For those with active blogs - help? (long post)

N

NettieB

New member
Long story recap - had a scary situation in grad school with a stalker, who obtained information on me from the business school "facebook" passed out to all business school grad students.

So up until now, I have avoided starting a blog, or providing really detailed information on forum posts. I've been sharing more descriptive scrapbooking pages using private albums on Photobucket, e-mailing friends and family with the site and pass code. Yet, past aside, I'm beginning to be really tempted to start a blog.

Some big hurdles still to overcome, and I have a few items on which I would really appreciate your input:

1) Orphan law:
Does anyone remember how/if the orphan law settled out? Dawn? Rochelle? Angie or other photographers? I remember the scary story about someone finding a picture they uploaded used in advertising without their permission, but cannot remember if it was uploaded to a blog, photo sharing site as public domain or what, and am too tired right now to research well. Or even if this was an internet hoax.

2) Is there a way to make a blog "private" or restricted access? Without starting a forum?

3) Has anyone had some, shall we say, "unwelcome guests" or unwanted/inappropriate attention paid to your blogs or blog comments?

THANK YOU for reading this ever so long, serious post! I am looking forward to hearing your thoughts.
 
There is a way to make a blog private or even password protected for each entry. Ive never had any negative attention personally but I just started my blog a little while ago. The photo that was stolen if Im not mistaken was in Australia and on a photo sharing site. Dont know what the outcome was though. If you are worried about someone stealing your photos you can always add a prominent watermark on them
 
I just started my blog a month ago, and while I have had a few 'annonymous' comments, I'm positive I know who it was, and I understand why they posted that way. No negativity. I do post my name and my kids names, but not really any details.
If you use Blogger, you can set it up so that it is 'private' and NOT searchable through Google, etc. Then basically anyone who sees your blog could only really find it if you gave them the address (family, etc.) You can also select who can post - anyone (which allows annonymous comments, or just people who have a blogger account, or I think there is another level).

I don't entirely know how the orphan law finished off, but a way to deal with that could be to put a watermark (or faint transparent logo) of your name, or your website or something on the photo. The Orphan law protects works in which it is impossible to find the owner...if your name is right on the photo, it's harder to use, kwim?

I'd love to see other tips here too...
 
There's not much you can do about the photo thing. First you'd have to catch them. I agree with the watermark idea if you're worried about it.

And yes, you can make a blog private on Blogger so that only those who you invite can read it.
 
You can make your blog private so people have to be "invited" to view it, which you would send only to people you would want to. I have chosen to make my family blog public, but I made it so that you can't search it on Google or Blogger, and you can't make anonymous comments (you can choose those options when you set it up). I also have Google Analytics (www.google.com/analytics) set up on my Blog, which I love. It was easy to set up and it shows me: how many views per day I've had, where the views are coming from (city/state/country), what pages they viewed, and how long they were on my site. If I were getting a lot of hits from somewhere that I didn't know somebody, then I would get nervous and make my blog private, but so far I've felt comfortable with the hits I get. It's just a way that you can track who (sort of) is viewing your blog.
 
You got really great advice and I really have nothing much to add. However, I've also had kind of a strange incident when I was on BabyCenter and have been a little afraid of sharing info. On my blog, it's not private, but not searchable on Google, either. I do share pics and use our real names, but if I felt like something fishy was up, I'd change all that ASAP. Blogger does make it easy to set your blog to private if you wish to do that. :)
 
I just started mine last week. But I decided before starting it to only post first names, if any at all, and to not write about any information that would be specific to where we live, go often, etc. I mean, general info is okay, but just not specific names of parks, or activities, etc. I'll post LOs and pictures, but again, nothing that could in any way look at all provocative to the perverts out there. I'm also considering creating a watermark to go over my pics when I start posting them.
 
I use blogger and have mine password protected. I have to invite people to read it and only those people who I allow have access to it and I can also track who is reading it through my settings. There are times I wish I could just point people to it but since mine was started to keep our family back home up to date with us it is loaded with our personal family life stuff. I rest easier knowing it is not just floating out in cyber world.
 
