| LED Digest 2020: Business Ethics |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Reg. from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest post, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. September 6, 2005 Issue #2020 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Religion and Business ==-- ~ Dave Roberts "I won't take a site that promotes smoking..." ~ Kathryn Martyn "The customer is always right is a tricky theme in web development..." ~ Tom Anson "...clients should be educated about what makes a good website..." --== Dealing with Image Theft ==-- ~ Mark Frank "I received a nasty email from the people who were stealing..." ~ Colin Flack "...this simple addition to your .htaccess will stop it..." ~ Brett Dorron "...you can select an alternate image or banner in place of all hotlinked images..." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Open Source & Microsoft ==-- ~ Veronica Yuill ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Dave Roberts Subject: Religious biz > Have any of you dealt with clients who've insisted > on promoting their religious beliefs on their company > web site? How did you handle it? - Beth Earle, LED 2017 I have a client who is deeply religious, and has a short Bible verse on each page of the site. It's my opinion that this religious message probably does not help the site sell the vacation rentals that the client offers. In fact, some potential buyers might be put off. However, really, who knows? Perhaps prospects who are true believers like the verse and will buy if they think they are buying from another believer. If the client used so much of the site for a religious message that I thought it detracted from the business message, I would make that point to the client. I'd make it respectfully -- after all, it's the client's business and the client's site. If they want to penalize their business by 30% in order to promote a religious message, it's my job to be sure they know what they are doing, but it's their choice and certainly not mine to do what they want. My job is to help the client's site meet their objectives for it. If promoting a religious value along with the business message is part of the objectives, then that's my job. Now, if the client wanted to promote something I didn't like, that would depend on how strongly I disliked it. For example, I won't take a site that promotes smoking, because I believe that sellers of tobacco are just selling death. If a site was strongly anti-choice, as a pro-choice advocate I wouldn't think I could do a very good job of promoting the site, and I wouldn't take it on. So if the site's objectives included a position to which I take strong exception, then I might have reservations. Having said that, religion has never been a problem for me in any of my work on sites. Dave Roberts http://www.davedoesitall.com -------- new post - same topic --------- From: Kathryn Martyn Subject: Religious biz There's a big difference between one wanting to put their religious message on a site and one wanting to put lots of ridiculous content that doesn't match the site's purpose. I'd say unless the business owner already promotes his/her religious beliefs on their existing sales material, then they shouldn't do so on the web. If they do, then fine. I've seen plenty businesses that do make it clear they have a religious affiliation, and I think that's perfectly fine. They want business that also has similar beliefs. The customer is always right is a tricky theme in web development isn't it? ;-() Kathryn Martyn, M.NLP Ending Emotional Eating, One Bite at a Time http://www.onemorebite-weightloss.com -------- new post - same topic --------- From: Tom Anson Subject: Religious biz Regarding Renee's and Bob's comments (LED Digest 2019) about Beth's question on promoting religious beliefs: it's really obvious that, if the site is about Church or some other religious theme, promoting those beliefs is appropriate. But I don't think that was what Beth was asking about. To me, the question was about promoting those beliefs where no such religious context (in terms of the site's apparent purpose) exists. For example, I sell essential oils. There's no place on my website where the promotion of my religious beliefs is really appropriate. However, as Bob pointed out (sort of), some markets might fit well with people who also share those beliefs. While my website is not religious in nature, I do offer an aromatherapy set called 12 Oils of Ancient Scripture. It's more about the history of aromatherapy than religion, but it does offer a context for some (limited) religious expression. And having that oils set on my website brings in people who might not ordinarily be looking for essential oils. But for most websites, I still believe that clients should be educated about what makes a good website (like keeping it on-point), and the relative advantages of building a separate site if they feel the need to promote their religious views. As for James Miller's comments, even as an American Christian (and I hate to put those two words so closely together), I can appreciate much of what he has to say about religion. His comments reminded me of this web page: http://www.searchingtogether.org/articles/zens/jesse.htm. There is every reason to be cynical about religious expression, especially in an institutional setting. That's why my wife and I left the institutional church a long time ago, and are hoping to be able to start a fellowship in our home (see www.ansondigitalconcerns.com/adc/zetousa.html). But forsaking "religion" is not the same as forsaking the Lord; and to essentially call religious faith "stupid" (because of the nature of most institutional religious expressions) only demonstrates a basic ignorance of the subject. An authentic faith can be found, if you're open to it. Tom Anson Anson Aromatic Essentials -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Mark Frank Subject: Image stealing > ... some images are being used (ie referenced direct so > they are using our image on our hosting - not copied to > their own server) by other sites... Is there an easy way > to stop this? - Emma Mackintosh, LED 2018 Emma, Your problem is easy to fix. It's a simple two step process. First, rename all of the images that are being stolen and fix your website to call the new image names. That solves your immediate problem. Second, create new images with the old image names. When the copyright violator's site calls up an image name from your site, they get more than they bargained for. You don't want to do anything slanderous, but you can be "very creative" with the new images you select. You might be surprised though. The first time I did this, I received a nasty email from the people who were stealing my bandwidth and violating my copyright. It seems the images I selected were "embarrassing" and had a significant negative impact on their sales. They were very upset with me. But they didn't do it again. Mark Frank Start Your Own Home-Based Website Design Business http://www.websitedesignbiz.com -------- new post - same topic --------- From: Colin Flack Subject: Image stealing Re the image stealing problem, if you have access to a .htaccess file on your server, this simple addition to your .htaccess will stop it - period -------------------- #Forbid hot-linking of specified file-types - blank and local referers are ok RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$ RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?yourdomain\.com [NC] RewriteRule \.(avi|bmp|css|gif|jpg|js|mid|mov|mp3|mpg|png|pdf|ra|ram|wav)$ - [F] -------------------- make sure the lines above haven't wrapped copy and paste to your htacess files change 'yourdomain' to be your domain name. and com net or whatever as appropriate you can add or delete file extensions to suit your needs although I've used this for years its not my code so all credit goes to the author - whoever he is. Colin Flack ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Brett Dorron Subject: Image stealing Emma, if your server uses .htaccess files (ie: Apache etc), you can select an alternate image or banner in place of all hotlinked images sitewide. See this link: http://altlab.com/htaccess_tutorial.html Or search for "stop hotlinking" Brett Dorron ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Veronica Yuill Subject: Open source > Maybe Opera browser has the > web development tool bar? - Nany Cardinali, LED 2019 I don't know about IE (never use it, except for testing) but Opera has a very comprehensive web developer toolbar: http://nontroppo.org/wiki/WebDevToolbar HTH Veronica Yuill Archetype Information Technology Ltd http://www.archetype-it.com/english/ ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2005 Orange Wheel, LLC. 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