Ann wrote: "I do not know what Host Gator page is all about. Will have to read up on the matter." Host Gator is a commercial web hosting ISP service. For a fee, they'll host a website on their servers under a domain name you register. Sort of like Freepages, but they charge and let you use your own domain. I've been doing some investigation of hosting services in connection with moving a non-freepages site from its current host. Host Gator gets good reviews, but some of their clients may be less than ethical. Host Gator being mentioned in this context has me wondering about choosing them. So, if you find you content misappropriated and appearing on a site hosted by Host Gator, I'd recommend contacting the company about the abuse. They are the ones who can discipline the abuser. However, as Barry said, " Even if the host of the site targeting your pages manages to close the site down, the culprits, armed with all the data they have already acquired will quickly set up elsewhere. There is no simple solution." The penalty for the abuser is that they may lose the balance of their hosting contracts, costing them a small amount of money. (OOTH, maybe they're paying with stolen credit card information.) * Re: "I went in to the rootsweb upload files area, IMAGES folder was completely empty. I uploaded all images again and all was well. The images disappeared again a few days later." Using another person's content without permission or attribution is usually unethical. Removing it from the place found is downright nasty. It seems someone has gained access to your Freepages account with your username and password. You should change your password as a first step. If that doesn't solve the problem, you may have a malware infestation, with which a hacker can go into your computer and steal information like passwords. (It's much less likely that the Freepages servers got hacked.) -rt_/)

At 08:03 PM 2/21/2011, SBS Engineers Research wrote: >A couple of months ago I received an email from someone saying there >were no images in my INTERESTING STORIES link. I went in to the >rootsweb upload files area, IMAGES folder was completely empty. I >uploaded all images again and all was well. The images disappeared again >a few days later. I assumed it was my doing - maybe I had made a >mistake during uploading the images. Now, I see that my site may have >been hacked! Another possibility is that during server maintenance, RW restored the server from a backup that did not contain files in the IMAGES folder. If the files do "disappear" again, write to accounts@rootsweb.com They can check server logs to see if someone else has accessed your Freepages account, and change the password if necessary. Pat Asher

Hi Sheila, You might also try this website: http://freepages.misc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~zuber/gentips/index.htm It has lots of good info. If you need further help you can email me personally. Good luck with your site. Kind regards, Heidi Boos-Utley E-mail: hutley@greenhills.net URL: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~heidisfamily ------------------------------------------------------- ----- Original Message ----- From: "Sheila Priest" <sheila@sheilapriest.wanadoo.co.uk> To: <FREEPAGES-HELP@rootsweb.com> Sent: Tuesday, February 22, 2011 8:21 AM Subject: [FreeHelp] Frontpage 2003 >I have produced a website in frontpage 2003 and would like to get it up and >running. I have set up a freepage account, so have ftp hostname, user id >and password. I have trawled the rootsweb website trying to work out what >to do next but am now quite confused! I am looking for some very basic >instructions as this is all completely new to me. If I go into publish site >on FPage it brings me up with a remote website box and I don't know what to >put in there. Also do I need to download an ftp program or can I do this >automatically with orange? > Any help gratefully received. > Sheila > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > FREEPAGES-HELP-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without > the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

