a black-listed user agent. I’m not sure how that key was added to the registry, but I’ll have to find out.

I was debating about writing another yearly update post, mostly because I didn’t think it would add any value for someone to read it. As I thought about it some more, I decided to write it because I figured it may add some value.

One of the hardest parts about starting a web site or blog, at least for me, was generating traffic. It is always hard to put your hard work into something and not receive much traffic. I decided to publish my yearly traffic statistics and other information to show what is possible after two years.

Two Year Traffic Comparison

Last year I wrote a post that outlined my traffic statistics for the first year of Technically Easy’s existence. This year, however, I decided to compare the traffic numbers. I remained active in writing posts each week throughout the year, and partially because of that, my traffic numbers have slowly increased.

A graph of my traffic numbers can be seen below.

As you can see the traffic on Technically Easy has been growing slowly. As I write and post more content, I get more visitors. Most of my visitors come from search engines, which I’ll show later in this post.

The numbers related to the above graph are as follows:

It is also important to keep in mind that for the first six months I had barely any traffic at all. It wasn’t until December 2007 when I started to notice an large increase in traffic. It has been growing since then. Technically Easy now receives about 1,000 visitors a day from various sources. Most visitors, however, come from search engines. The next section will show a breakdown of the traffic.

Traffic Sources

I used to display my traffic sources on the advertising page, but I have since removed the numbers. It was not easy for me to remember to update the numbers each week, so I have since included the statistics from StatCounter. The problem is that the stats I link to provide an overall number, and does not indicate the traffic source.

Over the past year I have enjoyed an increase in direct traffic, referring sites traffic and search engine traffic. Traffic from search engines remains the largest contributor of visitors to Technically Easy. A comparison between the traffic sources can be seen in the following table:

As you can see, the biggest traffic source increase came from search engines. This is probably a result of the regular post publishing that I do on Technically Easy. The more content I have, the more traffic I seem to get from the search engines.

From Blogger to Wordpress

While I enjoyed using Blogger, and found it very easy to get listed in Google’s search results while on Blogger, I decided I wanted more freedom with my blog. In July 2008 I decided to make the move to Wordpress.

I wasn’t sure what was involved in the conversion, but after making the change I realized it was rather easy. I wrote four posts detailing how I managed to convert from Blogger to Wordpress:

• Blogger to Wordpress - Part 1
• Blogger to Wordpress - Part 2
• Blogger to Wordpress - Part 3
• Blogger to Wordpress - Part 4

Since then I haven’t missed a beat in terms of traffic, but I did my planning ahead of time to make sure the conversion went smoothly. I also had the advantage of using domain name with my Blogger blog so all the external links to Technically Easy still worked.

Overall I am happy with how my blog has grown over the past two years. I’m hoping the traffic continues to increase over the next year and beyond as I continue to publish more content.

Related Posts

One Year Later: Traffic Stats

If you have a Wordpress blog, then you have probably thought about securing and protecting your blog. I have read about many instances where someone has lost their blog because it was hacked. In some of the cases, the owner of the blog had to start over because they didn’t have a backup. Protecting your blog is just as important as protecting your computer.

For the past few months I have been learning about securing a Wordpress blog, and have implemented many changes into Technically Easy to help keep it secure. At the same time I have also began using plugins that will help protect it from potential deadly visitors, as well as ensure that if something does happen, I won’t lose everything. In this post I will look at a few plugins that I use to protect my Wordpress blog.

Protective Wordpress Plugins

While there are many changes that can be made outside your Wordpress blog, there are also a few plugins that you can use to help make things easier for you. When it comes to securing your blog, it can become very technical at times, however, with the plugins listed below, you don’t need to be too technical to protect your blog.

Akismet

This plugin is probably the most popular plugin used to prevent comment spam. It is included with the Wordpress package, so it is available without downloading. It does require a Wordpress.com API key, which you can get for free by signing up with Wordpress.com. It isn’t perfect, but I have found it to be very good. I do, however, check my comment spam to ensure there are no false positives, but overall I get very little comment spam.

