The Real Ryan J. Parker

Since upgrading to WordPress 2.3.2, the webserver that hosts my blog has taken a beating from trackback spammers.

The trackback requests were prevalent before, but for some reason they weren’t slowing the server down until the upgrade.

After trying many solutions, I finally found a way to solve the problem. This will no longer allow you to have trackbacks on your blog, but if you have to decide between no blog or no trackbacks then I’m sure you’ll have no problem implementing this.

Basically you just update your index.php to the following:

if ( preg_match('/trackback/', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) ) {
die();
} else {
/* Short and sweet */
define('WP_USE_THEMES', true);
require('./wp-blog-header.php');
}
?>

You might need to modify the preg_match() so that you don’t cut off legit posts that have trackback in the name, but the blog I use this code on does not have such posts.

Hopefully some day soon these spammers will realize they’re doing no one any good.

Now that FeedBurner is owned by Google, you would think they’d have time to fix their math.

For example: I have 14 people subscribed to a feed using SendMeRSS, yet FeedBurner only counts 4. I know it’s 14 because SendMeRSS lists the number of subscribers in every e-mail that is sent out. Yes, I’m one of the 14 because I want to know if it’s ever broken.

Also, Google’s feed fetcher only reports 7 subscribers, yet FeedBurner counts this as 14. I know it’s 7 because the Googlebot comes to my site first before being re-directed to FeedBurner.

I figure this is just a parsing issue, but conspiracy theorists could suggest that Google wants to make it look like everyone is using their service.

Regardless, I just want to have an accurate subscriber count. Is that too much to ask for?

I got an e-mail this morning telling me my sports handicapping blog failed the BlogRush quality guidelines.

Reading through the e-mail I had no idea why I was removed… I have quality content, it’s constantly updated, exactly the kind of things BlogRush is looking for. Well, at the very end, I see this last paragraph:

- The blog’s content (or advertising) should not contain any of the following types of content: hate, anti-racial, terrorism, drug-related, hacking, phishing, fraud, pornographic, nudity, warez, gambling, copyright infringement, obscene or disgusting material of any kind, or anything considered illegal.

Everything else in this list is either obscene or illegal except for gambling. Obviously you can make the argument that you typically have to be in a place like Vegas to take part in this type of activity, but BlogRush isn’t quite getting it right by barring this type of content.

Sports bettors like myself are a small crowd so I don’t expect much, but what about the poker playing community?

A few days ago I noticed about 60 clicks to my AdSense account in a short time span that appeared to be invalid, so I notified Google to make sure they knew that it was some sort of fraud. I’ve heard horror stories of people having some random jerkoff have their account disabled, so I wanted to make sure I didn’t fall into the same trap.

Looks like it didn’t work.

A few hours ago I received the following e-mail from Google:

Hello Ryan Parker,

It has come to our attention that invalid clicks and/or impressions
have been generated on the Google ads on your site(s). We have
therefore disabled your Google AdSense account. Please understand that
this was a necessary step to protect the interests of AdWords
advertisers.

As you may know, a publisher’s site may not have invalid clicks or
impressions on any ad(s), including but not limited to clicks and/or
impressions generated by:

- a publisher on his own web pages
- a publisher encouraging others to click on his ads
- automated clicking or surfing programs, or any other deceptive
software
- a publisher altering any portion of the ad code or changing the
layout, behavior, targeting, or delivery of ads for any reason

…

I run AdWords campaigns and obviously hate click fraud, which is why it’s unfortunate that Google has disabled my account.

So, what are the odds of Google reinstating my account?

Tags: google, adsense, account disabled

What another nonsense TLD: .info.

Hopefully by blacklisting .biz and .info I can keep Akismet happy.

While we’re on the topic: anyone actually own and/or use a .info TLD for a legit purpose?

Tags: .info, spam