Site-Map Scam Sites

I don't consider myself any great shakes in the Web Design field. I don't think 'code is poetry', I think it is an inconvenient pain in the ass that I have to wrestle with in order to get what I want.

The thing is, that puts me in exactly the same basket as the vast majority of you. People like me, working away on our sites, feeling our way forward. So I am going to begin a series of articles about web design for people like us, where I will explain things simply in language that I understand, and avoid talking about the brain-frazzling nightmare that is code whenever I can.

There are so many pitfalls waiting to trip up people like us, and frankly the web is chock-full of unscrupulous companies and scam-sites that are just waiting to take advantage of us. Look at this example: I found out that I needed a site-map that would be search-engine friendly, in order for my site to be more highly rated. OK, so, I am a supporter of free, so I went looking for a free site-map generator.

And I found one. No, I am not going to give the URL, because I do not want to refer you there. You'll see why soon.

I typed my site URL, www.rodfleming.com into the box, clicked 'okay' and had some more coffee. By the time I was back, there was my xml site-map, all ready for me to download and put into my site's root directory. Wonderful, thinks I, and made a note to myself to do just that later. Fortunately, as it turned out, I did not do it right away.

Instead I checked what my front page was looking like, because I made some changes yesterday and am still going through the process of checking how it looks in all the popular web-browsers, at least those that work in Windows and Linux.

But what's this? Right in the middle of the first paragraph of my home page, some text, the word 'download' has mysteriously been highlighted. Hovering over it shows an advert in French showing some repulsive blob of a woman whom apparently the politicians are afraid of. (Yes, I speak French.) Clicking on it takes me to the site of a well-known popular French newspaper, which I don't subscribe to.

After thinking 'WTF???? my site has been hijacked by some sort of web trojan,' I have a look back at that site-map generator site, and lo and behold, hidden in the small print, it reveals that the service is not free at all, instead they put adverts into your site. Adverts which you have no control over either the position or content of.

Now okay, I should have read every page of the small print. But who does? It specifically said 'FREE' several times on the site's home page, and 'free' does not mean 'supported by ads we will sneak into you pages', at least not in my book. Like most of us in an age when Open Source is everywhere and 'free' means 'free', I have become used to taking that word at face value. I have written elsewhere that far too many American businesses are essentially scammers, and this, to me, is a clear proof of that.

Anyway, to cut the story short, I then had to remove the word 'download' and replace it with another form of words. This was really annoying, as I had planned for the text to be linked to a downloads page where all my products could be accessed; strike that idea, huh? Thanks a bunch.

Naturally I can't use the xml site-map generated by this scam site, and now I will have to go through all my pages to see if they have sneaked some more ads in. That is work I could really do without having landed on my plate right now. Oh, and by the way, if the site wishes to attempt to sue me for removing their ad, they may feel free to try. I don't think my local courts will take any more kindly to their business practices than I do. And I am sure I can get them some really nice bad publicity too.

The morals of the tale? There are several. Yes, you need a site-map. However, there are crooks out there just waiting to shaft you. I put a lot of effort into my site so that hopefully it can generate income for me, not for somebody else, and I insist on total editorial control over what goes into it.

Now I will be researching a site-map generator that does the job without sneaking ads into my site, and when I find one I will let you know about it. In the meantime, be very very careful to read the small print on these sites. They don't play a fair game.