Bad Behavior

This plugin is not as well known as Akismet, but it is very powerful for stopping link spam by acting as a gatekeeper for your blog. It does this by doing more than just analyzing the content of the spam. Bad Behavior analyzes the delivery method and software being used by the spammer. All potential spammers are then logged, including their IP address, so you can see more information about who is potentially trying to spam your site. I have had one issue with this plugin, however, where it blocked my work from accessing my blog, or have had a few people being blocked. Overall, I have found this plugin to be very useful.

WP-DBManager

I have written about the WP-DBManager plugin in the past, and am still using it with great success. Backing up your Wordpress database is a must if you want to protect your blog. This plugin will allow you to automatically schedule the backup and then e-mail you the backup file. This plugin backs up and optimizes my Wordpress database each morning, and then sends it to my e-mail account. The e-mail account is not associated with Technically Easy, just in case something were to happen to my domain.

WP Security Scan

I haven’t used this plugin for very long, but decided to give it a try since I have heard good things about it. It basically analyzes your Wordpress blog and informs you of any possible security issues. It also includes the ability of changing the prefix of your Wordpress tables for even more security.

The above plugins help me manage, secure, and protect my Wordpress blog. There are probably many other plugins that can be used to secure your blog, and I’ll be interested in hearing what you use to secure your blog.

Related Posts

Preventing Directory Browsing With .htaccess
Managing Your Wordpress Database

I do a lot of shopping online. I enjoy the convenience, and the lack of crowds, but mostly I can find almost anything I want online. Many are wary of shopping online because of the security risk. Security is a huge issue when purchasing online, but there are many things you can do to ensure your security.

I have been order online for about 10 years now, and have had no identity theft or financial issues. Others have not been so lucky, which is why it is important to know what you can do to keep yourself protected. In this post I outline many steps you can take to ensure your personal information stays safe when you shop online.

Staying Safe When Shopping Online

The following tips should help you to keep your private information secure when shopping online. While this list isn’t exhaustive, it does provide some of the most common tips.

1. Shop only at trusted and secured Web sites. There are a few things you can check in your browser to ensure the Web site is secure.
   • Ensure the Web site address begins with “https://”. Many times this will not be displayed until you begin the ordering process.
   • Web browser will display a closed padlock icon when you are on a secure site. Make sure this padlock is displayed. For Firefox this icon is located at the bottom in the status bar, while in IE it is located next to the address bar.
2. Ensure you read both the privacy and security policies of the Web site. These policies will outline how your order will be processed and how your information will be managed. If you aren’t comfortable with the policies, then order your item from another site. Also keep in mind that policies can change, so make sure you read the most current version.
3. If you are asked to create a user name and password before ordering, ensure you create a very strong password. A strong password should be long, at least 8 characters, and should contain letters, numbers and punctuation. Some sites may not allow punctuation, but all should at least allow letters and numbers.
4. In addition to the previous point, always keep your password private and secure. Don’t save your password where it can easily be read. Online stores and financial institutions will never ask you for your password, so if receive an e-mail asking for your password, don’t share it.
5. If you have a PayPal account, and are able to use it to pay for your item, do it. This will help keep your credit card information more secure as you won’t use it online as frequently. With PayPal, you simply use your e-mail address and password to log in to their site to pay for your item.
6. Don’t visit questionable sites. Many sites can install viruses, spyware, and other malware that can run in the background of your computer. These programs can monitor your keystrokes, control your browser, and send information to other Web sites. Ensure you run an antivirus and anti-malware program on a regular basis to ensure you computer is clean.
7. Above all else, if you don’t feel comfortable with ordering online from a particular Web site, don’t do it.

If you have any tips, just let me know in the comments.

For many that use Outlook at work, you are probably connected to an Exchange server that manages your e-mails. In many instances, the administrator of the Exchange servers has probably configured the server to retain deleted items for a specified period of time. By default, Outlook sends any deleted e-mails to the “Deleted Items” folder, where you can restore the item or permanently delete the item. But what if you hard delete an item that doesn’t goto the “Deleted Items”?

There is a simple change that you can make in the Windows registry to make use of the Exchange Server’s retention period. This will allow you to recover any items that you have hard deleted. Let’s see how to do this.

