Tag: site

ads.txt file

There are many files that crawlers expect to find in well-known locations on websites, one such file is ads.txt. While you might not have paid advertisements, crawlers may still look for a copy of this file leading to HTTP 404 errors in your logs. To prevent the error and show that you should have no advertisements leading there you can add the file with placeholder values as follows:

In the root of your website, create a new file with the name ads.txt.

#ads.txt - no DIRECT or RESELLER
www.example.com, placeholder, DIRECT, placeholder 
# NONE

NOTE: If you ever do use an advertiser, they will generally inform you as to changes to make to this file.

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Yandex Search Engine

While “Google” may be ubiquitous with “search” for most users in the United States and much of the world, there are still several other strong contenders that many people know nothing about. One such example, from Russia, is Yandex.

Getting your website indexed by this search engine is easy.

  1. Visit the webmaster website at https://webmaster.yandex.com/addurl.xml
  2. Register for an account, you can use single-sign-on from many social media websites such as Facebook, Google or Twitter.
  3. Click “Add Site” or “Add URL”
  4. Enter your domain name and submit
  5. There are several methods provided, easiest to implement is usually ‘txt’ file, as you can execute a Linux/Unix command line “touch” to create the empty file on the server as needed.
  6. Verify that your site is now linked to your account
  7. Site indexing can take a while, if it is not already indexed, in the meantime you can now modify some information about your domain(s).

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LinSSID

If you have ever used the popular software InSSIDer on Windows or OS/X, you might wonder if there is an equivalent application for Ubuntu/Linux.

LinSSID allows you to visually survey the Wifi networks in your area, identifying networks using the same channel as your own, even if they are not broadcasting SSID’s.


sudo add-apt-repository ppa:wseverin/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install linssid

— OR —

sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/wseverin/ppa/ubuntu YOUR_UBUNTU_VERSION_HERE main

NOTE: it seems that the release version is only available for ‘precise’ and has not been updated for newer Ubuntu releases, I was able to simply go to the terminal and execute "software-properties-gtk" to change ‘trusty’ to ‘precise’ on the PPA and it worked great!

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X-FRAME-OPTIONS HTTP Header

Added in MSIE8 and Mozilla Firefox 3.6.9, Apple Safari 4, IE8, and Google Chrome 2 are several mechanisms to defend against cross-domain forgeries.

You can add to your website to make sure it is not embedded in a frame or iframe. This avoids clickjacking.

The X-Frame-Options HTTP response header can be used to indicate whether or not a browser should be allowed to render a page in a “<frame>” or “<iframe>“. Sites can use this to avoid clickjacking attacks, by ensuring that their content is not embedded into other sites.

Supported Values:
X-FRAME-OPTIONS: DENY
X-FRAME-OPTIONS: SAMEORIGIN

NOTE: “ALLOW-FROM” is supported in some browsers

You can explicitly set this value for ApacheHTTP in the httpd.conf file, your .htaccess files or code it into the page(s) by the application itself.

Example, add this to the apache config file:

Header always set X-Frame-Options DENY

McAfee SiteAdvisor

This is a great free plugin for Firefox and MSIE. After installation of the plugin, web links particularly in search engines like Google will contain an image/icon displaying a level of trust as well as some basic information about the website.

As a website owner, it is recommended that you add your site. To do so, you must first prove that you can publish content on the website. This is accomplished by submitting a form, after which you are given a filename (typically the domain with a ‘randomized’ hashcode) to create on your website.

NOTE: when doing this you must also insure that your website generates proper “404 Not Found” HTTP errors for non-existent files, as the verification process also tests that scenario.

Once listed, McAfee will scan your website for vulnerable downloads, reviews, related (linked) websites, as well as track outbound email (possible SPAM) generating from your domain.

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Here’s to a safer online experience.