You’ve all seen that most warez sites have the “Code your links” rule, most don’t have a clue why this rule was made in the first place, so I’ll try to explain why the rule was made, and why its being used for the wrong reasons now.

The code links rule was made to prevent any tracebacks to the websites providing those links, which was a big issue before the free file hosting services were popular or even existed (ie, Rapidshare), but since that most uploaders and linking is now done through 3rd party websites (Rapidshare, Megaupload..etc), there is no need to code the links, since anything would be traced back to the file hosting site, not you, you’re not hosting or uploading the files as attachments (like the good ol’ days), its all done through file hosting sites.

However, the rule still exist, most still make the rule for the same reason it was used before, well my friend, if you’re enforcing that rule for that, then you seriously need to get an upgrade for your brain.

In my opinion, the coded links rules should be used because it helps the staff and other members of a site track phishers and spammers, most phishers mask their links with a rapidshare links, but if they code their links they won’t be able to do so, hence the easier track part.

And of course, it makes the download links look “cleaner” in the download page, so thats basically it, I’m not against coding links, in fact I think ALL download links should be coded at all times for the reasons mentioned earlier.

Keep the scene clean people.

Article by el_jentel1

I’m sure that many “Scene” webmasters faced the annoying complaints about the “You know what”, and its seems that its a non-ending fight between both parties, the Scene and the “Others”, but where is Google from all this? I mean if you really think about it, Google is one of THE biggest linkers out there right?

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, search “happening dvdrip” in Google without the quotes, you’ll find a lot of torrent links, blogs, forums with links to download the movie, isn’t that considered linking?

How about all those free blogs that are used to provide warez? (blogspot), why aren’t they closed down? I don’t know if you’ve seen this, but some of those blogs when you visit them, it gives a warning message by Google, something like “This blog was reported, it might have illegal or unwanted content, Google does not check those blogs…Enter at your own risk…” or something like that.

Wtf does that mean? does that mean that Google is immune? or does that mean that they always win? if they always win, how do they win?

I mean we’ve heard it all “I’m not really hosting the files, I’m just linking to it”, yes that might be in a gray area, but we’ve heard about a lot of those linking sites being closed down by the host due to “Illegal Problems”.

What are you doing Google? What is your secret? expensive lawyers? billions of dollars? but doesn’t that make Google a better target for the “Others”? I mean if it was me, choosing between a website that makes a few bucks a day, and Google making million bucks a day, I’d choose cake? (Yes, I said cake because something fishy is happening here).

I guess we’ll just add that to one of the world’s unsolved mysteries.

Article by el_jentel1

After recently discussing this with Ultima, I asked him to write an article. Spot on the money. Here it is:

—–

So over the past couple of weeks, many DDL sites have noticed a huge slump in their traffic. Why is this? Google now recognizes dynamic content. What does this mean? Sites that use Google bombing techniques - ie, people who are using the same design as hundreds of other DDL  sites, packed full of ugly keywords trying to scam users using services such as clickbank, have gone from their high and mighty 150,000 uniques per day, down to a crawl of 10,000 - if that, due to Google throwing out their pages. These sites tried tricking Google, and had small amounts of returning visitors, with almost no support. Majority using a similar design (most ugly at that), trying to earn their living off users.

This may actually mean that new DDL sites will come up with a unique design and some good content!? Shocking, isn’t it.

This sparks off the originality comment by st0ne regarding forum skins - although this time we’re talking about layouts in general. If you want good content, and visitors that return (ones that actually give a damn about your site), then you have to be unique! With virtually any DDL site, you could show me the design, and I’d show you another 10 sites using the same one. Do people not take pride in their site anymore? I can understand needing to cover the server bills, but quite frankly, is it necessary to bombard your users with pop up advertisements, clickbank links (ie: click here for free mirror + keygen + lulz), and other retarded shit nobody cares about?

My message to those who use the same design as most other sites, and have a bounce rate of higher than 99% - you’re an idiot. You’re one of those people who in school wasn’t “included”, and who tried being cool by copying everyone else. It worked for a while, and then you fell flat on your ass. Maybe the ones earning their living and hundreds of dollars per day through these pathetic methods will actually ventune outdoors and get a job?

