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Tuesday, March 11 2003 @ 09:56 am EST
Contributed by: Robin
Views: 129,557

I got a little upset again, after visiting a website mentioned here, when I couldn't spot this tiny winy mark or anything whatsoever telling us that this particular site is using GL for managing the content.
Why do people remove the GL credits? I reckon GL deserves being mentioned especially that you don't have to pay for that.

PEOPLE PEOPLE LEAVE GL CREDITS AND LET OTHERS KNOW THAT YOU'RE USING QUALITY CMS!

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Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Tuesday, March 11 2003 @ 02:39 pm EST

I use to feel the same way until I read the heated exchange not too long ago between phpNuke's developer and some users with a Yale law organization. The law org has a phpNuke site and does not display the credits at the bottom of each page. Instead, they elected to insert the credits as a meta tag plus a footer comment inside the source code. Any visitor who views the source on any page can easily tell how they were generated. This was not good enough for the very vocal group. A couple of whom went off to start a black list.

Although each side parted with their same opinions on this issue, there were some interesting points raised.
-- The GNU license only requires that we maintain the copyright notices in the source code not on each of our webpages. A copyright notice on the startup of an interactive software package is appropriate. These CMS' don't fall into that category.
-- The Open Source CMS' are a tool to easily create and maintain webpages. The same could be said for other software like Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Wordpad, etc. None of these tools require us to give them credit on our pages.
-- Our sites are run on webservers powered by software which includes PHP, MySQL, Apache, Linux, IIS, Windows, etc. The hardware comes from various vendors. None of these require us to give them credit on our pages either, but they are essential in order for our sites to run.
-- If you display credits to the main site, then what about all those who have contributed hacks, blocks, plugins, etc. A webpage could easily become overrun if everyone was similarly credited.
-- Most professional sites do not display any visible credits to the software used in generating their webpages. If forced to do so, they would look elsewhere though many would willingly pay to have it removed.
-- Displaying the software version used could invite crackers to try and break into your site. I don't think this is as much of a concern for Geeklog as it would be for a phpNuke site. However, those who do not upgrade to the latest security releases are displaying a big red flag on every single page that their site has a vulnerability.

Like you, I would like to see the developers get recognition for their hard work. A small credit link though in the footer of every page is not required. Even Dirk has said it's not necessary, but it's a nice gesture. After seeing phpNuke's lynch mob scene, I think the developers here have the right attitude.

Many of us though would never have found Geeklog if it hadn't been for someone else putting that little link in the footer of his site we found and liked. After reading phpNuke's heated battle, I can understand why some people are reluctant to display a visible credit. I would counter with why not at least insert a metatag or comment in the source or add it to a credit page (if one exists). This way you're helping someone else find a good product.

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Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Tuesday, March 11 2003 @ 05:37 pm EST

I've been getting email after email regarding this issue and my site. It's funny how they think I owe Geeklog and the only way to repay that is by showing some sort of 'powered by' description. Why's it funny? Because the day after I released my 10 themes for the Geeklog community to use, I get this flack.
I put this message in the distribution:
"* My only request is that you tell me where you're using any of these themes... it's just something nice to know I suppose. "

After receiving maybe 3 or 4 email's telling me what sites are using them and seeing 300+ hits to the file on my server, I didn't fret. Big deal. I don't care if people are using my themes and not telling me or saying, "this site powered by Geeklog and Travis' theme."

I don't see why these Geeklog users who don't contribute anything to the project can go and give me this sort of hassle.

Oh well, the trials and tribulations of open source I suppose.

Travis

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Authored by: alinford on Tuesday, March 11 2003 @ 06:57 pm EST

Travis,
everyone has their own opinion. I tend to agree with you and the article about the pissed off nukers. I use Dreamweaver and do not give Macromedia any credit on any sites I have done.

By the way, I was the one that originally asked the question. I hope that you could tell by the tone of the question that it was non accusitory. I was just curious.

I may create a static page that links to all of the products that are in use on my site. I can then have a link in the footer that links to the static page. I do not mind advertising to the world what I am using. I do mind telling hackers what I am using, so this may never get done :)
I hope that this does not sour you on releasing more themes, plugins, blocks, hacks, etc. I think that most people that are emailing you about it are just protective of GL and the developers.

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Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Wednesday, March 12 2003 @ 01:29 am EST

If you didn't want your original post to sound angry and accusatory, then maybe you shouldn't have ended it with those two lines in all-caps and bold. :)

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Authored by: alinford on Wednesday, March 12 2003 @ 01:44 am EST

That was not from me. This was from me:
http://www.geeklog.net/comment.php?mode=display&sid=20030303100534100&title=Theme+Release%3A+dirty&type=article&order=&pid=8348

:)

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Authored by: cl1ck on Wednesday, March 12 2003 @ 05:42 am EST

Interesting discussion!

I asked the geeklog team straight out what is required from us leechy geeklog users because I'm using this at work and wanted to be legit. Dirk, i believe, answered something to the effect of, "You don't have to link us or even tell us about it." That being said, I and my office stand to benefit greatly from the use of this product. Your decision to contribute to something you use and benefit from is just that....you decision.