What is a Hard Delete?

There are two types of deletes in Outlook: a regular delete and a hard delete. A regular delete is simply deleting an e-mail by pressing the “Delete” key. The e-mail will then be sent to your “Deleted Items” where you can recoverthe e-mail if you have accidently deleted it.

A hard delete, on the other hand, doesn’t send the e-mail to the “Deleted Items”, but instead removes the e-mail completely. There are three ways that a hard delete can happen:

1. You press “Shift+Delete” to delete a message.
2. You are using an Internet Message Access Protocol 4 (IMAP4), Post Office Protocol 3 (POP3), or another type of messaging client that doesn’t move the item to the Deleted Items folder.
3. You work offline with an offline folder file (.ost) and remove the message for you Inbox or another folder. You then clean out your Deleted Items folder before synchronizing your offline folder with the server.

Even though the item may not appear in your Deleted Items folder, you can still use the Exchange Server’s retention period to recover the e-mail.

Recover Hard Deleted Items

To recover the hard deleted items, first you will need to add a registry key. To do this, use the following steps:

1. Press “Windows Key+R” to open the “Run” dialog. Type “regedit” and then click “OK”.
2. Navigate to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Exchange\Client\Options”.
3. Right-click the Options subkey and select “New”. Next select “DWORD Value”.
4. For the DWORD name, type “DumpsterAlwaysOn” (without the quotes), and then press “Enter”.
5. On the right side, double-click “DumpsterAlwaysOn”.
6. In the Value data box, type “1″ (without the quotes), and then click “OK”.
7. Close the registry editor, and close and restart Outlook.

The next time you restart Outlook, a new item called “Recover Deleted Items” that will display a windows showing all the message you have hard deleted. You simply select a message and click the “Recover Selected Items” in the toolbar to restore the item.

I have been struggling with a Microsoft Word problem for a few weeks now. Whenever I opened a document and then began changing it, I occasionally received an error message. Once the error message appeared,all the buttons and options within Word became grayed out. This prevented me from saving my work that I had done up to that point. It became frustrating to say the least.

To find a solution to the problem I turned to the Internet. It appears that this error is quite popular as a search in Google produced many results. I tried many of the solutions, but none seemed to have worked for me. It wasn’t until I decided to look further into the error that I found the solution that appears to have fixed the problem.

Word 2003 Error

While working on a Word document I encountered the following error:

The error prevents me from saving my work, contradicting the error message, which means that I lost anything that I changed in the document since the last save. The error is also confusing as I have 2GB of memory in the computer that was running word, and there was plenty of memory available.

When I did a search online, there were many results for that particular error message. Some indicate that the problem was from Word 2000, while others from newer versions. I tried various solutions, but none seemed to work. I decided to look further.

The Solution

While reading some of the solutions I noticed that some had made reference to the Word cache size, which is defaulted to 64. While I couldn’t find where to set this in Word, I decided to see if it can be changed in the Windows registry. Usually settings such as this are located in the registry. I managed to find a site that listed the key to change.

The following steps outline the process to modify the Word cache size:

1. Close any open Word windows.
2. Open the Windows registry by running “regedit.exe” from a command prompt.
3. Once the registry editor is opened, navigate to “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\Options”.

   This key is for Word 2003, indicated by the 11.0 version. You will need to navigate to the key indicating your Word version.

4. Click the “Options” key on the left to display all the values within that key. In an empty location on the right, right-click and select “New->DWORD value”.
5. Type “CACHESIZE” as the value name and press “Enter”.
6. Double-click the value “CACHESIZE” to open the “Edit DWORD Value” dialog box.
7. Under “Base”, select “Decimal”. Under “Value Data”, type “512″ (without the quotes).
8. Click the “OK” button to accept your changes and close the dialog.
9. Close the registry editor.

When I relaunched Word, I never received the error message displayed above. This registry change seemed to have fixed the error. From what I read, you can set the CACHESIZE value to any value that is a multiple of 64 up to a maximum of 1024. While I can’t guarantee that it will solve the problem if you experienced the error, it may just be the fix you need.