Thank you Judy Ann From: J.A. Florian [mailto:cageycat@gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, 22 February 2011 9:12 AM To: SBS Engineers Research Cc: freepages-help@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [FreeHelp] Link Farms grabbing URLs from freepages account (mine, at least) Let me reiterate: From everything I've read, this isn't about any "freepages" sites being "hacked", per say. Instead, it is an outside hosting company whose servers are being used to spread malicious garbage. But the only way the bad guys can draw visitors is to include links to legit webpages. A bot crawls around the web picking URLs to use. After locating URLs to use, they put the URLs and images or text onto websites. In this instance, HostGator is the hosting company of multiple websites. But a malicious bot or human running a malicious code could hit any hosting company. All a company needs is a security flaw. As to your disappearing images, someone else would have to explain. Judy On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 8:03 PM, SBS Engineers Research <research@sbse.net.au> wrote: Good morning list I have been watching/reading these emails regarding broken links etc. I was running Xenu on a regular basis on my rootsweb genealogy website to check for broken links - doing my best to correct any that were broken. http://tinyurl.com/2948r4v A couple of months ago I received an email from someone saying there were no images in my INTERESTING STORIES link. I went in to the rootsweb upload files area, IMAGES folder was completely empty. I uploaded all images again and all was well. The images disappeared again a few days later. I assumed it was my doing - maybe I had made a mistake during uploading the images. Now, I see that my site may have been hacked! Not sure if I can do anything about preventing this happening again. I do not knowwhat HostGator page is all about. Will have to read up on the matter. Regards Kind regards Ann Spiro The Blacksmiths Website: http://tinyurl.com/2948r4v ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to FREEPAGES-HELP-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message -- -- WASHINGTON COUNTY PA WEBSITES::: http://freepages.misc.rootsweb.com/~florian/ Coordinator of the Washington County PAGenWeb: http://www.rootsweb.com/~pawashin/

At 09:21 AM 2/22/2011, Sheila Priest wrote: >I have produced a website in frontpage 2003 and would like to get it >up and running. I have set up a freepage account, so have ftp >hostname, user id and password. I have trawled the rootsweb website >trying to work out what to do next but am now quite confused! I am >looking for some very basic instructions as this is all completely >new to me. If I go into publish site on FPage it brings me up with a >remote website box and I don't know what to put in there. Also do I >need to download an ftp program or can I do this automatically with orange? >Any help gratefully received. Here you go http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~gearyfamily/frontpage/publishing-frontpage-2003.html pat

Good morning list I have been watching/reading these emails regarding broken links etc. I was running Xenu on a regular basis on my rootsweb genealogy website to check for broken links - doing my best to correct any that were broken. http://tinyurl.com/2948r4v A couple of months ago I received an email from someone saying there were no images in my INTERESTING STORIES link. I went in to the rootsweb upload files area, IMAGES folder was completely empty. I uploaded all images again and all was well. The images disappeared again a few days later. I assumed it was my doing - maybe I had made a mistake during uploading the images. Now, I see that my site may have been hacked! Not sure if I can do anything about preventing this happening again. I do not knowwhat HostGator page is all about. Will have to read up on the matter. Regards Kind regards Ann Spiro The Blacksmiths Website: http://tinyurl.com/2948r4v

On 2011-02-22 4:22 AM, J.A. Florian wrote: > On-site Google Search does not require the 'special' (computer > lanuage) site-map, although it is recommended to be submitted to all search > engines. A simple text-link site map you create will do. > > Even without a perfect site map, Google On-Site Search does a really good > job at indexing all pages. Yes Google is great I found I have this program http://www.wonderwebware.com/sitemap-generator/ I think I got to it via Google webmaster tools And it does have a Google/XML which you need for some webtools checks I must get back to that stuff Ron Lankshear -Sydney NSW (from London-Shepherds Bush/Chiswick) try my links http://freepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~lankshear/

On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 2:17 AM, Barry Carlson <barrycarls@gmail.com> wrote: > Judy, > > It doesn't need a Bot per se to grab links to your pages. == Hi Barry, Yes, I said humans can 'grab' URLs. The main reasons i think this case is a bot is because it's affecting numerous websites on the HostGator servers. At least, from the ones I've identified and found their hosting company. Seriously, I wouldn't have noticed the problem except that I've been making a 100% effort to fix each broken link on my sites. Many externals had been broken (they moved sites/servers or re-organized). I'm gonna do a hooray dance when I fix the last link. :-) -- PS Barry, whatcha gonna do with my URLs now LOL ;-) Hey, I could use the file you made to make a site map! Well at least for that site! :-// Judy

