I was speaking to John Lessnau via email yesterday about the WordPress plugin for LinkXL (which I am planning on reviewing soon). The site scans your website and looks for keywords etc but it wasn’t able to do it.

John then pointed to my plugin directory and said that one of the many plugins installed was conflicting with theirs. I pointed out that I didn’t actually have that many plugins installed and had just tried a few out (ie. most were not activated) but what did concern me was that everyone could see my plugins. I am not an expert with htaccess but I’m familar with most basic techniques. I’ve just been lazy and taken the time to hide my folders from the general public. Thankfully it is painfully easy to do this!

How to stop people viewing files in your directories

By default, everyone can see the files you upload to a directory (unless there’s an index file). Commonly, most webmasters forget to protect their images and banners folders. I cannot criticize anyone for this as I am quite lazy in this regard too and there really is no excuse as it’s incredibly easy to stop people viewing files in your directory.

To protect a directory from listing files all you need to do is upload an .htaccess file to the directory with the following :

IndexIgnore *

The * is a wildcard, a catch all that stops all files from being listed. You could of course only only ban certain file types. For example, if you wanted to stop your word documents but were happy with the graphic files being listed you could use :

IndexIgnore *.doc

Personally, I prefer to put all information in the root .htaccess file instead of uploading seperate .htaccess files to several directories. To do this all you need to do is add the folder path, relative to where your .htaccess file is.

So for example, if I wanted to stop people viewing the plugins and themes folder in this blog I would add this to my root .htaccess file :

IndexIgnore /wp-content/plugins/*
IndexIgnore /wp-content/themes/*

Should you be concerned about directory files being listed

Most of the time there isn’t any real harm in leaving directories open to the public but it’s probably still a good habit to protect your images, banner and video folders. At the very least it will reduce your bandwidth but it will also stop people viewing files directly outside of your main site.

For example, say you post a funny video on your site and it is bringing you a lot of traffic. If the directory the video is saved in can be viewed by everyone then the video can be viewed directly ie. people can see the non-embedded video directly which means less advertisements are being displayed to them which in turns means less money for you!

Also, goes without saying that if you have important private documents on your website then restricting them from public view is a must.

I encourage you to try this out on your site if you haven’t used this before. It’s very straight forward but should you be unsure about any of this please let me know and I’ll do my best to help

Thanks,
Kevin

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As most of you know, I recently purchased this blog from David Shaw, so you may be unsure about what direction the blog is going as I never really spoke about it in my announcement post.

First off, this blog was launched as a ‘Making Money Online’ blog and thats something I want to continue. It will not be targeted to bloggers exclusively and many of the money making methods I will talk about will not be related to blogs at all.

There are hundreds of ‘Making Money Online’ blogs on the net today. There are a few great ones but generally speaking I think that a large percentage of them are giving bad advice and most of them are not actually making money through the web, which in turn leads to a case of the blind leading the blind. There are many who subscribe to the idea that you can Fake it til you Make it which may be one reason why so many of them sell their blog before they make any kind of return from it.

I’m not trying to be mean by saying this as I made many of the same mistakes they are making years ago. Just like anything else in life, there is a learning curve and sometimes the best way to learn is to make mistakes and learn from them.

So what you can expect on ProTycoon in the future?

I promise to be as honest as I can in my posts. There are things I have a lot of experience with on the web and there are things which I’m still unsure of. For example, I used AdWords when it first came out but I’ve only recently started testing with it again so I’m still wet behind the ears ie. I’m still learning.

Also, I will put my hands up at this stage and admit that I haven’t made millions from the web. I have in the past made 5 figures monthly but after selling most of my portfolio to go travelling my income is lower. However, I’ve been running websites for close to 9 years now and have been self employed for the last 4 or 5 and have picked up a lot of experience in many areas.

So what can you expect from ProTycoon? Well I won’t be telling you all to start commentating on do-follow blogs and I probably won’t be writing many ’10 ways to do this and that’ type posts either (not that there’s anything wrong with those types of posts, I write them on other blogs!). What I will be doing is showing you how I make money on the web, show you examples of sites I own which are making money, share my successes, my failures, my ups and my downs. I will also pass on design, coding, and SEO tips from time to time too.

By sharing my experiences with you all I have no doubt that I will learn from all of you too. As I said, there are still some areas of making money on the web which I don’t have a lot of experience with.

Due to my schedule, I aim to write about 3 good posts per week so please subscribe so you don’t miss out. If there is anything you would like covered on ProTycoon then please let me know. Likewise, if you have any questions about any of this please leave a comment and I’ll do my best to answer you when I can

Good Luck,
Kevin

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Branding is a very important part of promoting a website, be it a blog, forum, online shop or service. Personally, I can design basic websites and simple logos and graphics but on the whole, design is not my strong point. I always say I’m a jack of all trades and master of nothing!