As shown countless times, for your site to be successful, you need to be innovative! Don’t just copy the other 1,000 people thinking you can do the same. If you wish to buy a $3 info domain, $5 hosting, and then fill up your site with more ads than content, get the fuck out and work for McDonalds. Your pay will be higher.

If you’re planning to start a DDL site (which I have nothing against), don’t become one of the people I mentioned above. Whether you own a forum, blog, or DDL site - love and sculpt your site. Show everyone that you’re better than the others around. It’ll be hard, but ultimately, it’s worth it.

Posted by Erratic on behalf of UltimA

I’m sure you’ve read st0ne’s opinion about site ripping (which I fully agree with), ripping is pathetic, always try to be unique and original instead of just copying everyone else.

Anyways, to protect your template files from being ripped/downloaded just add this in your htaccess file in root or in your template folder.

<Files ~ "\.tpl$">
Order allow,deny
Deny from all
Satisfy All
</Files>

Change .tpl to whatever extension your template has, most has either html or htm, but some use .tpl (such as phpBB2), and thats basically it.

Enjoy.

Article by el_jentel1

Alright people of the interweb, today I’ve decided to touch on another sensitive subject. Skin (and/or site) ripping. Its a rampant problem across the internet and yet somehow a large number of idiots think this is a good idea. News flash buddy, this proves several things at once. You’re an idiot, you’re not creative, and your site will fail. Recent events have prompted me to write this article, so I’d like to explain a few things below. There are several types of skin/site ripping, but in the end it really falls into one category: Ripping.

Ripping Defined:
Ripping is the act of stealing and using another persons work. The use of a design, images, and ideas without permission and using as your own is ripping.

Cry-Baby Defined:
“Oh NooOOez!!1!one! He stole my design, even though its not the same, but its close!! waaa boohoo i r sadface noobcakes wtfbbqcopter” SHUT THE FUCK UP ALREADY.

Skin/Site Ripping:
Okay, now that i’ve got that out of my system I can navigate to my point and educate some of you idiots out there. Of course this is an impossible task, but if I can just get through to one person then this article has done its job.

We’ve all seen some cool shit on websites that we’ve wanted to use. Some of us have been tempted to “use” the idea, and others have outright ripped the idea. Being unique is what helps you, the webmaster, and your site survive. Completely ripping, or “borrowing” parts of another website to help make yours stand out isn’t going to keep your site going. It’s the ability as a webmaster to be creative and to think on your feet that helps a site thrive.

Ripping does in fact make you, and your site look like a complete n00b-fest. Ultimately your stolen design and ideas are looked down upon by others in the scene, people lose respect for you and your site, and eventually people stop worrying about your site. Truth is that its these types of webmasters (the same type as mentioned in my previous article, “Killing the Scene“, over saturating) that think their website will be the next best thing because they’ve used a design and idea of another ’semi’ successful website. Trying to make your formula work on another sites already working formula. You need to come up with your own formula, and run with it. You don’t need a flashy, graphic intensive, ajax-stuffed website with animated banners, images, and marquee’s to make your site successful - you just need to be yourself, and let your site form its own identity as it matures.. not the identity of another.

Final Thoughts:
This is mainly for myself, and other webmasters that have something unique to offer. It’s very difficult to stand by and watch someone steal your work. Your images, coding, design, and ideas. The very things you’ve put all your hard work, time, energy, and money into and stand by and watch someone else use your work. The truth of the matter is that mockery is the sincerest form of flattery. It’s the very site who’s ripping your work that will eventually fail. Your members get to know you as a webmaster, and your site and can tell the difference between who’s got the experience and creative flair, and who’s faking the funk.

There is one major difference I want to touch on before I close up this article. Ripping Non-Unique and Totally-Unique designs. If you’re using a publicly available skin, such as one from vbskins like satellite, greenfox, or something from extremepixels like enlighten you need to come to grips with the fact that no matter what you do to that skin, its still a publicly available skin. If you see that style being used by another webmaster and its similar in color and look, but all the images are different - ask yourself what crime has been committed and what real impact it will have on your site? Someone may have used your “idea” and built off of it, but who really cares? Is the site going to thrive? No. Stealing images, code, or complete design chunks off of a unique skin/theme is however something to get upset about. Again though, in the end that site will end up like all the other crap-infested noobcake sites out there - fail.