During my regular computer maintenance I tend to delete unnecessary files to conserve and recover hard disk space. Files such as temporary Internet files, regular temporary files, and old shortcuts are usually files that I like to remove. There have been times in the past when I have removed the unnecessary files but still have little disk space. Unless you go through each directory, it could be difficult to find which files are hogging all the disk space.

A few months ago I stumbled on a small application (less than 2MB) that has helped find files and directories that use up the most disk space. I use this application on all computers that I have used since then and have been easily able to recover disk space by finding other unnecessary files that have been using up a lot of disk space.

Map Hard Disk Space with SequoiaView

The application that I discovered recently is called SequoiaView. While the name may not indicate what it does, once you run it you may be able to figure it out. The tool simply reads a hard drive or directory that you specify and creates a map of all the directories and files. Each square in the map represents a single file on your computer. The larger the square, the larger the file.

When you first start the tool it analyzes the last hard drive or directory you specified. It may take some time for larger hard drives, but it will usually complete within a few minutes at most. Once the hard drive has been analyzed, all files are displayed on the screen as squares.

To determine the file a square represents, simply move your mouse cursor over the square. By default, a large yellow square will surround all the squares in the directory, and a red square will outline the individual file. The path and file name will be displayed as a tooltip. By hovering over the larger squares you can easily see which files are using the most hard disk space.

If you want more information about the file, right-click a square and select “Properties”. You can then see more information about the file, as well as the directory where the file is located.

While not enabled by default, choosing “View->Colors” will display a colour dialog box. This dialog allows you to assign specific colours to different file types. After selecting the colours, click “OK” to close the dialog and you will notice the some squares within the display will now be coloured. This is handy since you can locate specific file types easily by using an individual colour.

In my case, I was able to find and delete a log file that was taking up over a gigabyte of hard disk space using SequoiaView. Keep in mind, however, that before deleting any file, it is important to understand what the file is before deleting it.

I had been struggling with an issues in some of my blog posts. In posts that explain how to change HTML or PHP code for a web page, I like to display the actual code in my blog post. The problem is that when a visitor copies the code, it isn’t formatted properly. While the actual alphanumeric characters are copied properly, the single and double-quotes aren’t valid.

When I simply typed the single or double-quote character from my keyboard, the characters would be rendered in the browser differently than if I had typed them in the code. The characters would be formatted and looked different on the web page and when they were copied, it would cause coding problems, such as when the code was pasted in the Blogger editor. I think that I have fixed the problem, and I’ll explain how in this post.

Different Quotes

To better illustrate the problem, let’s look at some simple HTML. The HTML code below shows code created by simply typing the double-quote character from the keyboard:

As you can see from the above code the double-quotes have a nice formatting to them. The problem is if you were to copy this code, the double-quotes formatting could cause problems, depending on the editor, such as the editor in Blogger.

To fix this problem, you would have to use the character code for the double-quotes. For example:

The above HTML code will produce the following:

As you can see, the double-quotes are standard with no formatting applied to them. I simply replaced the double-quote character with the character code ". For single-quotes I would use '. This should prevent problems when displaying HTML code in your web pages when it is copied and pasted in certain editors.

I recently had the opportunity to fix a computer that was having issues with a virus/trojan/rootkit. I included all three in the list because I had no idea what I was looking at when I first heard of the issues. I was told that when the owner of the machine would perform a search in Google, every link that they clicked on would be redirected to a URL that included “windowsclick”.

While doing some research, I found a solution to the issue, but it was a complicated solution. I instructed the owner to install both anti-virus and anti-spyware tools and then run them to see what was found. Upon trying to run an anti-spyware tool, a new problem presented itself: the tools would load but wouldn’t run. Not wanting to give up, I asked the owner to drop off the computer and I’ll have a look. After some research I managed to clean the computer, and here is how I did it.

WindowsClick Wreaking Havoc

As mentioned in the beginning of the post, a computer became infected with an issue that I will simply call “windowsclick” because that was in the URL of the links in Google’s search results. Everytime a search was made in Google, the user would be redirected to spam sites.

On top of that, whenever an anti-spyware tool was executed to try and clean the computer, the tool would load, but wouldn’t run. The executable process would be displayed in the Task Manager, but nothing else would happen.

