Posts Tagged ‘website’

Using Google to protect your site

Sunday, November 29th, 2009

Is your website error free?

My site  has grown over the years and uses a lot of PHP code. It’s difficult to test each and every aspect of it. Here are 3 simple tricks that can help you test your website. They don’t replace a real test (that you should do after a each change), but they’re a nice addition.

Trick 1:

Use Google to search your website for “error” or “warning”. You can use the format:
site:yourdomain.com (warning or error )

This of course has a terrible lag, since Google crawls your website only every few days or weeks, but on the other hand Google may use different parameters or aspects that you use in your own tests.

The real fun comes with combination of trick 2.

Trick 2:

Use Google alerts to automatically search your website for problems. You can create a free Google alerts account and use the search mentioned above to have Google automatically check your site every day. If something breaks, Google will send you an e-mail.

Trick 3:

Same as above, but use your Google to watch your site for hacked pages. A hacker might have exploited a weakness in your server and created a new page for whatever product he promotes with his spam mails. You probably don’t want to become involved with this. So instead of using “warning or error” in the search. use a list of the usual phrases and medical products that the spam mails usually contain.

It’s a one-time work of a few minutes. The rest of the work is done automatically by Google and can save you a lot of trouble.

Website monitoring against hacking

Friday, February 20th, 2009

A brilliant idea codes from Google’s “Official Google Webmaster Central Blog“. If your site gets hacked you might not notice it until it’s to late. And it can be a lot of work to check your site each day.

So Google suggests to use Google Alerts to scan your site on a regular base for common malware terms by searching for something like “site:example.com viagra OR casino OR porn OR ringtones”.

It’s not a 100% solution but I’d say it’s pretty good and quick to set up.

Are you “Alive and kicking”?

Monday, August 25th, 2008

Some customers are afraid of buying online. Afraid that your company isn’t real. And a 3-year old copyright notice at the bottom of the page won’t raise their spirits. So do yourself a favor and keep it up to date. And while you’re at it, insert a time period like “Copyright (c) 2003-2008” to show how long you’re already in business.

If you’re lazy (just like me, I admit it), automate that with a tiny piece of PHP:

Copyright &copy; 2003-<?php print date("Y")?>

To make sure you’re always “alive and kicking”… 😉