Gabriel Harper's Blog

How to Ban an IP Address With .htaccess

Gabriel Harper — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 19:35:08 +0000

Once in a while you might run into a suspicious IP address accessing your website. Maybe it’s doing something funny like probing for vulnerabilities, or just spamming the heck out of your server. Being a responsible webmaster, you decide to ban the IP address from your server completely – but how? Using Apache Web server [...]

Social Networking in Business

Gabriel Harper — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 11:33:33 +0000

Social networking in business can be both highly rewarding and extremely distracting. Leveraging the strengths of social networking in your organization requires a strategic plan, education on social networking for key employees, and understanding it’s role in your business model. Social networking connects with individuals on a personal level, and it’s important to respect this to [...]

Raising Money for Haiti Earthquake Disaster Relief

Gabriel Harper — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 10:11:25 +0000

I just read about the horrible earthquake that tore up Haiti yesterday. Reading the initial reports was bad enough, but stumbling across some more graphic photos of wounded, lying in the streets with crushed limbs, just made my stomach turn. Not in disgust but despair. It’s times like this I feel so helpless to do [...]

Test DNS Transfer with Windows Hosts File

Gabriel Harper — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 05:58:56 +0000

Here’s a simple trick you can use to test DNS changes on a Windows PC. You can fake or override DNS lookups by manually entering an IP address for any domain name you want. Use it to see if yoursite.com looks OK on the new server or IP address before DNS makes it around to [...]

Bogus Bing Trademark Infringement Lawsuit

Gabriel Harper — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 01:25:13 +0000

A degree of scepticism is observed in public response to the trademark infringement lawsuit filed against Microsoft by a small St. Louis design company for using the Bing name on their heavily publicized new search engine. Is this just a rally for publicity on behalf of the plaintiff? The case appears questionable, but there may [...]

8 Tests for Trademark Infringement

Gabriel Harper — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 08:54:32 +0000

When is it okay to use a trademark on your website? Is your logo or product too much like the competitor’s? When do you risk being shut down and possibly taken to court, even being sued for extensive damages? Combined with some common sense and these 8 tests for trademark infringement, you can arm yourself [...]

List of Popular Webmaster Forums

Gabriel Harper — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 06:16:10 +0000

Here’s a comprehensive, recently updated list of good Webmaster forums to check out. Currently 46 active Webmaster related forums for discussing Web design, coding, online business, development, online marketing, and other stuff that Webmasters like to discuss. ABestWeb Affiliate Marketing Forum Admin Zone Forums The Admin Zone – the foremost resource for forum owners and administrators. Biz MP Buying [...]

Improve CTR: Banner Placement for Best Click-Through-Rate

Gabriel Harper — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:49:42 +0000

Improving your CTR is one of the best things you can do with your ads. You can earn more money for the same amount of traffic, and it’s totally free to improve your CTR with some basic techniques. If you’re getting paid for sending clicks with PPC ads like AdSense – every click really counts. [...]

Flippa Time?

Gabriel Harper — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 04:18:03 +0000

Speaking of Flippa, something is going on. Release? Not sure, but Sitepoint Marketplace is down for an upgrade at the same time as Flippa.com. According to SP it’ll last about three hours, which in terms of a top 1,000 site is quite a while.

Flippa – Sitepoint’s New Marketplace is Flippa.com

Gabriel Harper — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 09:11:48 +0000

If you use the Sitepoint Marketplace to buy and sell online, prepare for a big change. Sitepoint is flipping things upside-down soon, and moving the marketplace to Flippa.com. Many people are saying WTF to Flippa, and with good reasons. Is this too much at once? Most of the responses to the announcement of Flippa attack the [...]