I want to know who doesn’t like my little dog Maggie and her website? Do I want to know what she did to you, that made you do awful things to her little dog house on the interwebs? She’s just a little dog wanting to share her experience on travel and give tips on how to care for a dog. She even wants to share her favorite meals and treats with other dog owners who share the same passion. She does not want to harm anyone, and if you don’t like her, leave alone.
Now I think I know who you are…
Why do I think I know who it is? Because the timing is a little strange. Wag The Dog UK started this year in February 2012 and it started with one little post. I watched it grow every day with new readers, new subscribers, and new Facebook fans and Twitter followers. I was ecstatic with the feedback and the warm response from the dog lover community roaming around the web and taking notice of my blog.
So from February to June I blogged, I tweeted, I shared and I was really enjoying the whole experience. I was also busy with Wag The Dog UK’s first product WAGN’GO. We had been working on it for almost a year and are getting really close to producing it. What else could a little dog blog want? Everything was good on the interwebs and my personal life changed too, and it changed just for the better… and that was when things started to get strange.
It always starts with an email
Just a quick note to say Best Wishes on your special day!!
Now when I received the first one in my personal mailbox I thought nothing of it. “Stupid spam,” I said and deleted it as quickly as it entered my inbox. Two days later my website was hacked. Now this continued until the middle of August.
And it was creepy, they didn’t…
- put malware on my site,
- re-direct my followers to other sites,
- or put nasty porn or other things on my site
- or claim fame that they hacked yet another WordPress site.
It usually went like this…
- Got the email
- website got hacked
- cleared out the website, rebuild the website, secure the website
- Carry on with business as usual. (if there was one thing my dog taught me .. it’s “things need doing regardless of the weather”)
By the middle of August, I knew that this was bigger than a few quick fixes and I had to contact some big dogs to help secure the dog house. They seemed to know all my passwords for everything…
So I contact Sucuri.net and told them my woes… and a little longer than usual they were able to clean up my site, close the back doors and secure my site. Since then I have not had a hack on the site since! Paws crossed! i have seen them try in my logs and I do get the occasional hack on my password, but so far the big dogs at Sucuri net are keeping them at bay.
However I just got another email…
Just a quick note to say Best Wishes on your special day!!
Now its Facebook!
Facebook unpublished my Fan Page:
This Sunday afternoon Facebook unpublished my fan page…
I am a small dog blog with 41 friends and 78 real likes from like-minded people. I do not advertise on other sites or post on other sites about my page or business unless invited to do so. My posts are all dog related and I get feedback in a positive way on my posts from my friends and fans. I only post about 3-5 things a day. All dog-related articles or cute photos…things relevant to dog lovers. My understanding was if fans or friends did not like your post, they could just click and block it away…simple as that.
I appealed and…
Facebook said the reason was… To help keep our policies simple while delivering great social networking experiences to users, our automated systems remove Pages providing poor user experiences. Our systems use a variety of signals to assess user experience, such as user feedback on a Page’s communications and on the Page itself.
We’ve checked out the circumstances of your Page’s removal, and we found that your Page received strong negative feedback from users and their friends. This denotes a poor user experience and amounts to a violation of our Facebook Page Guidelines.”
How on earth can there be strong negative feedback looking at cute puppy shots and reading dog-related stories????? Who would complain?
Am I crazy or is someone trying to kick my dog?
