Wednesday, September 17th, 2008
Ok, this is a pretty simple thing to do and it has some important benefits.
Have you ever visited a website or a web page only to find that annoying “Not Found” error message? If so, what did you do? You probably got ticked off, hit the back button and visited another website. Can you imagine someone coming across a “Not Found” error page on your website? Well, if you don’t have a custom 404 “File Not Found” page set up on your website, that might just be happening.
Here is what you need to do to fix this problem and keep your visitors on your website.
The first thing is to create a web page with some sort of message on it. Something like, “Whoops, looks like the page you are looking for isn’t here. Please click this link to visit our home page or our search page…” You get the idea. You can save the page as “404.php” or something similar and upload it to the root of your web server.
Oh, I forgot to mention this. In order to do what I am suggesting here, you need to be running an Apache web server and your web host has to allow changes to your .htaccess file. I am sure there are other ways to create a custom 404 File Not Found error page and get it up and running, but I am only talking about one way here.
Now, open up your .htaccess file and place this code into it somewhere. I like to place it right on top:
ErrorDocument 404 /404.php
I am using .php extensions for this stuff just because of habit and preference. You can use .html or whatever you wish.
Well, that’s basically it. You can now save your .htaccess file and upload it to the server and go see if it worked. Try typing in some page that you know isn’t there. If it works, please read my previous post about “How To Check Your Web Page HTTP Headers & Response Codes” for some important information.
Good luck.
Related posts
Tags: 404 php, Apache, apache server, apache web server, code, Codes, custom, custom 404, error, error message, ErrorDocument, File, file upload, header, headers, HOST, htaccess file, html, HTTP, link, php, php extensions, Response, response code, root, search, search page, server, web host, web page, website
Posted in Websites | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 16th, 2008
I am talking about copyright infringement on your website here.
Say, one morning you wake up to find that someone has copy and pasted your homepage (among other pages) text onto their homepage. I am sure you would get rather peeved at the sight of that. I mean, it’s not a trivial matter here. Website copy costs good money. There are keywords you have to think about and research and many, many more variables that led you to place that copy on your web page. For someone to just steal it like that is very frustrating, to say the least.
So, what can you do to deal with the situation? Well, according to Wikipedia, there are a few things you need to do:
1. Establish ownership
2. Establish actual copying
3. Establish misappropriation
These are the items you need to get squared away before anything else. Again, I am just getting these things from Wikipedia.
There is something out there called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that kind of governs the whole online copyright issue. It was signed into law on October 28, 1998 and extends the reach of copyright to protect online assets as well.
With this new online protection, it makes handing the issue over to your attorney much easier and less expensive. They have something concrete to work with, and since we all know how attorneys get paid by the hour, that matters.
Once your attorney has the information they he/she needs, they can go ahead and send a notification claiming infringement to the website hosting provider of the website that copied your work. According to the attorney I work with, the hosting provider usually takes the site down rather quickly upon receiving a letter like this. I would think they don’t really want to get in the middle of this kind of thing.
The owner of the website can always go ahead and set up shop with a different hosting provider, but that shows a certain amount of audacity on their part and I would think you could go after someone like this personally. In my opinion, it is much easier to change the copy on their website than to fight you in court.
Related posts
Tags: assets, attorney, attorneys, copying, copyright, copyright infringement, copyright issue, Digital, digital millennium copyright act, DMCA, homepage, law, Millennium, misappropriation, protection, web page, website, website hosting provider, wikipedia
Posted in Legal, Websites | No Comments »