Let me reiterate: From everything I've read, this isn't about any "freepages" sites being "hacked", per say. Instead, it is an outside hosting company whose servers are being used to spread malicious garbage. But the only way the bad guys can draw visitors is to include links to legit webpages. A bot crawls around the web picking URLs to use. After locating URLs to use, they put the URLs and images or text onto websites. In this instance, HostGator is the hosting company of multiple websites. But a malicious bot or human running a malicious code could hit any hosting company. All a company needs is a security flaw. As to your disappearing images, someone else would have to explain. Judy On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 8:03 PM, SBS Engineers Research < research@sbse.net.au> wrote: > Good morning list > I have been watching/reading these emails regarding broken links etc. > I was running Xenu on a regular basis on my rootsweb genealogy website > to check for broken links - doing my best to correct any that were > broken. http://tinyurl.com/2948r4v > > A couple of months ago I received an email from someone saying there > were no images in my INTERESTING STORIES link. I went in to the > rootsweb upload files area, IMAGES folder was completely empty. I > uploaded all images again and all was well. The images disappeared again > a few days later. I assumed it was my doing - maybe I had made a > mistake during uploading the images. Now, I see that my site may have > been hacked! > > Not sure if I can do anything about preventing this happening again. I > do not knowwhat HostGator page is all about. Will have to read up on > the matter. > > Regards > > Kind regards > Ann Spiro > The Blacksmiths Website: http://tinyurl.com/2948r4v > > > > > > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > FREEPAGES-HELP-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without > the quotes in the subject and the body of the message > -- -- WASHINGTON COUNTY PA WEBSITES::: http://freepages.misc.rootsweb.com/~florian/ Coordinator of the Washington County PAGenWeb: http://www.rootsweb.com/~pawashin/

On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 7:52 PM, Patricia Geary <patgeary@comcast.net>wrote: > > Perhaps someone is doing some housecleaning at HostGator. > > pat They better be LOL; I know I've made a big fuss at them this past week. Judy

At 06:04 PM 2/21/2011, J.A. Florian wrote: >Futher, I have reported to HostGator the websites' that pulled from two of >my freepages communities (family and history) and will review my other >freepages sites this week and will continue to report all Link Farms to the >HostGator company (IF they are the correct hosting company). =============== Interesting, I found one of my images linked to a HostGator hosted site that had been hacked. Appears the site was hacked back in December as that is what the page results are listing for when the 500,000 pages for the site all of them pretty much as Judy describes BUT clicking on the links get the HostGator page not found. Perhaps someone is doing some housecleaning at HostGator. pat

