BDSM is Love

Cliques are groups of people who want only to associate with themselves. They are in high schools, upper class neighborhoods and can grow anywhere else that people gather. They care only for themselves, gossip about everything, create assumptions about others not in the group and develop a self-pity party. They think they are cool and all powerful.

I joined a submissives weight loss group such as this. The owner constantly complained about her debilitating illness and everyone else tossed their condolences for her struggle. While it does touch me that this woman is struggling with life, I didn’t think it was appropriate for a weight loss group on a weekly basis. I never contributed to her pity party. Once a week practically, was spent wishing this woman well and that she does so much already, that she’s amazing, blah blah. She asks for help on the website, but when I offered; I got turned down. I could have built her a site that was less work (easier to manage) but she saw it as an attack on her ’skills’.

I had practically withdrew from this site because that’s all that ever seemed to be talked about anymore. No one talked about weight loss and eating, exercise or diet struggle. It was a webmaster pity party and she didn’t mind. Neither did all the members. You know, we all have problems and issues, but all be damned if I’m going to share them in a diet group, that isn’t the place for them. This blog is for my personal struggles.

It is also for my personal rants.

Last week a newer person reported that posts on the forums of this website were making it into Google searches even though there is a log in and members only section on the site. She was in a panic because someone might find her through the site and that wasn’t wanted. The owner gave this long speil about how they have no control over what search engines see on a website and that its the user that needs to be careful. That they need to use a username that won’t be recongized or not post personal information.

I’d like to say for the record that she is wrong. Webmasters that know what they are doing and are not amateurs can stop search engines from getting to areas that they don’t want them.

1. Create a log in that isn’t browser based. This site uses a javascript login box. If I disable javascript on my browser I can walk into the member portions without a log in. I can also view source on the page when the box comes up and retrieve the log in from the javascript. The reason I can do this is because javascript log in boxes pop up after the page has loaded, even if you only see a white page. Anyone with a little web knowledge can get into this site without a username. Hackers will love this site once it’s found. SPAM heaven!
2. Require log in on every single page that is private. Basically when you go to yahoo for example, after you log in the first time, every single page you go to that is private it has a script to continue to check that you are who you say you are and have a right to see what you are seeing. If you don’t, it logs you out and blocks the content. This particular website does not have that. If you bookmark an internal members only page, you can go to it without logging in at any point. This does not protect it from Google. If there is a link anywhere to it, it will find it.
3. Use a robots.txt file. This is a file that ALL search engine bots look for once they fall on a domain. If it exists they follow the rules there. Some can be to follow all the links and index them for the search engine or to skip all the pages altogether. I use robots.txt files for all my sites to govern what is saved and what isn’t.
4. Go to google and ask that your site be removed from the search engine permanently. If you are afraid of being found, you can have google delete your site from the engine and never send a bot to it again.

These are all valid ways to protect a members only site, or any site for that matter.

As for this particular site, after I posted about why this person’s information was in google I was removed from the group.. as cliques are known to do. I challenged the pity party queen and they didn’t like it. Ignorance is bliss in a group like that. So be it. I can, if I want to, make a site that is more professional and useful than hers, and no one would have to worry about their privacy being broken within the members area. I’ve been nice and not making a competition site because I liked the website owner. Now it’s fair game. Who do you think people would like more? Someone who cares for the users safety and actually weight loss struggles or someone who lets anyone into their site for maliciou intent and throws a self pity party every week when things get bad for her?

/rant

–luna

EDIT: And now I go and see that she has deleted all my sites from her Toplist. WTF?

EDIT2: She emailed me to tell me I was removed from the toplists because the stats said I only gave her 600 links to her 7000. Well if that’s the way she’s playing it, then she has a TON more sites to remove from her toplist. I was always on the first page of listed sites, so all the others should just go to hell then right? What a way to rationalize her removal of the sites. W/e.