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gracielou said:
I use blogger and have mine password protected. I have to invite people to read it and only those people who I allow have access to it and I can also track who is reading it through my settings. There are times I wish I could just point people to it but since mine was started to keep our family back home up to date with us it is loaded with our personal family life stuff. I rest easier knowing it is not just floating out in cyber world.
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Hey Amanda...could you tell me where those settings are...I tried to find them, but to no avail. THanks!!!:)
 
Sammi - go to your dashboard and then under settings there is a tab called "permissions." This is where I track who is signed up to read my blog and also where I send invites to people who want to read it. Let me know if you need more.
 
My blog is public and I get a quite a few spam type comments and I've gotten a few obnoxious personal comments. If you are worried about that kind of thing, it is definitely worth using the privacy settings.
 
My "spam" started when I created a post with a Happy Birthday in the post title--it went crazy that day! That's when I added the word verification, which has totally helped. I rarely ever get spam now.

My personal information was already kind of all over the place due to the fact that I was a top leader in a direct sales company...kind of hard to create a bogus identity for your "real job." So, people could probably track me down if they wanted to, however, I'm still careful about other info that I provide. You don't see me provide any school info on scrapbook pages and such if my kids are still attending that particular school. There are other things that I journal and hide. But I try to not be too paranoid.

I did have a kind of freaky thing happen though...an overzealous jewelry maker who regularly visited my blog because of the previously mentioned direct sales thing, "hijacked" some of my layouts to create her jewelry. Took them right off my blog. They are beautiful pieces of jewelry, but it creeped me out considerably to learn about it the way I did...a slide show of her work on her own blog. I asked her to remove them, and she followed up with an apology and an offer to mail me the jewelry in exchange for permission to use the pieces in promotional material. Which I haven't done. It really made me uncomfortable.

I also never share very personal information, and some stuff just isn't meant for public consumption--I have no place as the matriarch in my family to subject the people I love to ridicule or embarrassment just because I'm having a bad day.
 
sammi said:
Just one more thing...I am not seeing the setting to see who is viewing my blog.
Click to expand...



This may only work the way I have mine set up. It just shows the people who have accepted the invite to my blog. I don't know if it works for just people coming in on the blog. The people that view mine have to set up a password so it just shows me who is signed up. HTH
 
You can sign up for Google analytics and it will tell you. Or Woopra, they track that as well. You can also put some code on your page so people can't right click your images & copy them. Adding a watermark helps too That won't stop them from screen shoting but it does slow a lot of you casural right clickers down.

I've been blogging for 4 years and largely have managed to maintain my anonymity. I use nicknames -Stacey is not my legal name - and my ISP masks my IP addy, so you get them when you WhoIs.

You're going to get spam and idiots from time to time. The internet brings out the worse in some people. Most are just drive by idiots & you can delete them & that is that. Anyone who is repeatedly visiting and harassing can be tracked with Google Analytics or Woopra.
 
you pretty much got good advice from everyone.

I just recently started bloggin again after having to shut down my old blog for personal reasons, now i'm careful with what i say on there.

Thanks for the tips!
 
With wordpress, you can ban certain IP numbers. But, you have to have the IP numbers in order to ban them. LOL
 
I've had blogger since March 2006 and have never gotten one spam comment :thumbup: Some things I do are never use our first names and only give a general idea where we live (PA). Water mark all my photos (I use to blur faces but have since stopped that). When blogging about delicate issues (p.o.t.t.y., p.a.n.t.y., u.n.d.e.r.w.a.r.e., b.o.o.b.i.e. ect I always use a "period" between every letter to discourage pervert searches).

Good luck....I love blogging, not for anyone to actually read but for myself. I love to go back and read my post in the past.....I usually get a good laugh!!!
 
Another common scrapping word that seems to attract spammers/pervs is 'strip', as in word strip, journaling strip, etc. I think they come looking for another kind of strip and are probably disappointed to find a blog about scrapbooking :p
 
Lots of good advice here. I

use typepad and they also have security settings. I have a more public blog where I share very few photos of DD and it's mostly for scrapping stuff and random trains of thought. I don't use first names, but my own on this part of my blog.

