Singapore Web Hosting Blog

i feel the need to write more about what’s considered spamming so that our clients can avoid sending spams without knowing.

obviously if someone gathers email addresses from forums, newsgroups, web sites, etc. using email address harvesting software and sends emails to the list of email addresses trying to sell his earn-money-quick-nonsense, pills, lose weight products, drugs, your-email-won-price-scam, enlarge-certain-part-of-body…

same if you buy a list of email addresses from somebody else.

that’s absolutely spam. if anyone sends out that kind of email that way, we remove the account without second thought. and the spammer is responsible for any damage made to our server, IP, other web sites.

but in this post, i would like to address such situation that some people may not think it’s spamming while actually it is spamming.

someone may think that sending emails to a list of people is not spamming as long as there’s opt-out options. that is WRONG.

you see, there’s a difference between what’s considered as spamming by law and what’s considered as spamming by real people and ISPs.

according to Singapore law and CAN-SPAM ACT of 2003 (US anti-spam law), you won’t go to jail if you provide opt-out options in the emails (provided you comply to all other items in the law).

however all ISPs, web hosting providers, spamcop, etc. consider it as spamming as long as it is not opt-in.

in other words, you can only send emails to people who actually requested to receive email from you. for example, he signed up for your newsletter by filling out the signup form on your web site himself.

send subscribers what they subscribe for, your newsletter, i mean, your real useful newsletter. don’t send them ads after they sign up, it’s abusive and would be considered as spam.

and you have to be able to prove that, his full name, date of subscription, his IP address, logfile, etc.

as serious web hosting provider, we follow how ISPs, spamcop and hosting industry define spamming.

if you send emails to people who did not request to receive email from you, even though you give opt-out option, it is still spam. we will terminate account that sends spam email. and the client who sends spam will be responsible for it.

pls do not argue that it’s not against the law. it’s a clear cut. sending emails to people who did not request the email is spam and we do not allow that on our servers.

but then, if someone’s activity is considered as spamming by law, it won’t be as simple as getting hosting account terminated. the spammer will be sued and in trouble, big time trouble.

we have zero tolerance to spam for all our client’s interests. if anyone send spam complaint to spamcop against a domain, we have to take action to secure our servers, our IP addresses, and all our clients’ businesses.

so, if you run a mailing list, or newsletter, or something like that, make sure it’s opt-in. double opt-in is better.

do not send mass mailing is best.

i wrote about web design with Flash and said “none of the big guys develops whole web site in flash”.

well, i was deadly wrong.

i just went to Prada web site and was wondering where to go next. i was staring at a black belt with white text “PRADA” on it, below it there is a picture of a very cool lady (looks like 3D computer generated, is it?) holding prada handbag. no other text, nothing to click, nowhere to go.

hey, it’s PRADA, it’s not a under construction site that the boy next door just put up.

then i noticed there’s popup window blocked warning message on top of the browser window. well, yes i use a few popup blocker including firefox extension, google toolbar, yahoo toolbar. after disabling all popup blocking, reloaded prada.com, phew, i see a popup window which leads to pradaparfums.com.

i have to say honestly, it’s fantastic Flash web site, whole site in Flash.

now go to google and search for “prada handbag”, prada itself is not in top 10, not on 2nd page either, not even on 3rd page.

how about “prada shoes” in google? same.

yahoo? go try it.

it’s ranked at no. 1 for “prada” though, i guess many web sites link to them using “prada” as linking text. i link to them in this post as well.

now take a look at how many pages from prada.com have been indexed by google, then click on the 2nd page listed “Prada Women Fragrance” (you’ve visited homepage right?), a black screen to me. 3nd listing “Prada Perfume Fragrance“? same, a blank page in black color with nothing on it!

if you view source of the page, there’re codes. but the text are hidden by CSS.

this is interesting. imagine you produce and sell Adapr handbag and shoes, can you afford designing your web site this way?!

Flash has become a “must-have” for many web design companies and corporate as well as personal web sites.

used properly, it can be cool, eye-catching, and useful to visitors. otherwise, it’s often counterproductive.

my take on this is, it can be used very well as part of your web site, for example, a flash banner, a multimedia flash presentation of your products/services, a hi-tech flavor introduction of your company, etc.

a trend i see in the past few months, flash is used as video and audio clip player. video is getting hot nowadays, it gives very personal touch, present your products in a more straightforward way, it can be like a TV commercial, very powerful selling tool. the benifit of using flash to play video or audio on web site is, visitors do not need special plugin, publishers do not have to worry about different video formats.

however, you have to think twice before making your whole web site in flash. many web sites are in fact just flash movies, which i would not recommend.

if you think about it, none of the big guys develops whole web site in flash. there must be a reason. the simplest i can think of, the web site is meant to provide useful information to visitors, not only a cool presentation. how much information can you squeeze into one flash? thousands of pages of valuable product information, guides, tips, articles… no way.

secondly, flash is not indexable by search engines. they’re trying to, but not getting there yet. there’s workaround to feed text version to search engines while displaying flash version to human visitors. although it’s totally ethical, however it’s still cloaking that search engines may not like. search engines use algorithm to rank web pages, not human editors, algorithm, til today, cannot identify the cloaking is ethical or just dirty tricks.

thirdly, flash movie often takes much longer to download, especially if whole web site is built in flash, as it will be a big file. again, there’re workarounds to make flash start playing while still being downloaded. then you need very experienced flash designer.

one last point before i finish this post, many people including myself would click on “back” button whenever they see a flash is downloading as full page, be it intro or whole web site. fair or not, you have to accept it. it’s a habit developed from the old dial-up days.