Article by: st0ne

This article will be dedicated to all team members that are handling any website out there and putting all the effort, time and dedication they have on making the website better and better.

If you own a website, blog, forum… and you have a team helping you managing and moderate it, don’t forget to show appreciation for your team, after all they are helping you to make your site better and bigger, its really sad to see good team member taken for granted just because he/she is doing all they can (sometimes even “extra”) and not get the appropriate appreciation they deserve, most of the good team members expect nothing in return.

A simple “thank you” every now and then would do the trick, and whenever you feel like you can “give” more appreciation to that one team member that is always doing the initiative move, go for it.

Your staff team is your small community, they are the people you trust (online), and as you all know trust is hard to find these days, don’t lose that just because you didn’t take the time to actually give a damn about your team, your website is important, but you have to understand that your website wouldn’t be worth a penny without the team you have.

Thank you.

Article by el_jentel1

Something that baffles me is how people often see phpMyAdmin as the only tool for managing their MySQL database. Personally I can’t stand it. It’s slow, it doesn’t really teach you anything and worst of all it has a lot of limitations due to its use of PHP. So your forum/blog/etc has grown a lot, and it’s database is say, over 50MB. Not only is this annoying to backup, but you’re somewhat worried that should you have to change hosts it will be a pain to restore. Once again, let’s use SSH!

Even with your standard hosting account, you should have SSH access that enables you access to MySQL. Make sure you’re in your root directory (and not backing up into a public folder). Then, it’s as simple as this:

mysqldump --opt -u your_database_username -p your_database_name > backup.sql

It will then prompt for your password to the database. Depending on the size of the database this can take seconds to hours, so be patient. It isn’t just sitting there. Once it’s completed, you can check the size of the raw database, by using this command:

ls -al backup.sql

The easiest way to get the size down is to gzip the file:

gzip backup.sql

You can then download the file by whatever method you wish. Probably FTP is the best if it’s in a private directory. If you have to change hosts, you can upload the backup.sql.gz file you’ve created, and restore it as follows. First, unzip the compressed file:

gzip -d backup.sql.gz

Then, assuming you’ve created a MySQL username & database, you can restore with the following:

mysql -u your_database_username -p your_database_name < backup.sql

It’s really that simple. A lot faster, no file limitations, and no phpMyAdmin required!

Article by Erratic

In this article I’ll try to give more details for webmasters to have the “perfect submissions” record with us, of course before reading any further you should read the Best Practices rules, because everything in this article is related to it.

Applications:

- The “V v. ver” condition
When you submit applications, always make sure that you include the version number in title, we’re not fans of applications posted without the version number, having that said lots of version information are included with what I call the “V” condition, for example:

Webroot Spysweeper v5.8.1.47 or Webroot Spysweeper v.5.8.1.47 or Webroot Spysweeper ver5.8.1.47

Whenever you submit an application, try to always remove the “v” and just keeping the application name and version number.

For example: Webroot Spysweeper 5.8.1.47 = Perfect

- The “Build” condition

Lots of applications has “Build” included part of the version number, when you submit an application with “Build” in it, we always prefer you do one of two things, either completely remove the build information, or merging it with the version number, for example Internet Download Manager 5.12 Build 9:

Edit the title and turn it to:
Internet Download Manager 5.12 (Build completely removed) or
Internet Download Manager 5.12.9 (Merged with the original version number)

If the application is portable, only add (Portable) at the end of the title, not (Portable USB) not (Zomg use it anywhere), just (Portable) for example:

WinRAR 3.7 (Portable)

Things we generally don’t like in applications submissions:

- “Edition”, try to remove that term from the application title, for example “Windows XP SP3 Professional Edition” should be “Windows XP SP3 Professional”.

- AIO (All in Ones), try to refrain from submitting AIOs, single downloads are always better, its specific and meets the user’s needs, we’re not too strict about this, but we’re also not fans.

- Don’t include useless terms in title, such as “Patch included”, “Registered with proof” or any similar terms, keep it simple and direct, application name and version number should do the trick, that should also go with all the other categories, not just application, don’t add information that is not needed.