Then I have a private blog that is for family and close friends...it's password protected. And that's where I share more personal information to keep up with family. If ever I need to I can block IPs and track activity on my blog. It's a happy medium for me right now.
 
AllieP said:
You can make your blog private so people have to be "invited" to view it, which you would send only to people you would want to. I have chosen to make my family blog public, but I made it so that you can't search it on Google or Blogger, and you can't make anonymous comments (you can choose those options when you set it up). I also have Google Analytics (www.google.com/analytics) set up on my Blog, which I love. It was easy to set up and it shows me: how many views per day I've had, where the views are coming from (city/state/country), what pages they viewed, and how long they were on my site. If I were getting a lot of hits from somewhere that I didn't know somebody, then I would get nervous and make my blog private, but so far I've felt comfortable with the hits I get. It's just a way that you can track who (sort of) is viewing your blog.
Click to expand...

Allie (or anyone else who may know): How/where do you insert the code for analytics? Does it show up like a counter on your page? Or is it something that you can access from your dashboard? I didn't see it when I peeked at your blog. TIA for any help!
 
Whenyou sign up for it they give you some code to put in your template. You put it down at the bottom just before the closing body tag. Nothing shows up on your blog as far as I can tell. You have to go into Google analytics site tosee the information.

This is the code to disable the right click. If you are on blogger you need to add this as an HTML page element. Do not put it directly in your template HTML, use the Add Page Element option. You can change the "Function Disabled" phrase to have it say anything you like

<script language="JavaScript">
<!--

//Disable right mouse click Script
//By Maximus ([email protected]) w/ mods by DynamicDrive
//For full source code, visit http://www.dynamicdrive.com

var message="Function Disabled!";

///////////////////////////////////
function clickIE4(){
if (event.button==2){
alert(message);
return false;
}
}

function clickNS4(e){
if (document.layers||document.getElementById&&!document.all){
if (e.which==2||e.which==3){
alert(message);
return false;
}
}
}

if (document.layers){
document.captureEvents(Event.MOUSEDOWN);
document.onmousedown=clickNS4;
}
else if (document.all&&!document.getElementById){
document.onmousedown=clickIE4;
}

document.oncontextmenu=new Function("alert(message);return false")

// -->
</script>
Click to expand...
 
Kat Stokes said:
Allie (or anyone else who may know): How/where do you insert the code for analytics? Does it show up like a counter on your page? Or is it something that you can access from your dashboard? I didn't see it when I peeked at your blog. TIA for any help!
Click to expand...

Stacey had it right. Once you put the html code on your blog, you sign into google analytics' website and you can view all the information there about your blog. It's almost scary how much information I can see about people viewing my blog! PM me if you have more questions about how to get it set up on your blog.
 
Jennifer said:
On my blog, it's not private, but not searchable on Google, either.
Click to expand...

This is how mine is (at least my family one, maybe my scrap one). It's not in blogger listings and it's not searchable. I'm pretty sure the only way people can find it is through a link to it on someone's blog or if I give them the link--they can't find it with random searches or looking for trouble. Take it out of search engines. I love it that way.
 
Thanks girls! Analytics is now working... Now if I could get the Function Disabled one to work... :blink:

I am SO illiterate when it comes to this stuff....
 
Stacey42 said:
Whenyou sign up for it they give you some code to put in your template. You put it down at the bottom just before the closing body tag. Nothing shows up on your blog as far as I can tell. You have to go into Google analytics site tosee the information.

This is the code to disable the right click. If you are on blogger you need to add this as an HTML page element. Do not put it directly in your template HTML, use the Add Page Element option. You can change the "Function Disabled" phrase to have it say anything you like
Click to expand...

Help! I did this and it is not working. I tried it on my mom's puter to be sure and it just won't work. What am I doing wrong? You can still right-click!:cursing:
 
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