I have decided to temporarily deny access to this site to about half the world’s population. Why have I done this? I grew tired of the constant cyber attack attempts by script kiddies sitting in their underwear surrounded by empty pizza boxes and dirty laundry looking to hone their “hacking skills”. This site has performed as a hackers playground for long enough. To paraphrase Peggy Lee: “You can no longer play in my yard“—please go and play somewhere else kiddos.

And no, I am not being “unfairly discriminatory” here: anybody who knows how to read a log file and do a little digging can find out where script kiddie attacks are coming from (I’m not talking about “real” hackers here—the kind that know how to conceal their activity by rerouting their page requests).

So from now on, anyone in China or the Russian Federation trying to directly access this site is now being blocked. Sorry folks, but enough is enough.

I got my IP range for China at www.okean.com and for the Russian Federation at www.countryipblocks.net. The downside is that it increases my .htaccess file to a whopping 150kb—which is a shame as this file is read by Apache with every request to the server.

First of all, we—as web designers—love to help you out and appreciate your business. Creating beautiful and usable websites is what we’re all about. This post only serves to give all the folks who depend on web developers/designers a few guidelines on the effective delivery of content.

Be Clear

Please don’t put us into a position where we have to decipher your intentions. When we have to do that, it takes up more of our time and the extra work involved will end up costing you more of your hard earned cash. Heck, it may even annoy us (and annoyed designers are far less productive than designers who are in good spirits).

Quality Content

As a site proprietor it is up to you to ensure that content is up to scratch. Well written content will please your visitors and generate more revenue for you as the owner of the site. On top of that, good designers put a lot of effort into properly crafted designs and prefer to see their hard work being matched by equally well crafted copy. At the very least, and at all times, run a spell checker on your copy before sending it out for publication.

Be Clear, Again

Actually write some copy. Don’t just give us vague hints: “uhm, this needs to say something down the lines of…” Consider us dumb machines: we need specific instructions (unless we actually have been contracted to be copy editors). If you don’t know how to write content, consider hiring someone who does.

Deliver Content In An Appropriate Format

Deliver content in an appropriate format: for instance, RTF (Rich Text File) or Microsoft Word. It is much harder for us to strip content from a PDF than convert a properly marked up RTF for example. You can also help us by highlighting the changed content.

Don’t Change Your Mind (Unless You Have To)

If updates have been scheduled to take place at a particular time don’t send us anything until then (unless our opinion is called for). We really don’t need the content until the actual updates are about to take place. Chances are you will change your mind in the meantime. Sending us multiple emails with conflicting requests for content updates will simply confuse us, and there is a chance we’ll miss some of your instructions. Of course you’ll want to send us revised copy when situations change, making clear that previous content has been scrapped.

Observe Email Etiquette

When you are sending us content via email, give emails a clear subject heading. That way, if we need to refer to your emails at a later stage we can easily find them again.

Also, refrain from giving updates about your sister’s friend’s cat. Business emails are for business, and generally should be limited to just that: business. It makes our job so much easier. While we may want to hear about the cat, we prefer you to give us an update in another email.

In Conclusion

While I’m sure I’ve left out some useful aspects of effective content delivery, these pointers will go a long way to helping us being more efficient and allow us to do what we do best: craft beautiful and useful sites.

Please remember that the more work you create for us, the more we have to bill you for.

Interesting developments over at Ma.gnolia:

Ma.gnolia is kicking off development of Ma.gnolia 2, or M2 for short. What does that mean? Well, for one, M2 is a ground-up rewrite of Ma.gnolia, re-creating features we love today, taking a second run at what didn’t worked as well as planned, on a distributed, service-based architecture designed to handle the large volumes of data we’ve seen. But even more significant, M2 will be an open source project that can be downloaded to remix and run as your own.
Yep. That’s right. In a few months, you will be able to download and install your very own Ma.gnolia!

For more info, check out their blog.

Back in the saddle again with my desktop. It seems that the power supply was either faulty or not putting out enough power (perhaps even a combination of the two). With a new power supply the box has been stable so far.

This could have been such a simple issue to resolve were it not for the odd combination of symptoms.

In any case, I am glad to be able to run my desktop as trusty old workhorse again.

Geez, what a couple of weeks they have been. Non-stop desktop instability issues whilst migrating numerous hosting accounts and juggling an assortment of deadlines. A great combination.
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