CCSP News Letter, Installment #6

by Paul Laudanski, AKA Zhen-Xjell,
and Staff.......
April 15, 2004

Welcome to our next release of the site newsletter. Lots of things have transpired since our last letter. Please read on for details...

1) Free License Giveaway Event Conclusion
Our previous newsletter announced the 40,000 registered member celebration event. With this edition of the newsletter, we happily conclude the giveaway. A few thousand entries were submitted and the results are seen here:

50 Computer Cops Premium Winners
RESULTS

100 Firetrust Benign Winners
RESULTS

10 JaguarPC Lifetime Webhosting Winners
RESULTS

10 Mischel Internet Security TrojanHunter Winners
RESULTS

10 PHP-Nuke 12 Month Club Winners
RESULTS

10 Zone Labs Zone Alarm Pro Winners
RESULTS


2) Statistics
The site has gone beyond 50,000 registered members and the daily page hits are hovering at 270,000 currently. Sustained at such a rate, the site should receive 6.5 million hits per month with 80,000 registered members by July. Visit an on-going thread about this here.


3) Anti-Virus Survey
With over 12,000 votes, the top three winners are:

- Symantec Norton Anti Virus
- Grisoft AVG
- Mcafee


4) Blue Cards
These images have been added to all posts so that registered users can report posts to the staff. Once you click a blue card and elect to follow thru with it, a forum post will appear so that you may enter your reason for flagging said post. Proper uses for blue carding a post:

- it is a duplicate post,
- the post violates the acceptable use policy,
- perhaps the post deserves to be in a different forum.

Please do not abuse the blue cards, as they are meant to be a tool rather than an inconvenience.


5) Wish List Update
- Favorite Forums List is under construction
- Clothing line still pending
- Scanning enhancements pending
- Default theme makeover under construction


6) Poor Site Performance
Due to the heavy traffic the server is passing, the site is performing sluggish. Many of you may have already noticed this. We are working to obtain a second dedicated MySQL server which will improve performance measurably.


7) Banner Advertisements
Because of the often times intolerable page loads, we had to install the use of banner advertisements to afford payments on a second server. These banner advertisements are run as 468x60 pixel images for guests only. As registered users, the banners are removed completely. There are no pop-ups, pop-unders, or inviews. There are two banner systems in place:

- Google Adsense
- Computer Cops Internal System

The Computer Cops banner system keeps the images directly on the server whereas the Google Adsense system makes use of Javascript to deliver the text ads.

An alternative to the banner advertisements is to migrate from a free membership system to that of an annual subscription service.

Remember, the banners are shown only to guests. Registration for free membership and logging in removes them from view.


Welcome Bill Gray, Staff Writer
Bill is a Business Coach. Working with Businesses and Organisations to create better environments and to develop and enhance business 'potential', into successful business practices. His Featured Commentary appears here on Thursdays, catch it!


9) TechTV's Call For Help
Computer Cops was recently shown on TechTV in conjunction with Merijn's program HiJackThis! It certainly was a wonderful feeling see the site on television.


10) Translate Computer Cops
A block has been added on the left side bottom section that contains links to translate and browse the site in the following languages:

- German
- French
- Italian
- Portuguese
- Spanish
- Rusian
- Greek
- Chinese


11) Wireless
We now have an AvantGo-like system for our front page news article available here.

Furthermore, tests were conducted using the Blackberry 6230, Treo 600, and the Sidekick for Computer Cops accessibility. We are happy to report that the Treo allows for cookie connectivity whereas the other two do not.


12) Unknown Files
If you have a questionable file that is not intercepted by updated anti-virus programs and you'd like to have it reviewed by security experts in the industry, visit our Unknown Files forum and submit it as an attachment. Beware that only the staff and experts have access to the actual file. If new files are found, then developers from industry leading security firms research them and improve their anti-virus products for the community-at-large. This is a value added service.


13) Computer Cops, a Reseller?
Yes, we sell software now as affiliates with:

- Eset: NOD32 [Anti Virus]
- Firetrust: Mailwasher Pro [Anti Spam]
- Mischel Internet Security: TrojanHunter [Anti Trojan]
- Zone Labs: Zone Alarm Pro [Firewall]

We are currently working on getting our software page online, but in the meantime feel free to use the feedback form if you are interested in making a purchase.

Commissions will help to pay for the servers so that the site may continue to exist and grow.


14) Staff Appreciation
Please give a big round of applause to the wonderful and excellent folks who make up the staff here at Computer Cops. These folks donate their time in all ways that are positive and constructive helping the community become more secure and maintain privacy. Kudos!


15) Site Tip
As a Premium member you have three ways to upload files to the site:

- Uploads [http://computercops.biz/modules.php?name=Uploads]
- Gallery [http://computercops.biz/modules.php?name=Gallery]
- Post attachments

The Uploads module will allow you to rename and delete uploads whereas the Gallery does not. It also contains a directory-like listing of the files in your bin. Any files that do not end in an image, compressed, text, or audio extension (to name a few) will automagically be compressed as a gzip'd tarball. This compressed file is easily opened by programs such as WinZip.


Thank you for your time, and also for choosing Computer Cops as your source for community knowledge sharing.



Thank you,
Paul Laudanski, Founder & Member
Computer Cops, LLC

@Copyright ComputerCops 2004