My pages are being copied....

[tomcatuk]

...or at least, that's what it looks like. My stats program shows page access to local files so I see page access records like this:
/I:/%u0645%u0646%u0637%u0642%u0629%20%u0627%u0644%u064 5%u0646%u0635%u0648%u0631%u0629/Tomcat's%20Taekwondo.mht

Is this anything to worry about? My stats program gives me the IP address, so I could block these people quite easily via .htaccess. There have been three this week alone, all from different countries. Would blocking the IP's be an overreaction? Maybe they're just curious and are trying to work out how the pages are constructed in order to build a project of their own that's completely different. I don't "own" HTML or CSS commands after all!

Anyone here got any experience of this? That's probably a lame question - you most likely have all seen this type of behavior in your stats all the time, just interested to hear any thoughts

Best

Andy

[bhartzer]

I see this from time to time. Since the page is sitting on someone's drive (not on a site), then most likely they really like your page and they're saving the page on their hard drive so they don't lose a copy of it.

At this point, I wouldn't worry too much about it.

[bj]

Copyscape - Website Plagiarism Search - Web Site Content Copyright Protection

I'd run your site through that to make sure your content isn't being scraped.

[wige]

Is this an actual file path?

/I:/%u0645%u0646%u0637%u0642%u0629%20%u0627%u0644%u064 5%u0646%u0635%u0648%u0631%u0629/Tomcat's%20Taekwondo.mht

The strings, when decrypted, seem to be arabic characters which typically would not be expected in an internal file structure. Or are you seeing these entries as part of a not found or other error message?

[fctoma]

I see this from time to time on some of our software sites. Other sites will display tidbits, not the page in whole, but snippets from here and there on our software. They also pull content from press release sites that have our site and software listed. My guess is they're running a script that queries our software title, throws a page (s) together with snippets (or the actual SERPs) and paste them on their site. I haven't noticed any problems lately, nothing to report. It happens, not much you can really do.

[blitzen]

If you use an external program to make your pages, or parts of your pages, ensure it converts to your web directory.

A client just used GoLive to create the link and copied it to his website. The link didn't work because he copied the local directory link, <a href="file:\\c:\somedir\test.html">, not the web directory link.

If anyone, including spiders, follows the misconfigured link, it'll show up in your stats.

[SnerdeyWebs]

Yeah.. seen this a lot from newbies. They liked some part of the page layout etc.. and then just save the page to edit to figure out how to layout that part. Mostly what your seeing is the counter code, image being hosted whatever each time they have previewed it or edited the page.

Block the ip as it will get their attention and give up cause it won't load anymore.

Good luck!
Snerdey

[billwhedon]

I guess the other way to look at is via an old bromide, "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." Or it might be some poor sod of a Web developer in my own situation. Build a really pretty, very clean and organized multipage site, then customer takes a look, "Oh, that's not what I wanted.. --THIS-- is (sends URL of a poorly-coded, redundant as hell site built in Dreamweaver)... And nothing will do but you have to copy the site to rip out the bad stuff and try to make his site look just as blah as the one he likes so much. It's an evil chore, and I'm on the verge of telling the site owner to get stuffed . go hire someone who uses Dreamweaver and is willing to fight his way through generated garbage.

Are there no real, red-blooded Webheads left? People who don't use page builders, site builders; who actually write HTML, XHTML, DHTML, CSS, Javascript by the seat of their pants, and don't have to do drag-and-drop "programming" to get it right?
But I guess that's a topic for another time...

[dvduval]

THat MHT extension tells me they are taking a screenshot of the page.
MHT is a screenshot that was saves AND has the links intact.
So basically, they took a screenshot and then clicked on the links from the screenshot.

[CarolineBogart3]

I guess you're not sure if your stuff is being copied. If it is I had very good luck dealing with Google and hosting companies getting my work unpublished at another site.

I put the instructions you can follow on my site here.

