I'm no black hat expert, but I have heard the term, "scraper site," which I believe is used to describe a site that is automated to scour the web for suitable content, which it then copies onto itself.

Over the past couple of weeks, Misinterpreted.org has apparently become mildly attractive to a few different scraper sites. I've received 13 comments so far from random sites that upon visiting display either a snippet of a certain post I made, or the entire post itself.

I remember learning a scraper site's goal is to capitalize on the content generated by owners of websites that aren't very well-known. I think what happens is the scrapers end up ranking in the search engines in the areas that really should be occupied by the owners of the scraped sites.

The fact that I've only gotten 13 comments so far doesn't really bother me, since I'd only worry if I was getting such comments left and right. And since each one contains a link back to a bogus site, I don't approve them.

The plus side is that each of my posts that has been copied onto another site features a link back here, so that's good. Although I wonder if Google and other search engines will penalize me for having a few "bad neighborhood" links?

Cheater cheater pumpkin eater… Don't scrape me, bro!

This blog used to be located at nuclearnoir.com. I've since decided to use that domain for another project, and move to a new site where the main focus can be my blog. I figured it wouldn't be too difficult, and it really didn't seem that way, at first. I was able to copy everything, but when I finally went to click on a post's permalink, I got a 404 error.

I searched the web, and tried a few solutions. My old permalink structure had been the "year, month, day, post title" kind, so I wanted to keep it that way here. After a short while of trial and error, I found a solution. Now my permalinks work just fine. Here's how I did it.

First, I had to move my blog. I logged into my dashboard at nuclearnoir.com, and clicked on the Manage tab.

In the subset of tabs, I clicked Export.

I clicked the "Download Export File" to save all my old posts to my computer.

Then I installed a fresh version of WordPress at Misinterpreted.org, using the Famous 5 Minute Install method.

Then I FTP'd to NuclearNoir and copied the entire wp-content folder to my hard drive.

I FTP'd to Misinterpreted.org and copied the wp-content directory in its entirety over the "blank slate" version the fresh install had created.

I logged into my new dashboard at Misinterpreted.org and clicked the Options tab.

On the subset of tabs, I clicked Permalinks.

I changed the setting from Default to "Date and name based," which is how I had it at NuclearNoir.

Then I clicked the main tab Manage, and the sub tab Import.

On the Import page, I found WordPress at the bottom of the list of links, and clicked it.

I uploaded the saved export file from NuclearNoir, which added all my old posts to the new site.

Hello World was still showing as my first post here at Misinterpreted.org, since I had just installed WordPress, so I tested it's permalink. 404 error.

After various other attempts, I FTP'd to Misinterpreted.org and changed the .htaccess file.

This is what it contained before I altered it:

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress

Then I added a little bit, to make it look like this:

<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
</Directory>

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress

I tested the permalink, and got a 500 Internal Server Error.

I tried to load my homepage, but got the same error.

I changed the .htaccess back to the way it was.

My site came back, and permalinks now work!

If I hadn't found a solution, I could have left permalinks on Default, since that was the only setting that worked to begin with. But I figured the date and title would be more helpful.

I hope this helps some of you trying to resolve the same problem. If anyone can tell me why changing the .htaccess file and then changing it back worked, I'd love to know.