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#10010 Google Bot is being blocked

Posted in ‘Admin Tools for Joomla! 4 & 5’
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Latest post by nicholas on Saturday, 12 November 2011 14:33 CST

earthrat
I have one site and one site only that Admin Tools is reporting a Google Bot (Reason: tmpl= in URL) and I don't know why? I checked the IP and I assume this is some jerk spoofing the IP to look like it is coming from Google.

Is there something I can do about this or just let it run its course? I hate to block the IP (66.249.71.211) and don't know what I should do?

slaes
id just let it be man, you should see my logs. between mod security, ATP and CSF, i see a jerk honestly every 5 seconds, lol.

Its a PITA but its just life online i guess. Its seems like once your fingerprinted, you enter the yellowpages of sites to try.

p.s. i have seen some craphouse templates which google actually indexed tmpl= on, my guess woulld be thats more likely than the ip being spoofed, after all its allot of effort to go to when there are literally million of J sites with tmpl already available, unless of course you on someones radar, in which case im sure you have backups and lots of them ;)

earthrat
LOL, I am always on some punks radar and I defiantly have backups and all my servers are locked down tighter than fort Knox’s (if that really means anything these days;). The template is an older YooTheme template and it would not surprise me if it is not being indexed. Seems it is only accounts where I used older templates that I have the majority of my issues. The new ones or ones I have built don’t get near the low life traffic as those do.

slaes
yeah i follow ja man. poor quality templates can be a serious deathtrap which most ppl seem to overlook, especially security wise.

of all the ones i have seen and used, joomlart are pretty damn high quality, in my personal experience.

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
I just dropped by to tell you that I enjoyed reading this conversation and fully agree with you guys :) People don't realise that templates are an integral part of their site's functionality. I tried to educate them through the Joomla! community magazine last year (like when writing this article). Unfortunately, some things can't be told in public, e.g. the opinion all of us have for Artisteer templates and the reasons for it :D

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡·Greek: native πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§English: excellent πŸ‡«πŸ‡·French: basic β€’ πŸ• My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

slaes
Artister, lol - i cannot believe its even considered for use by anyone for anything.

Niko, you publish some smashing articles mate. Your article "The number of the beast" is fantastic and i reckon essential for any novice and in fact seasoned pro as it contradicts some commonly accepted myths.

Aside from being a gifted developer, it appears you dont suffer from writers block.

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
Thank you, man! I only suffer from lack of hours within the day. If only I could find a way to add an extra 12 hours to the day... :D

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡·Greek: native πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§English: excellent πŸ‡«πŸ‡·French: basic β€’ πŸ• My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

earthrat
12 Hours? Man I need like an extra 48 myself;)..LOL

I work with some less knowledgeable Joomla designers that have no clue about using poorly designed templates (or extensions for that matter) and I have rescued about 10 sites just this year alone from Artisteer designs. I wish that program would just go away!!!

I agree Slae, Niko is a fantastic writer and the past few months I have been seeking out what he has written. Keep up the great work Niko you have my attention...;)

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
I am multitasking a lot, so 12 hours should suffice :D Thank you for your kind words :)

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡·Greek: native πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§English: excellent πŸ‡«πŸ‡·French: basic β€’ πŸ• My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

user40041
Artisteer templates are not good for seo and security ?

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
Artisteer templates are a nightmare for both security and SEO. They have very bad quality code (bad for security) and a clunky table-based layout (bad for SEO). I would recommend to steer clear from Artisteer if you can.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡·Greek: native πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§English: excellent πŸ‡«πŸ‡·French: basic β€’ πŸ• My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

earthrat
Artisteer is NO GOOD for ANYTHING!

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
Artisteer is good for exactly one thing: for that 4-page (home, about, products, contact) small business site you get to sell for 400$ including domain registration and 1 year of hosting. It's like instant coffee. It looks like crap, it tastes like crap and has a very high profit margin ;)

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡·Greek: native πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§English: excellent πŸ‡«πŸ‡·French: basic β€’ πŸ• My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

slaes
Niko, you crack crack me up man! ;) mad

earthrat
ROFLMAO! I honestly could not do it even for that. I would rather customize the beez template before I used that crap software!

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
You wouldn't believe it, but there are some low quality Joomla! shops -if I can even call them that- doing this thing all day long. There quite a few of them in Greece and do a lot of damage to the business. If I have to sell the same site, I will charge at least 1,000 Euros because I will need to pay about 300 of them to my graphics artist and my time to reiterate the template with the client, chase him around to give me the content, secure and optimise the site and answer to his phone calls costs. So, with 1,000 Euros I would barely make a profit, whereas these guys with 400 Euros make a hefty profit (and they won't even answer the client's phone calls after they deliver). So, basically, the clients were calling me a thief for charging 1,000 Euros for something the other guy could do with 400. They wouldn't understand that what you pay is what you get. But that's another story from another lifetime :D

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡·Greek: native πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§English: excellent πŸ‡«πŸ‡·French: basic β€’ πŸ• My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

user40041
If you can i would like your opinion about a eshop i've made with artisteer and virtuemart www.flowershopping.gr ?

slaes
@ georgeo

mate, i dont know where to start. I'l leave it with Niko, he's got the passion ;)

p.s. do something about that background ffs. a. the size and b the way its generated. And do yourself a favor, find another virutemart install and compare the output vs yours. This should answer many question for you, as their are a TONNE.