[DrTandem1]

Could this have anything to do with the site being a sub domain? Thinking more about the snippet of code you provided and the fact that you say the IP is originating from Asia, I suspect that this is some sort of attempt to use your site to launch spam. Specifically, I think your contact script (feedback.php) needs some attention.

[g3 creative]

We have often had bloggers going onto our website and stealing nuggets of information in regards to graphic design and placing them on Blog sites making out the copy was written by themselves - very cheeky monkeys but in Scotland people say that imitation is the deepest form of flattery, so you should be chuffed. If it really upsets and worries you then just block them via htaccess and that should end your problem for a while.

[tomcatuk]

Wow - some great replies - I'm in auspicious company!

BJ - I should have thought of that - have bookmarked Copyscape so I remember to use it more!

No problem with people reading my code if their using it to learn how the page is assembled - agree with Bill - knowing what the various HTML & CSS variables actually do, rather than relying on Dreamweaver/Frontpage/etc to do it for you seems to be dying out. I switched to Notepad as my main editor this year but I doubt many other newbies are doing that anymore.

DRTandem - I'm not really a coder - haven't got into PHP yet so if you could expand on that for me that'd be cool. Is there a better (read, more secure) contact script you'd recommend? I am going to add a CAPTCHA to it at some point, but I assume you mean some more subtle weakness in it.

Many thanks for all the replies - I read them all carefully - greatly appreciated!

Andy

[thecoinguy]

Great info and thank you very very much for the link to copyscape. I discovered one fellow who stole my content, contacted them, and it's now removed.

[nipplecharms1]

Originally Posted by bj

Copyscape - Website Plagiarism Search - Web Site Content Copyright Protection

I'd run your site through that to make sure your content isn't being scraped.

Gret link BJ and thanks.

Michael

[GiftsForYouBiz]

Originally Posted by tomcatuk

No problem with people reading my code if their using it to learn how the page is assembled - agree with Bill - knowing what the various HTML & CSS variables actually do, rather than relying on Dreamweaver/Frontpage/etc to do it for you seems to be dying out. I switched to Notepad as my main editor this year but I doubt many other newbies are doing that anymore.

There are more reasons to use a GUI development kit than just drag-n-drop. I personally hand code myself and also despise code generators, but I use HomeSite because I like the code color identifiers, the automatic tag closure, and other snippets and features. There is no drag-n-drop, but its much more powerful than Notepad. And what's better is there are other cheaper GUIs out there too, like EditPlus (which I also own) and TextPad.

Back in context, I've considered obfuscation on and off. It might at least keep the honest thieves out (too much trouble for them, so they move on). But not sure obfuscaters are worth the cost (and the cheap/free ones aren't worth the time). Aside from the need to decrypt it, most save a little bit on file size too (for anyone trying to shave off an extra 50-500 Kb from their page (depending on page weight).

And yes, thanks BJ for the reminder on Copyscape

P.S. Can anyone post an example of an IP block using .htaccess? I know I can Google it, but Google is made up of on-topic threads such as these where an example might help someone in their Google search someday

[iany]

Originally Posted by billwhedon

Are there no real, red-blooded Webheads left? People who don't use page builders, site builders; who actually write HTML, XHTML, DHTML, CSS, Javascript by the seat of their pants, and don't have to do drag-and-drop "programming" to get it right?
But I guess that's a topic for another time...

You are not alone. Thank God there is someone else out there who eschews DreamWeaver and can build from scratch. I may not be great at design (have others who will help me there) but I do prefer to discipline of clean html etc from the ground up.

May the force be with you.

)

[bj]

Ian, there are a lot of us who learned to code in notepad.

[wige]

Am I the only person who hard codes in Dreamweaver? I swear, $500 for the program and I use it like a more colorful version of notepad.... although the search entire site and FTP features are nice. Someday I need to see what other features the program has.

Actually, the way I learned HTML was using a WYSIWYG editor called HoT MetaL Lite, making the page in "design" view, then looking at the generated source code.