[thelist] SPAMBots, was Jakob the Liar, or was that Nielsen? Or Leslie Nielsen...?

[Dayn Riegel @ NYAD, Inc.]

Hey evolt'ers!

I've been reading the past few posts about SPAMBots, Spam in general
and a few other items that went from fonts (serif vs. sans-serif) and the
like.

Here's my $0.02: (sales tax may apply, check your local dealer for more info)

1st: Cable vs. Dialup Modems

I design a lot (mostly, actually) Web sites for either backwoods clients in
remote NC locations or NPO sites in remote locations. Hey, this will actually
point out something about "slower modems", too from another post.

I have found that, as was said earlier by another evolt'er, the people wanting
to see their "church's" newsletter online are willing to wait. And more to
the point, they will wait because they almost all have dial-up accounts with
crappy phone line quality, lousy ISP service or some other such reason to
get 28.8 speeds and be happy.

On that point a little further, the people in remote locations don't have DSL,
Broadband/Cable Modems or even in most cases satellite modems! We're
talking about people living in the mountains (where are you going to aim a
dish?) or people living the valley of a mountain (again w/ the dish item).
I have clients that don't even have a computer or phone line!!! How's that
for rustic?

So, I'll just be brave here and say that on the average, I design a site so
that it loads reasonably well on a 56K connection and then just move on
w/ my life from there. There are 19200, 26400, 28800, 33600, 43000, 49000
and 53000 speed connections on dial-ups. We'll pretend nobody has to
suffer the 9600 baud days anymore.

If the site won't load in under 10-15 seconds, I figure out why and do from
there. Me, I'm a hand-coding, altruistic fool -- you might be different and
that's good. Makes the 'net more interesting.

Final word on this matter -- know your audience, focus on their needs,
not your ego and then just move on. If the client and audience are mostly
happy (are they ever?) then you have done a wonderful job and you move
on... "Next, please!"

....

2nd: SPAMBots and SPAMmers

For those that don't host their own sites, or don't have their own Web or
Mail Servers you might just not know about some things. Here's a (dare
I say it?) quick lesson.

First, *pour* through your analog Web server logs. Get a good analyzer
to decode them for you and then read them! I prefer Funnel Web. It is
not the cheapest, but the best I've ever used for all their stumbles. They
have a free download, too. Trial, I think but...

Okay, now you've downloaded the Server log -- perhaps you can just
target the log data for a particular client. Now, look at each and every
Bot, Spider, IP addy, etc. that has come and graced your site. See how
some are AOL? Some are ATT... Some are unknown. Some are from
the States, others from Aussie-land (no insult meant).

Now, look closer -- see the ones that are from the major Search Engines?
Closer still and you might just see ones like SPAMBot, EmailSiphon or
some such ones.

Okay, show of hands... How many have a "robots.txt" file in the root
directory of their sites? Perhaps one in every major "root" directory
of their sites? C'mon, don't be shy.

I didn't use to either -- then I read on the Web -- Webcrawler's site as a
matter of fact -- about how to prevent SPAMmers, etc. Now I do have
one and I get very little SPAMBot traffic on my sites.

See the bottom for a "tip" and I'll see what I can do to help you out in
creating one, etc.

....

3rd: serif vs. sans-serif

For 90% of all my pages I use the following:

"Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"

Either in my CSS sheet or in the ::dramatic music:: "font" tags.

Sure, you can use Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Georgia and a few
others. I do. Where I can, where it fits.

"Core Fonts for the Web"

Arial, Comic Sans, Courier New, Georgia, Impact, Times New Roman,
Trebuchet MS, Verdana and Webdings.

That's what I say. Now, that's mostly for the PC'ers out there so that
is why I include the Helvetica as the first face of all my fonts -- that way
the Mac people don't get the wrong Arial. ;)

I'm a PC person. I love the Mac, just can't afford a decent one. I know
that for a fact a big portion of the Web is viewed by AOL and PC using
fools. Sure, there are different browsers, different platforms, different
font sizes, different this or that -- let's just face it...

The Web has reached enough homes, enough people, enough viewers
that we are now facing a challenge similar to the newspaper:

3rd Grade (or lower) reading level.

Anyone asked to take an IQ test before they called AOL to join? Again,
a show of hands... Didn't think so.

Sorry, I rant...

Well, since I know this is long enough and will probably hear from aardvark
again not to do this I will hush up now...

Ah, the tip...

<tip author="Dayn Riegel" type="Host Long Post">

Taking my own advice... I'll post this entire post on my own
Web site. I'll put it on a page w/out banners, w/out anything
but the post so you don't have to worry about being "hook'd"
into buying anything or what not. ;)

http://www.nyadinc.com/evolt/post.txt

</tip>

....

Sorry for the length...


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