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
Let's see...

70 requests and 1.47Mb transferred in 9.20 seconds on a 8MBps ADSL (a really fast one, the line is operated by the Technical Chamber of Greece). The page started displaying after 5.73 seconds. If I'm looking for flowers, opening half a dozen tabs on my browser it will take forever to load and I will close your site before you have a chance to "sell" me into it.

A ton of inlined Javascript on every page. Is this really necessary? It slows down fetching the page.

A couple of 404's due to missing files.

Javascript errors on the page. Default Internet Explorer settings will cause them to be displayed as an obnoxious pop-up. You might want to check them out. Moreover, the missing Javascript files cause the page load to block while the browser is waiting for the server to respond with a 404.

All the product images are served through PHP files. If you take a look at the latency analysis of the page load, you will see that this adds about 5 seconds in the page load time. Serving these files directly could cut your page load time in half.

A huge footer. This is bad for two reasons. First, humans won't read it (low contrast, tiny letters, cramped lines). If someone tries to read he'll go "yeah, whatever, next" and close the page. Since it occupies so much percentage of your real content, search engines will detect it as duplicate content and penalise your pages.

Well, I could go on, but fixing those issues will make your site load in less than half time and give you a SEO boost :)

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡·Greek: native πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§English: excellent πŸ‡«πŸ‡·French: basic β€’ πŸ• My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

user40041
I followed your recommendetions and i think now is looking much better.
thank you very much

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
You're welcome!

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡·Greek: native πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§English: excellent πŸ‡«πŸ‡·French: basic β€’ πŸ• My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

user50479
Dag Nico, I had no clue that Artisteer had such a bad rep amongst true web developers. I am a total noob in every sense of the word and put a lot of work into this site I created using Artisteer, lol. Now I feel like a clown. Hoping some of these security flaws will be caught by the admin professional tool I just purchased today.

Wish I woulda knew. I developed this site in the last 6 months not knowing anything but feel like I have learned so much. I actually wound up changing so much of the CSS & HTML.

It's a simple site (4 pages, lol) focused on education in the state of NJ.

Maybe you can let me know what you think:

www.njteachertalk.com

Thanks,
Eric

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
Well, all automated tools have to sacrifice something for something else. In Artisteer's case, it sacrifices code quality for ease of use. It's a nice tool to get you started. When you start feel confidence in yourself, code your own template. This approach always works ;)

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡·Greek: native πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§English: excellent πŸ‡«πŸ‡·French: basic β€’ πŸ• My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

user50479
Site is back up again Nico. Can you check it out for me? Anyone for that matter, if you will?

Hey earthrat, I tried to respond back to you but it failed, was sent back to me. How do I reach you?

Thanks,
Eric

user50479
Also, I password-protected the admin password yesterday and then could not enter my site. I was being blocked, think it said invalid token. Don't remember cause I fixed it. Not even sure what I did.

So when I log in now, it says IPTd_admin instead of just admin. Is this the password-protected admin?

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
It's a typical Artisteer site, if you ask me :) I will give you some number to consider.

The page contains 46 elements, totalling a 998.82Kb. That's a terrible lot, especially considering that it's a very basic homepage. By comparison, our bloated front-page scores 109 elements and 307.57Kb.

Your page starts rendering itself after 5.41s and finishes rendering an abysmal 14.42s. By contrast, our bloated homepage starts rendering at 4.87s and finishes rendering at 7.11s. If I cut down the top scroller these numbers fall in half.

I think those numbers say a whole story all by themselves ;)

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡·Greek: native πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§English: excellent πŸ‡«πŸ‡·French: basic β€’ πŸ• My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

earthrat
My email addy is in that message...

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
Hi guys! If you're using PMs to contact each other, please note that you don't see each other's email addresses. All you see is this forum's no-reply address :) You have to PM each other your email address if you want to get in direct contact.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡·Greek: native πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§English: excellent πŸ‡«πŸ‡·French: basic β€’ πŸ• My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

user50479
Earthcat, email me at [email protected], from your regular email.

Thanks

earthrat
Thanks egrohs, I added it in the PM.

user50479
Hey Nico, if I may ask, what tool are you using to tell me the elements of the site, how many kb's it is and how long the site takes to render itself?

Thanks

user40041
You can use firebug on firefox or developer tools at chrome (options>tools>developer tools)

rkendallc
Actually, you'd need a product like yslow for firefox and I think it or something like it is available for chrome. It loads your site and tells you how long it takes to load each item and an overall score. It's good to see how many files are actually loading. It would be the first step in determining what you might do to speed up your site.

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
All of them work just fine. I just used Chrome's developer tools. They're pretty good, actually :)

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡·Greek: native πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§English: excellent πŸ‡«πŸ‡·French: basic β€’ πŸ• My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

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