After effects of the CPANEL/WHM Hack

After effects of CPANEL/WHM Hack

There are SO many sites that were and continue to be impacted by this DEVASTATING outage, including some of the best and largest safelists.  There is some good news: big site owners like Dave Mosher, the Kojin brothers, Jerry Ianucci, Frank Salinas, Brian Zens... have been able to recover.  Others are still attempting recovery of functionality and membership rolls.

A Few Sites I Use

• SOTAM (State-Of-The-Art-Mailer) - my friend Brad Webb is working tirelessly to work out a solution to rebuild. Brad as had a loyal following for the last 16 years.
• Referral Frenzy - not only the massive distribution capabilities, but so many of the connected websites that give RF the power and diversity
• Traffic-hog sites, Guaranteed Solos, Referral Builder Elite, ExtraOrdinary Solos
• NS Sites - YourReturnMailer, Queen of Hearts, SendOutAds 
• Ads-Messenger

I have found that many sites DID NOT HAVE A CURRENT BACKUP (DUMB), so here may be some consequenses:

• Site may never come back up.  Many amateur site owners may just give up
• Your userid and login credentials may be lost or out of date
• Site URLs, banner URLs, affiliate IDs and URLs may change
• All your upgrades, ads, credits, commissions, and referrals may be gone

Working Site Impacts

Safelists that weathered the hack (congrats on quick response, backups, and recovery procedures) may be impacted, not due to technical issues on that site, but due to the literally THOUSANDS of bad networks and ad links to the sites still down. 

For instance, people LOVE banners (even though they are the LEAST EFFICIENT ad medium).  There are THOUSANDS of banner ads, and also button ads, textlinks, and surf links on even the smallest sites. 

Safelists test the banner url and target url when entered by the user, but most people ignore the frame-checker errors, so even in the best conditions, there will be dead images and target links.  When bad links are displayec in rotation, the system will RETRY 7 times (or more/less per the admn site settings) to access the URLs (in the case of banners, it would run the retry cycle TWICE - once for the image, once for the target URL)  These retry cycles impose SUBSTANTIAL computer and network loads on the system.  Imagine the load simply from the home page of your member area that may have a dozen or more images and links.  Bottom line: SLOWER RESPONSE, Network timeouts (404 errors), and system memory overloads (500 errors)

Do NOW

• Use a URL Checker before posting any ads. Test images and target URLs
• Review URLs in Ad Trackers, URL Rotators, Banner Rotators.  Pause or delete bad links
• Review landing pages for URL redirects to potential bad links (especially if promoting safelists or traffic sites)
• Review Autoresponder welcome/thankyou pages and follow-up messages for bad links
• Review stored ad copy for bad links

Strategy Going Forward

• Use ad trackers for all promo links  I have over 700 links in my ad tracker.  These links appear on hundreds of sites, literally thousands of instances.  I know some URLs may need to change, but if I don't take action, I may have thousands of bad images and banners out there. 
  
  By using ad trackers, I can make one change to the underlying raw link, and it is automatically propagated to all instances of the tracker (shortened) link.  I use the Worldprofit Advanced Ad Tracker (included with PlatinumVIP), HitsConnect Pro, and TrafficZipper Pro
   
• I use banner trackers to do the same, but a banner tracker has two URLs - one for the image, and the other for the target url.  I use HitsConnect Pro for my banner tracker  I can define up to 1,000 banners.
   
• If you use a URL Rotator, most have the ability to PAUSE or EDIT the URL.  I have sites with a dozen or more splash or capture pages. Many have the various holiday themes.  I define the rotator ONCE with ALL the urls, and simply pause/enable the holiday links in the rotator as appropriate.  I use the 
  BuildABizOnline URL Rotator (available for free) and LGPMVC (register through MyVIPContacts or MyIMPartners)
   
• I also use HitsConnect Pro as my banner rotator.  I have 10 banner rotators with the Pro membership.  Once the banner tracker is established, it takes one click to add/delete from the banner rotator.
   
• As you login to safelists, be sure to check your image ads (banners, buttons, login ads) and text ads (textlinks, sponsor login ads, startup ads, traffic/surf links). 
  
  You will not be able to edit solo ads or credit mails.
  
  Do nothing with expired ads. The admin runs a script to clean those up. 
  
  For ads with remaining views, replace the bad ones with good ads, because they may still burn up credits (it is still a view whether the ad is good or bad).  I prefer to replace image ads with a banner rotator appropriate for the image size.  I have particular banner rotators designated for 468x60, 125x125, and 600x300.
  
  Textlinks, sponsor login ads, and traffic/surf links can be replaced with a URL or BANNER Rotator link. Just create a generic subject line.
  
  Pro Tip:  Jitbit Autotext could save time and keystrokes when placing ads
   
• As affected safelists come back online, update your
  • Bookmarks
  • Affiliate URLs
  • Ad Trackers
  • URL Rotators
  • Banner Rotators
  • Landing Pages and Splash Pages (redirects)
  • Autoresponder welcome/thankyou pages, follow-up messages
  • Stored ad copy
  • Userid, email, password
    Pro Tip: this is an ideal time to use a password manager like Roboform

This is an opportunity to put the right tools in place to help you better organize, and better utilize the ad credits you already earned or purchased.