Movies:

When you submit movies, we only require you to add the movie’s title and release year, nothing else, unless the movie is foreign then include the audio language suffix, don’t include the movie quality, duration, main stars…etc, here is the perfect submission for movies:

If its an English language movie: Wanted (2008)
If its a foreign language movie: The Namesake (2006) (Hindi)

And thats it, nothing else, its really simple so it would be annoying seeing something that simple being submitted in a wrong way.

TV Shows:

This is also another simple category, nothing much is required just the TV Show title and Season/Episode information, if its a single episode submission:

Weeds - S04E06

If its a complete specific season:

Weeds - Season 4

If its from season one to the latest season:

Weeds - Season 1-4

Simple right?

Games:

This is THE simplest submission, so doing it wrong is… no comment!, anyways, as I said this is really simple, if its a PC game just throw in the game title, if its a console game add the game console type suffix, for example, if it was a PC game:

GTA Vice City

If it was a console game:

GTA San Andreas (PS2)

Stream Movies & XXX:

Lately we’ve been accepting streamed movies and XXX clips, the correct way to submit streamed clips is to follow the original category rules, and add (Stream) at the end of the title, for example: (Movies)

- The Happening (2008) (Stream)

Thats it, simple add (Stream) and follow the best practices rules and everything should be good.

Those were the most submissions types that webmasters make mistakes in, for more information on how to submit in the other categories read the Best Practices

Thank you.

Article by el_jentel1

Webmasters always contact us via e-mail about ban issues, ratings, general questions..etc it really seems like a simple task, sending an e-mail and waiting for a reply right? well, it seems that the process of sending an e-mail to us (correctly) is some what hard for some webmasters.

We receive lots of e-mails daily, some of them we just don’t know the “who, what, where” because the webmaster only mentioned the issue, without giving the needed information, such as site name, site link..etc, and to make the job even harder on us, even the e-mail address the webmaster uses is not from his domain, it would be gmail, yahoo…!

The correct way to send us an e-mail is as follows:

Message:
////////START//////////
Site Name: Blah Forum
Site Link: blahforum.com

Explain your issue, and give as much details you can, the more you explain that better help you’ll get.

////////END///////////

I hope that with this simple explanation that webmasters will start helping us, to help them.

Thank you.

Article by el_jentel1

Spammers, we all hate them, I personally wish that each spammer gets a large pole with rusted bended nails up their ass, my favorite title for spammers is “Pathetic Beings”, think about it, its true in every way.

Every website, forum, blog.. or any site that has a comments or replies system in it has rules against spamming, after all it is reasonable, no one likes to go to a site and find some topics about how if you take this pill your penis would become bigger and you’ll finally be able to please your woman (yourself?).

However, we have accepted spam bots in a way, at least knowing that they are actual bots with no brain attached (but we’ll always blame the creator!), so spam bots have an excuse, they have no brain, but what surprises me are the dumb webmasters who spam other sites and forums in the hope of getting petty traffic from other sites.

You’re a damn webmaster, that title is given to anyone these days, webmaster is not just about owning a website, its about the responsibility of owning a website, the respect you give and get from other websites (even competitors!), now its just given to some idiots that will do anything to get any type of traffic.

I’m sure that all the spamming webmasters have their own set of rules on their sites, and I’m also sure that they have the “no spamming” rule, I mean come on, when have you seen a website with a comment “spam as you like!”, my question for those webmasters, why are you spamming? and if you’re ok with spamming why did you add the no spam rule in your own website? or is that just something you don’t care about if its not happening in your “property”?

If you’re thinking or about to go to another site for the soul purpose of spamming your site link everywhere, stop, think for a min, you do realize that you’re wasting your time right? what do you think will happen? a sudden burst of traffic just because you made some topics with “visit my site puhleessssee”? you probably have staff members that help you manage your site, well, you’re not the only genius that came up with that idea, almost every single site has a team managing it, so rest assured that 99% of the sites you spam in, those spam topics will be deleted within 10 minutes, the other 1% are just pathetic sites such as yours that are trying to do the same.

I’ll say it again, you’re a webmaster, you’re supposed to be the mature one, the one that handles “things” professionally, if the only plan you have on making your site big is spamming other sites with traffic, my advice to you is to find something else to do and burn your modem / router right now.

Of course I give all respect to all the respected webmasters out there, the ones that know their boundaries and limits, and actually know how to run a website.

Keep the scene clean people.

Article by el_jentel1.