Due to this I outsource a lot of my design work. In the past I have contacted designers directly when I have been looking for a new logo but recently I have instead held a contest. The site I use for this is 99designs.

Many of you may already be aware of 99designs. It was originally the contests section in the SitePoint Marketplace but was later moved to the domain 99designs.com (your sitepoint login should work on the site). The premise of the site is simple : 99designs is a place where webmasters hold design contests and designers submit their entries and the webmaster chooses what he thinks is the best design. Thousands of designers visit the site regularly and the standard of designs is pretty high.

Launching a contest costs $39. The minimum price you offer depends on the type of design you need :

I’m a pretty easy going guy and I think I’m good to work with but some of the designers I have worked with in the past must have been a little annoyed with me. When they asked for a general idea of what kind of design or logo I wanted I struggled for an answer. When they asked what type of colors I wanted to them to use I asked for them to show me a few different color schemes so I could decide. They must have been asking themselves what they were getting into!

To quote a famous saying :

I don’t know much about art but I know what I like

The above quote sums up my creative mind. The reason I outsource so much design work is because when it comes to design my mind goes blank. So when a designer asks me to point them in the right direction I’m not really much help however when I see a design I instantly have an opinion about it and can say why I like the design or why I don’t like it.

This is why design contests are perfect for me. They allow me to see several different ideas and the overall cost is only slightly higher than going to a designer directly. Also, most professional design companies require a deposit or partial payment up front and set a limit on the number of drafts they will do for you. If you don’t like any of their designs you might find yourself out of pocket.

I’ve been in this situation before but thankfully the times I didn’t like the drafts I hadn’t paid up front. Just recently Nate Whitehill recommend a banner designer to me but the guy was really poor and after I rejected the first 3 drafts (which were really bad) he suggested we part ways (which I agreed to very quickly!!).

My current contest for a logo

I recently had a redesign of Electric Bandits, a tech forum I’m trying to develop. The forum skin designer, Kolby, isn’t really good at making logos so I’m currently holding a contest at 99designs (in the meantime, a temporary logo has been uploaded).

The contest has only been live 2 days and still has 5 days to run but there have been some good entries already. I plan on letting the contest run the full week as there may be some more entries in the next 5 days. Here’s a preview of some of the best entries so far

Submitted by freeman

Submitted by naj-dreamer

Submitted by Durinthiam

Submitted by escalator73

You can see all of the entries here.

At the moment I’m leaning towards either the design from naj-dreamer or escalator73, but I’ll make the final decision next week. Let me know what you think, I’d love to hear your opinion on these logos and I’m sure it will help me with my decision

Design Contests

If your budget is tight you might not think that paying for a logo or design is worth it. Afterall, there are thousands of website, blog and logo templates on the web which you can tweak to suit your needs.

However, I do think that in the long term, a unique identity will prove to be a good investment, particularly when compared to other expenses like advertising. If, like me, you are graphically challenged, design contests are a fantastic way to see several designs from a wide ranger of designers.

Not sure if any of you have held a contest before but next time you’re looking to get a logo or template designed I recommend considering holding a design contest instead of contacting a design company directly

Kevin

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David Shaw founded ProTycoon in February 2008. His aim was to build a blog which helped bloggers and webmasters make money on the web. David did a fantastic job for the first 6 months of this blogs life but due to work and studying committments, he was unable to give the site the time it needs so he decided to sell up. David had blogged for me before and I was an admirer of his work so when I dropped by the blog and saw that it was for sale I jumped at the chance.

My name is Kevin Muldoon. Some of my projects can be seen on my personal blog System0 but I’m sure some of you will know me from my blogging advice website Blogging Tips. I plan on continuing the good work that David has done and developing this site over the next few months.

So what can readers expect from this ownership change? Well first of all I am aiming to post on this blog at least 3 times a week. In my opinion regularity is a big part of a blogs success so I want to make sure you all have a reason to subscribe and drop by regularly. I will be posting about design, search engine optimisation, making money online and much more. The focus on this blog will not just be towards blogs though and many website related topics will be covered. For example, if I find a good script which I think you guys can make money from I’ll post about it

If you have any suggestions about what you would like covered on ProTycoon please let me know.

Last but certainly not least, I want to thank David. The transaction was very quick and he made sure the transfer went very smoothly. David has did a great job with this blog so far and I’m sure when his college commitments are over we will see him again on the web, in some form or another. Best of luck David

Thanks guys,

Kevin

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