We have worked overnight and all day today adding additional security measures to the site and will be further improving these as part of a forthcoming major upgrade.
Im really grateful for all members support and also the excellent suggestions which, keep coming in.
On the note of gratitude its worth mentioning the guys at Flatstats who have been most co-operative, which deserves credit as in this world its rare when people do unselfish things.
The collateral form tool needs to be made a little more user friendly and we will be continuing the development in the coming days. i will write another blog soon with details of proposed date for upgrade.
Punchestown has served up so many stories this week but its been some period for Mullins, id say its beyond his wildest dreams.
Also, if anyone has any comments on any new tools which may be useful, please do let me know and we will add to our future improvements.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Hacking issue
This evening i was contacted by FlatStats (another horse racing database service) informing me that HorseRaceBase had been subject to a hack in January of this year.
One minute later this site also posted a message on their forum advising people of the same thing, this was followed by someone describing our site as suspicious.
Before speaking on the hack issue, let me state categorically HRB is certainly not suspicious. I created it personally and thanks to your support it keeps growing (to the point now where clearly someone views us as worth targetting). Every single thing we do comes after discussion with members and the nature of the site is completely based around honesty and integrity. I am confident enough in my relationship with members to believe this will shine through.
I appreciate fully if you have read anything else before visiting HRB the hacking sounds bad and would immediately apologise to anyone who was alarmed and also to those who may have received junk email, which being completely honest may obviously have arisen as a result of this.
The only information held in the HorseRaceBase members account is your login, password and email address. Nothing else. We do suggest in our help guide that all members change their password regularly but i know myself, this is something we all very rarely get round to. Please do so now. There is a link on your homepage once logged in.
Feel free as always to email me if you have any concerns at all. We shall be taking every step possible to ensure this doesnt happen again and along with several upgrades and new features will be implementing additional security checks at each point (behind the scenes) very soon.
Again my apologies for this issue and thanks for your ongoing support.
One minute later this site also posted a message on their forum advising people of the same thing, this was followed by someone describing our site as suspicious.
Before speaking on the hack issue, let me state categorically HRB is certainly not suspicious. I created it personally and thanks to your support it keeps growing (to the point now where clearly someone views us as worth targetting). Every single thing we do comes after discussion with members and the nature of the site is completely based around honesty and integrity. I am confident enough in my relationship with members to believe this will shine through.
I appreciate fully if you have read anything else before visiting HRB the hacking sounds bad and would immediately apologise to anyone who was alarmed and also to those who may have received junk email, which being completely honest may obviously have arisen as a result of this.
The only information held in the HorseRaceBase members account is your login, password and email address. Nothing else. We do suggest in our help guide that all members change their password regularly but i know myself, this is something we all very rarely get round to. Please do so now. There is a link on your homepage once logged in.
Feel free as always to email me if you have any concerns at all. We shall be taking every step possible to ensure this doesnt happen again and along with several upgrades and new features will be implementing additional security checks at each point (behind the scenes) very soon.
Again my apologies for this issue and thanks for your ongoing support.
Friday, April 2, 2010
SEO Lessons
Sometimes its actually quite a relief when you realise your mistakes. I know now after some serious studying on the search engine optimization side of things that I have made plenty in terms of the design of the layout etc on the site.
You see, i started this all out as a hobby and it gradually grew until i took it on full time, initially all i thought about was putting up tools etc and unfortunately i was a little naive in terms of my thinking people would just come. Ive always known word of mouth was pretty much our only way of attracting new customers (as things were) but ultimately that barely covers the bills (because only a few people telling a few others still doesnt make lots of people!) and obviously to succeed long-term (which we shall) a much broader audience must be reached.
So a complete redesign of a lot of things (annoying things in all honesty!) has been carried out and a much more structured and sensible approach will be introduced shortly.
Im aware of sites doing overhauls in the past (one rather famously) and making a total balls of it and in fact driving people away, so i will certainly not be going down this route. Basically all that will change are positive things and at the same time we will introduce some new tools etc that have been in the pipeline for a while.
Much of the work is merging pages together, avoiding duplication of keyword phrases and introducing appropriate title tags and (and other mundane dull aspects that are seemingly all important).
The massive positive really is the reputation of the site, we have always done things by the book and that does show. So with the improvements to come we will take another huge step towards where we want to be.
Much of that really is down to the fact the tools on the site are excellent and with your feedback we keep improving them, if we could just get a few more people to come and try them we would be in business! We shall get there!
In other news but a large part of what ive been doing, i will be setting up another loyalty bonus for existing members, most of you have been around for a while and really we are so grateful of your support.
The Ratings Machine V2 project is moving along nicely and we are genuinelly excited (how sad is that!?!) about its introduction hopefully within next few months.
You see, i started this all out as a hobby and it gradually grew until i took it on full time, initially all i thought about was putting up tools etc and unfortunately i was a little naive in terms of my thinking people would just come. Ive always known word of mouth was pretty much our only way of attracting new customers (as things were) but ultimately that barely covers the bills (because only a few people telling a few others still doesnt make lots of people!) and obviously to succeed long-term (which we shall) a much broader audience must be reached.
So a complete redesign of a lot of things (annoying things in all honesty!) has been carried out and a much more structured and sensible approach will be introduced shortly.
Im aware of sites doing overhauls in the past (one rather famously) and making a total balls of it and in fact driving people away, so i will certainly not be going down this route. Basically all that will change are positive things and at the same time we will introduce some new tools etc that have been in the pipeline for a while.
Much of the work is merging pages together, avoiding duplication of keyword phrases and introducing appropriate title tags and (and other mundane dull aspects that are seemingly all important).
The massive positive really is the reputation of the site, we have always done things by the book and that does show. So with the improvements to come we will take another huge step towards where we want to be.
Much of that really is down to the fact the tools on the site are excellent and with your feedback we keep improving them, if we could just get a few more people to come and try them we would be in business! We shall get there!
In other news but a large part of what ive been doing, i will be setting up another loyalty bonus for existing members, most of you have been around for a while and really we are so grateful of your support.
The Ratings Machine V2 project is moving along nicely and we are genuinelly excited (how sad is that!?!) about its introduction hopefully within next few months.
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