By using Google Webmaster Tools, I discovered a new issue that began around Feb 1st 2011. Either a human or a malicious bot (likely a bot, maybe a trojan or virus) has begun grabbing random URLs from my freepages "communities"/websites and placing the links (as broken links) on their "Link Farm" pages. The taken material is either/or/both (1) the freepages specific URL; (2) a line or two of text content; (3) one or two specific images with a page URL but as a broken link. The Link Farms are putting these under topics LIKE _oy-_oy (replace first blank with b and the second blank with t)... or other topics... i.e. topics with double meanings, se*ual meanings, etc. One church website had uploaded only 2 pages themselves, per The WayBack Machine. But they have thousands of new directories/pages of link farms which they didn't know about and were glad I found. Further, I have identified that most of the websites that have the "linked to" content on Link Farm pages are hosted by one company: HostGator. Futher, I have reported to HostGator the websites' that pulled from two of my freepages communities (family and history) and will review my other freepages sites this week and will continue to report all Link Farms to the HostGator company (IF they are the correct hosting company). So I thought I'd let other people know about this. If you have Google Webmaster Tools, look closely at the Crawl Errors section for 404 pages, then look at the specific link and look at what outside website it shows. If the outside website doesn't look like it involves genealogy/history/family history, it may be a Link Farm page. If you don't have Google Webmaster Tools, use Google. Search for Link:your site (link colon your site's URL stopping at the main directory after ~youraccountname/) Then, review the URLs. Most of the bad ones have a weird 2-letter directory after ~youraccount/ then continues with an htm or html filename that makes little sense... like, pansies-chocolate/utter-a-thing.html The file name might contain a date, like 1934. On the page itself, you'll see the real site's banner or navigation (sometimes), then a mixture of text, images, and links, but none really relate to each other as a "topic". That is the Link Farm. Copy both YOUR affected URL and "their" URL (whatever site has your URL on their Link Farm page). Next, when you have "their site" URL, plug it into http://www.allaboutsite.com/ <http://www.allaboutsite.com/%20m> or http://www.whois.net/ It will identify the Hosting Company. If it is a larger or well-known Hosting Company, you can then call their 800 #. I just told the Hosting Company that I wanted to complain about malicious activity on webspace they host; that my URLs were included on pages they host; and that my content/images were put on a Link Farm on their hosted websites. Don't let the Rep try to tell you that anyone can use your content if not copyrighted--- Link Farms are not protected sites and most of us do use copyright on our sites. As well, on my sites I have special permission from several newspaper publishers to re-print their content up through 2000 and that permission doesn't extend to use on Link Farms. Anyway, when you call a Hosting Company, ask them to (1) issue you a ticket and give you the company's tech email address so you can submit your findings to them using that ticket #, and (2) ask them to notify their internal administrator, and (3) ask them to review their servers for pages with broken links containing the path freepages.whichever-community.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~youraccountname One of the biggest issues with this (other than what I've already said), a Web Hosting "server" can be infected by a bot that looks for holes in security, then self-replicates it's Link Farm onto more websites in those servers. Since most of the "websites" I found are hosted by that one company, it's very likely their servers are infected/affected. NOTE: This is NOT a virus or malware that will infect *your* website. The bot is NOT going to get "on" your site -- freepages and rootsweb (ancestry) did NOT cause this -- the bad bot that's grabbing links did it. The big problem is for the Hosting Company, which has to clean out all those files AND find the self-generating malicious file that will continue to generate new pages. Instead for us 'little' webmasters ( from everything I've read ), IF one or more of your URLs from any of your websites gets put on one of these Link Farms, Google could (could, might, maybe) penalize your site as well as the link farm as far as ranking-- it's more of an SEO issue. It's also not fun to be listed on an "ickky" page or among "ickky" topics. I hope this helps others to identify if their URLs are affected and to know one way to deal with it. Lastly, I'm wondering if I should change the URLs (my pages) that these bad people picked? I don't think it will matter much, would it? Should I remove the images they picked, or leave them alone on my site? This is a new area for me. I'd appreciate tips on how others have dealt with the problem. Judy -- -- WASHINGTON COUNTY PA WEBSITES::: http://freepages.misc.rootsweb.com/~florian/ Coordinator of the Washington County PAGenWeb: http://www.rootsweb.com/~pawashin/

Hi Pat, This is a great reference for getting started with FreePages. I do have one question, however. In the graphic depicting the FreePages Account Structure, it states: "http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~accountname/ which will always redirect to http://freepages.misc.rootsweb.com/accountname/" Isn't the target of the redirect missing its '~'? Thanks for your hard work, James G White > Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2011 15:56:42 -0500 > From: Patricia Geary <patgeary@comcast.net> > Subject: [FreeHelp] Working With RootsWeb FreePages Ebook > To: Freepages-Help@rootsweb.com > Message-ID: <201102202056.p1KKul4u017688@mail.rootsweb.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed > > All the tutorials rolled into one! Feedback welcome. > > http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~gearyfamily/rootsweb-freepages-ebook.html > > pat > > > > ------------------------------