After doing some research online, I did manage to find some files that are associated with the problem. The owner had search for the files, but found nothing. Spybot Search & Destroy did manage to run, and found the files, but tried to delete them on reboot. The attempts to delete the files didn’t work, and the deletions during restart produced many DOS windows each time Windows restarted.

In the end, however, I decided to use a tool that I have had success with in the past: ComboFix.

The ComboFix Fix

I went online and downloaded ComboFix. When I launched the tool I had the same problem as previous, it would load but wouldn’t run.

To solve this issue, I renamed the “combofix.exe” file to something like “s23adf.exe” (without the quotes). Sure enough, the application launched and I was able to follow the steps.

After following the prompts, and installing the Microsoft Windows Recovery Console, ComboFix performed a scan of the system. It found the files that were related to the “windowsclick” problem. The files were:

• C:\Windows\System32\uacinit.dll
• C:\Windows\System32\drivers\UAC[some random characters].sys
• C:\Windows\System32\UAC[some random characters].dll
• C:\Windows\System32\UAC[some random characters].log
• C:\Windows\System32\UAC[some random characters].dat

I allowed Combofix to restart the computer and delete the files. Actually, it quarantined them in a separate folder call “C:\Qoobox”, which I then deleted.

I launched a web browser and performed a search in Google. The “windowsclick” issue was no longer as the links in the search results took me to the correct pages. I was also able to launch the anti-spyware without any issues.

To ensure that no other viruses/trojans/spyware existed, I performed scans from multiple applications, with each one indicating no threats. The computer is now clean from any nasties, at least for now.

Related Posts

Windows Explorer Won’t Load - Fixed
What You Need to Secure Your Computer
How to Automate Your Computer Maintenance

I recently received an e-mail form someone asking if it is possible to change the Task Manager in Windows. They had another application that they would like to use, instead of the built-in Task Manager. It is very possible to change the Task Manager, since I use Proces Explorer and have set it so I can use that application instead of Task Manager.

While Process Explorer provides this ability, many applications that provide the same functionality may not allow a user to replace the Task Manager. In this post I will not only show you how you can easily do this, but also how you can do this for almost any application within Windows.

Execute One Application, Get Another

Before continuing, I should provide a warning. This post will explain a process that involves editing the Windows registry. You must always be careful when editing the Windows registry as bad things could happen if you change the wrong key or value. If you follow the steps outlined below, you shouldn’t have any problems.

With that out of the way, let’s move on. When I enabled the “Replace Task Manager” setting in Process Explorer, I was curious as to how that was accomplished. When I right-clicked the taskbar and then clicked “Task Manager”, Process Explorer appeared. The same happened when I pressed CTRL+AL+DEL and clicked the “Task Manager” button. What was changed to accomplish this?

After doing some research I found my answer. In the Windows registry there is a little known key that allows you to execute a command whenever a specific file is run. In the case with Process Explorer, whenever the “taskmgr.exe” file was run, the “procexp.exe” file was executed instead.

To change the Windows to launch another tool instead of the Task Manager, you could use the following steps:

1. Open the registry editor.
2. Navigate to the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options.
3. Right-click on Image File Execution Options and then select New->Key.
4. With the new key name highlighted, type taskmgr.exe and press Enter.
5. Click the taskmgr.exe key and then right-click an empty area on the right side and select New->String Value.
6. Rename the new string value to Debugger and press Enter.
7. Double-click Debugger and then in the Value data field type in the full path to the file you would like to execute.
8. Click OK to save you changes.
9. Launch the Task Manager by one of the following methods:
   1. Right-click an empty are on the taskbar and select Task Manager.
   2. Press CTRL+AL+DEL and then click the Task Manager button.
   3. Click Start->Run or press the Windows Key+R and type taskmgr.exe.
10. When you run Task Manager, the application you typed into the registry will open instead.

You can replace other applications in the same manner. I have tried it with Notepad, although with at times mixed results. I have used it to prevent applications from running by using a dummy execuable, one that doesn’t do anything, or called “rundll32.exe” with no parameters, which also does nothing.