Check your security settings when putting a Mediawiki installation behind Cloudflare

Some great advice from Cybarbie on Mastodon about Cloudflare and my putting Autocade behind it:       Sure enough, after following her advice, I saw the numbers improve after a 9,000-page-view day, to two consecutive days of 11,000. Visitor numbers have increased from c. 5,500 to 6,490 in a 24-hour period:     This […]

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A history of dealing with ad networks

Written in the feedback form to one ad network as we attempt to find someone to complement our work with H12 Media. Sums up a lot about the murky world of online advertising. It’s to a ‘Google Publishing Partner’, and we know Big Tech lies, but I’m keeping an open mind with this provider. Italics […]

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It would be nice to get my Amazon Associates money

This has been going on for between 10 and 20 years, and I think closer to the latter. Didn’t know Jeff was this hard up for cash. I didn’t record the dialogue last time, giving them the benefit of the doubt, but since I can’t trust the buggers, I will this time. Fed in to […]

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A full day on Autocade with Cloudflare switched on

  It appears that Cloudflare hasn’t affected Mediawiki’s stats (at least not hugely, from what I can tell). Overnight we had about 19,000 views, according to Mediawiki. Cloudflare, meanwhile, reports 5,420 visitors in that same time—three to four pages per visitor sounds acceptable. I realize Cloudflare might count search engine bots, too. I’ll have things […]

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Google fails to downrank junk sites; Bing and Mojeek fare better

Understandably, I was bemused but then frustrated with the fake articles out there about the new Google algorithm update being created by me and named for me. (Even Perplexity has picked up this misinformation.) Of all those I found and reached out to, only one author—Shahid Jafar—had the decency to remove his article and apologize. […]

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Putting Autocade’s Mediawiki behind Cloudflare

This is not a bad problem to have, but it could get expensive:     Therefore, today I made the decision to switch Autocade to Cloudflare. I had been warned by people who know far more about this than me that it will affect the statistics, so I’ll have to get over not being able […]

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Read all about the SEO algorithm that I developed for Google

I figured out why people have been searching for my name with Google and SEO, all thanks to a backlink from someone who didn’t know any better. Ironically, they’re going to get their wish for a link from here, but for reasons they didn’t expect. Thanks to “AI” or LLMs, there is an entire virtual […]

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Is Google stealing your voice for its virtual assistant? Meanwhile, Mktg Stinx

Here’s Google’s latest privacy gaffe, the latest in a long, long line where they pretend to not know it’s happening till they’re embarrassed into admitting that it is happening—and then the authorities will fine Google millions of dollars which they will make back in a few hours. Ibly writes in a post on the fediverse […]

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You never know where your interests will take you

A seven-year-old needs to figure this out: what would the Ford Escort Popular Plus be priced at if were assembled in Aotearoa?   Amanda and I were chatting about prodigies. Some young people are amazing, doing uni classes at intermediate or high-school age, or playing piano like Mozart, and while not all of us have […]

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Tech musings from a non-tech: search engines and the nightmare of AWS

A great quote from Penn Jillette in Cracked: Einstein comes up with this idea E = mc² — a profound, powerful, mind-blowing idea — and he has to work forever to make people understand that and to share that reality. Woodward and Bernstein are pretty sure the president of the United States committed crimes, and […]

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