On-site Google Search does not require the 'special' (computer lanuage) site-map, although it is recommended to be submitted to all search engines. A simple text-link site map you create will do. Even without a perfect site map, Google On-Site Search does a really good job at indexing all pages. Google Webmaster Tools has basic features to tell you about: 1. Crawl Errors (usually badly formed link) 2. 404 page not found (also often a badly formed link) 3. Meta Tag duplicates or errors (examples: missing Title tag; duplicate Descriptions on 2 or more pages) 4. Top keywords found on site as a whole and top keyword searches Recently, through Google's Webmaster Tools, I discovered 13 instances where "link farms" had used one or more of my pages or images-- except they made mine as a "broken link" on their page. I decided to be pro-active--- IF I could identify the hosting company of the website, I called them to report the issue. I also called one church-- they had 2 uploaded real pages for their "web", but had millions of 'garbage' uploaded since Feb 1st. My call alerted the church that they had a significant virus on their web host's server. So, Google Webmaster Tools can reveal a lot ! I still don't know how I'm going to handle the other link farm problems, but I hope the places I contacted will clean up their messes. One issue I have with Google Webmaster Tools is that they report Broken Links / Crawl Errors for anyplace my link is shown within the entire Rootsweb site. So, for example, most of us use our signature lines to show our website's URL/URLs. Some of the indexed archived Rootsweb Mailing List threads suddenly show as "crawl errors / Broken links" of my sites--- usually if the URL in the List Archive 'breaks' the link into 2 lines, often after or before a hyphen in the URL. The same problem happens with URLs placed in Rootsweb Message Board Posts, and Google Webmaster Tools will list those! My issue with that is, I can't fix those supposed broken links because they aren't under my control, they aren't really "in" my webs but are on the RW servers, and it seems silly that Google reports those as being "in" my websites when instead they are just one mention on one of Rootsweb's areas. I'm still working on manually making a better site map. I keep thinking, "it shouldn't be hard" but then I get confused about how to list pages in sub-folders. And updating it manually is a pain for me at least. I looked at sites that do the computer-language site map for free, but they only do about 100 pages -- far less than the thousands I need done. Judy On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 9:59 AM, Sheri Bush <mytwigs@hotmail.com> wrote: > > Thank you everyone for the comments. They were very helpful. I think I > will be looking at a Google search box when I am ready. The only problem is > the site map. I used FreeFind to create the site map and didn't have to > worry about it. I think Google will be a better search maybe? > > As far as a statcounter, I have been reading up on it and I just add it to > each page. The counter gives the stats on the page by url. So that is > solved. > > Thanks! > > Sheri aka. FamilyTwigs > TwigTalk My blog > Indiana Trails To The Past > Jackson County/INTTTP >

Each of these sites has a different URL Linking between page on one site to a page on another site you will need to use Absolute URLs So Freefind would need activating for each one http://www.freefind.com/ I used to use it but it had number of page restrictions so I changed to Google My cousins sure find me Ron Lankshear -Sydney NSW (from London-Shepherds Bush/Chiswick) try my links http://freepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~lankshear/ On 2011-02-21 4:02 AM, Sheri Bush wrote: > My question is, will a search engine, such as freefind treat each one as part of the whole, or will it only search one community? Same with a StatCounter? > Will each community need a separate search? >

Thank you everyone for the comments. They were very helpful. I think I will be looking at a Google search box when I am ready. The only problem is the site map. I used FreeFind to create the site map and didn't have to worry about it. I think Google will be a better search maybe? As far as a statcounter, I have been reading up on it and I just add it to each page. The counter gives the stats on the page by url. So that is solved. Thanks! Sheri aka. FamilyTwigs TwigTalk My blog Indiana Trails To The Past Jackson County/INTTTP

At 09:48 AM 2/21/2011, Grant White wrote: >This is a great reference for getting started with FreePages. > >I do have one question, however. >In the graphic depicting the FreePages Account Structure, it states: >"http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~accountname/ > which will always redirect to >http://freepages.misc.rootsweb.com/accountname/" > >Isn't the target of the redirect missing its '~'? It sure is. WIll fix it now. Thanks Grant. pat

Provided you give each new counter a different name, they will count each time a page has been opened. Just that page, and it is normal to set them up on your index page. In summary the RW counter can be placed "anywhere" you want to count page access, but each counter needs an exclusive name. Barry On 21/02/2011 7:56 a.m., J.A. Florian wrote: > The counters, I don't know. >

At 11:15 PM 2/20/2011, Jenny Calvin wrote: >It looks great! Can the link to your article be added to the welcome letter >for new accounts? =========== The powers that be will have to decide that. pat

Pat -- It looks great! Can the link to your article be added to the welcome letter for new accounts? Jenny