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After you visit this news site, don’t come crying to me if you can’t find feeds for your news reader.

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I’m sure you’ve heard about MSN’s news bot engine. But did you know that it can search beyond the web? I’m really interested in how people feel about this….

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As small business owners trying to make our way on the web, and as webmasters trying to save and make a buck here and there, it’s good to know that there are some resources out there to give us a basic education on how to do more advanced webmaster stuff, all online, mostly for free.

It will be hard, but I’m going to try not to repeat any resource I’ve referenced in my blog before. Call me on it if I do and i’ll replace it with another goodie.

BigNoseBird.com, part of the Really Big network can give you a wide education on everything from site promotion to HTML and server side includes. And if you can’t figure out the answer from their resources, you can always post to their bulletin board.

And if you’re stumped about the priciples behind internet marketing and site promotion, you really want to check out sitesell.com - they have free trials… I know you have probably heard of Ken Evoy’s site before, but you should give serious consideration to, at bare minimum, taking them up on one of their trial offers. Even if you can’t afford some of their other products yet, it’s really helpful to take a look at the trials - they give you information you may not have considered before. There’s a longer review here.

Ever want to become certified at some IT specialty, for your own uses? Freeacademy.com is your answer. You can sample a course for free, then there is a low registration fee to continue. I’ve used them before and you can pass real accredidation course with their program. Don’t even think about paying $2000 to learn stuff that’s free, or nearly free, online.

Before I tell you the last one, I have to talk about LearnThat.com first. You can teach yourself all kinds of things here, and I have.

With that out of the way, let me ask you something.

Have you ever been sitting in front of Outlook, Flash or Photoshop and thought - if only I could get an intermediate or advanced guide to this?

CCT Global gives out a free CD with all kinds of courses on it, you only pay for the shipping. If you only want one or two courses, you can download them free right off their site. Just click on samples - but remember - you’re not allowed to use these to make course of your own for sale.

Here’s a quick list of what they’ve got -

Microsoft Access
Microsoft Excel
Microsoft FrontPage
Microsoft Outlook
Microsoft PowerPoint
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Word
Internet Explorer
Macromedia Director
Macromedia Flash
PageMaker
PaintShop
QuarkXPress
Adobe Fireworks
Adobe Go Live
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Image Ready
Adobe Photoshop
PC Foundations
HTML
Lotus Ami Pro
Lotus Freelance

All downloadable in html or PDF and/or other formats.

Having this kind of knowledge can really help your free traffic efforts - you won’t have to hire a programmer to do basic things for you unless you’re too busy, and understanding how to apply minor fixes will take big headaches out of your day.

Get some free continuing education. It’s worth it.

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Here’s the link to the article I promised you at News.com - regarding how hackers can use Google to exploit your site if you’re not careful….

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In the good old days, there were lots of places you could go for a mechanical pair of eyes to look over your site and tell you how fast it loads, if there are broken links, that kind of thing. Netmechanic’s services used to be free, or have free trials. Ah, the good old days…

Most, if not all, of the utilities linked below are free.

The Craig Cecil site also has some valuable helpers, including a CSS validator, an HTML validator, and links to other tools as well, such as the Bobby checker, that will tell you if your site is suitable with people who have physical or sensory challenges and can’t view the web the same way most of us do. That’s a fantastic page, you could be there for hours.

Designerwiz will also trace the network route to your server - good in the odd case that you can’t access your site or your host’s and everything else seems to be fine - sometimes it’s between your PC and the host, not that your host or the site is actually down.

Dr. Watson is a free service to analyze your web page on the Internet. Watson can also check out many other aspects of your site, including link validity, download speed, search engine compatibility, and link popularity.

Have fun - the more people who can see your site, the more use you’ll get out of the traffic you DO have.

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Before I tell you what to do if you get hacked - and how to prevent it - here’s a short, funny story.

So there I was, thinking, “I can finish my long-overdue update to my book and then, I can try that thing they call sleep. Then I’ll finish my toolbox tips”.

I went to do a final check on my sites before I continued on my merry way and guess what.

I got hosed, Timmy. Someone with way too much time on their hands hacked my PHP-Nuke section. Oh, the shame of it!

Shame on me for forgetting to do the security updates to my PHP-Nuke installation after the last upgrade.

But, I’m a techie, I knew what to do… I mean come on, I used to work for the IMF. Only my busy schedule kept me from remembering to do something this basic, though I was prepared for the worse case scenario as a back up.

I’m a fanatical back-upper, so even if I hadn’t caught them in the act, I would have been fine, because the only thing that keeps me from using my knowledge for evil is that pesky “conscience” thingee I have. I just couldn’t do that to someone, especially someone who is trying to help people… Hell, I won’t even download from Kazaa anymore.

So, that’s why I was delinquent in my free traffic posting. And here’s your continued tip from yesterday… a whole day late, I’m sorry.

Tool Tip #2 - Backup and Security

The first place you should go for basic study is The Web Host Industry Review’s Security section for webmasters. There are tons of articles there telling you what horrors exist that you probably don’t even know about, and how to recover from them.

Here are some back-up tools from SnapFiles.com - some are free. Doing it on your PC is not enough, you then want to back up your PC to CD.

Snapfiles also has all kinds of Security Tools.

Here’s an article called Seven Ways to Protect Your Site From Hackers - wouldn’t have helped me but I would add to that - change your passwords often. I know we already have a lot to do as webmasters and small business owners, but it’s worth the trouble. I like to use random password generators for this,

Here’s hack help for your PC, from Microsoft.

Got Linux? Try here.

Don’t have one for Mac yet - though no Mac I ever had or was near ever got hacked… coincidence? I think not.

I miss Macintoshes…

If you’re running a network, you might find tips at TechRepublic helpful.

Here’s hack help if you are using PHP - important things to remember.

And if you have PHP-Nuke, 3 things that will save your butt are the instructions for what to do if you’ve been hacked, the security patch files for each release, and a security program called The Protector. They have another article called Lock down your web site and other stuff in their security section.

If you get hacked in any way that relates to the web and you live in the US you can get the government to help you prosecute.

Get IP addresses if you can - I keep mine on record for this purpose solely… I know I’m not supposed to be vengeful.

But I really, really am. Sometimes I wait years for payback. I really need to lighten up.

Think it can’t happen to you? It can. There’s an article up today about the dark side of Google’s powers - unintentional on their part I’m sure - that can tell a good hacker your site’s vulnerabilities.

And you don’t have to get hacked for your web host’s servers to crash and lose your site. Just happened to one of my members. Luckily he found a resolution - if you don’t you can try The Way Back Machine for recovering html pages they way they used to be before you crashed.

At bare minimum, back up your site. I’ll have more tools for you later on…. ta for now…

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