Having a long list of links on your first page can be unsightly and quite unprofessional. For the one at work, we are releasing our custom theme. For my personal one, i leave the powered by geeklog footer. for another geeklog i run, i use a modified version of this small php_block contributed by ironfeather in this article. It randomly picks a 88x31 button to display in a block everytime something is clicked on the site. there are also a couple of static buttons for mozilla and for me. then there is a link to a page with all credits listed. It a cool script, it looks nice and neat. something like that can be turned on for anonymous users and turned off for members. There are other ways to contribute besides a linking. it all boils down to if you want to or not.

but there are far too many good projects in the open source graveyard because people leeched and gave nothing back.

---
-----------
http://cl1ck.net

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Authored by: Robin on Wednesday, March 12 2003 @ 04:00 am EST

I posted it originally and my intention was to express my personal humble opinion about this particular issue.

By and large I don't read agreemeents carefully and don't care whether they allow me to get rid off a logo or credits. I believe that in case of things I don't have to pay for, at least what I can do is to show the credits.

To be honest, hands up who puts the credits into metatags after removing them from the front page. My next question is how many ordinary www users view the source code. My mom is not one of them :-)))

As to examples like using Macromedia products. Well they are commercial stuff, once paid why you should mention the software, they don't need advertising. For the money they get you can read their ads in every single IT magazine.

I didn't mean to accuse anyone.
And I contribute from time to time ;-))))

---
Geeklog Polish Support Team

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Authored by: alinford on Wednesday, March 12 2003 @ 01:43 pm EST

Do you also credit PHP, MySQL, Linux, phpmyadmin, etc?
Basically, do you credit all of the free stuff you are using or just GL?
Just asking.

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Authored by: Robin on Thursday, March 13 2003 @ 02:48 am EST

As the stuff you mentioned is provided by the provider no I don't. However all the stuff you mentioned is credited by the provider on their main page http://www.host.sk.
Hope that answers your question ;-)

---
Geeklog Polish Support Team

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Authored by: Anonymous (Anonymous User) on Saturday, April 26 2003 @ 07:12 pm EDT

The points made below are very valid.
From my own perspective, I run a competitive business and don't want to advertise any advantages to my competition.
A far more serious problem stems from the very reason that I am currently changing my Nuke sites over to Geeklog, that is that my sites (www.martialartsnews.co.uk and www.shop-for-gifts.co.uk) keep getting hacked ($£%^%).
One of the reasons for this is that it is easy for hackers to search for specific details to bring back all the nuke sites in the results.
I really do not want to make things any easier for them than I have to.
I know that GL is far more secure than Nuke etc etc, however one of the reasons that Nuke is attacked so often is that it is high profile, and I'll bet that when GL becomes as popular, it too will be under greater scrutiny from hackers.
PS.
I beleive the best way to deal with hackers is to kick the crap out of anyone you meet who boasts about it, make sure to leave thier fingers in tact and tell them to message all thier buddies and let them know they aren't safe behind thier monitors, after all if none of them had anyone to boast to they'd get very bored with it.
If anyone believes that hackers are performing a service by pointing out vulnerabilities don't worry cos when you kick him in the nuts you can tell him it was to highlight the fact that his groin wasn't properly protected.

If anyone wants to let me know how to remove the powered by footer feel free to let me know, or better still if you know of a solution that will allow me to link to the creators without giving info away to hackers or competition, I'm all ears.

Thanks to the writers and contributors

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Authored by: rawdata on Saturday, April 26 2003 @ 10:57 pm EDT

Geeklog uses templates. There's still some html in the code, but the majority of it is in the templates. They are located in theme directories under /public_html/layout. The template file names are pretty descriptive to which they apply. The power by is located in footer.thtml and should look something like this (taken from the clean theme):

<span class="copyRight">{copyright_notice}<P><a href="{geeklog_url}"><img src="{layout_url}/images/buttons/geekpower2.gif" alt="{powered_by}" border="0"></a></span>

In this one, the part from <P> to </a> is the power by. This one happens to be a button. Some of the others use text instead.

I think hackers probably use search engines to find their victims. You can include yet hide the powered by info by putting it in a metatag in header.thtml like this: <meta name="generator" content="Geeklog">

or in a comment which can go anywhere like this: 

or on a separate credit page and use a robots metatag to ban indexing of that particular page like this:
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow"> or use robots.txt to ban indexing of the page instead.

If the keyword Geeklog was entered in a search engine, your site would not show up if you used any of these methods. If you post your domain on this site though, then it very well could at least temporarily until it's buried by other data.

As for your competitors, if they physically look at your pages including the source it would be tough to hide a link from them. You could display it only for logged in people but if they signed up they would see it. If your competitors are say all English speaking, then you could always display it in a different language. Maybe one of those who use a non-Latin based language would be willing to do up a small button saying Geeklog in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Persian, or whatever. Most westerners don't understand and can't translate their character sets, and I think it would look kinda cool.

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