Don’t you hate it when you get contacted by people and they say your site has been hacked. This is so uncool, a total waste of time and a bunch of low life idiots that has got nothing better to do then to waste their time.

Check this screenshot.

Oscommerce Website Got Hacked

PHP Website got hacked

This guy is too cute, by ftp’ing a logo, text and a song that played in the background. I give this to him that he can at least can spell and have heart. But beyond that not impressive at all.

This guy calls himself a Turk, but i won’t be surprised that he is from us, uk etc. Clearly the message that he is giving to the world is that he is the biggest loser.

Many of these so called wanna be hackers are just script kiddies. They not even hardcore, just some amateurs defacing a site. Standard and simple to do. Kids nowadays can get programs freely available on the net. Check if your Apache server has been setup properly and if not jump onto your server and replace your homepage with theirs. In this case my register globals was turned on. Simply I removed admin, removed scrap (files and hacker / bum) and my site couldn’t get hacked again. So I send out a strong message to this character, when he came back to the site to see if it is still defaced. Unfortunately he found it up and running within a couple of minutes.

Now this is the second time that one of my websites got hacked this year 2009. Both times I dealt with it and these skunks couldn’t get onto that website server again.

Moral of the story is don’t except crap from scrap!

When I started with my first website way back in the early 90s the internet was not like it is today. No video streaming, rss feeds, blogging etc. but just static websites.

On my mind was not to make money online, but just to create an about me hobby website. Those there banner ad advertising was a popular way to make money online.

So after the dot com bubble burst web pioneers like Google, Clickbank etc. pioneered new ways to make money online and allow website publishers to monetize their websites.

I started doing heavy research and find ways to make money online and earn a decent income from my websites. So I found the answers that I was looking for and implemented it.

Remember to make money online with a website or blog is not an overnight thing, but hard work and dedication. What you put in you will get out.

So I began experimenting with different money making programs and started making money online with my websites.

To make a long story short I implemented Google Adsense and started promoting affiliate website products and e-books with Clickbank.

My first earning for the month was $5 for clicks that I received from website visitors that clicked on my Google Adsense ads. The next month the $5 grew to $56 and only the third month did I hit the minimum amount of $100 to receive a cheque from Google.

Now there are lots of people and webmasters that talk of how much money they make online, but they don’t have proof. Here below I gave an example of some cheques I get monthly.

Here I have attached an example of an $300 Google Adsense that I received in a month. The cheque is in my currency ZAR.

$300 Google Adsense Check

Here is an example of a $132.36 Clickbank cheque that I received in the same same month

$132 Clickbank Cheque

Here is an example of a $260.00 Bluehost cheque that I received.

$260.00 Bluehost cheque

So from that time on my sites consistently generated money with Google Adsense and other affiliate programs.

I am making money online for years now from not just Adsense, but Clickbank, Kontera, Linkworth, Bluehost, Hostgator etc.

So if I can make money online with a website then you can also do it. Yes, you can too make a decent living online.

It is a matter of being passionate, have determination and not to give up.

Today I have added a favicon icon to the www.how-2-make-a-website.com blog. A favicon is a good way to brand your site and to help people to locate your website between their other bookmarks.

What is a Favicon?

A favicon which is short for favorites icon is also known as a

• website icon
• url icon
• shortcut icon
• bookmark icon
• location bar icon

The size of a favicon is a 16×16 pixel square icon

Have a look at the following image and see the favicon marked with the yellow circle:

Website Favicon

A favicon can be very useful to find a site when you have lots of bookmarks. It also looks good.

Have a look at this screenshot of my bookmarks. This is a long list of bookmarks, but I cut screenshot short.

WordPress Bookmarks

How to add a Favicon to your WordPress blog

1. You will need a image for your favicon. You can use your logo, words etc. If you don’t have your own image then you can use royalty free images by searching for it in a search engine
2. Go to http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/ to create you 16 x 16 favicon.
3. Choose your image and click on the create icon button
   
   

   How To MAke A WordPress Favicon

4. Upload via FTP the created favicon from the location that you saved it to the root of your website hosting server. You can use cPAnel, Filezilla etc. to upload the 16 x 16 favicon to your web server. I’m going to use Filezilla. Have a look at the screenshot.
   
   

   Upload Favicon With Filezilla

5. Now you need link that point from your blog to the uploaded icon on the web server
6. Log into the admin side of your WordPress Blog and go to Appearance section.
7. Select Editor
8. Select Header.php
9. Add the following code to the header section of your blog.
   
10. Check screen shot
    
    

    Edit WordPress header file

11. Save you header.php file
12. Now the last step is to refresh your web browser and the favicon will appear. Sometimes it takes a while to show.


WordPress Favicon

Many times you get a great domain idea or come up with a total unique domain name. You type in a domain name in your web browser and see the domain name is none existent.

You use Whois or go to a reputable domain registrar and lookup the domain name and you see it is available there also. You celebrate and think that this domain is going to be your pot of gold.

Sometimes you purchase the domain name immediately. Other times you might decide to buy the domain name the following day or week.

Then you go back later the day or even the next day etc. and find out that your domain name has been registered by somebody else. You are shocked, because the domain name might have been totally unique and it was your idea. Now this is frustrating and a big problem.

Ask me, because numerous times this have happened to me. I am definitely not impressed and this is a major problem.

Like one time I wanted to register a domain name seono1 dot com. It was available.

So I didn’t buy seono1 immediately and the next day when I tried to register it, I found out the sad news that it has been taken.

Now you ask yourself the questions:

• How can somebody steal my domain name?
• Who stole my domain name?
• Did the domain registrar steal my domain name?
• Is spyware stealing my domain names?
• Who is selling a list of searched domain names?
• and many more ….

Is it a coincidence that somebody else came up with your total unique domain name idea or did somebody spy on you?

This is a big a problem and uncool. What people will do go through for a quick buck.

I did some research on the internet and found out about the practice of domain tasting or domain kiting

So what is domain tasting?

Domain tasting is basically when somebody registers a domain name and test it for website traffic or monetize it for 5 days. If it is profitable then they will keep the domain name or otherwise they will cancel the domain and receive a refund. There is a 5 day grace period for registering a domain name.

Have this ever happened to you?

Give your response