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[keh]

Just got really pissed off today when we got a tip that this text: "Frontpage Slideshow (version 1.7.2) - Copyright © 2006-2008 by JoomlaWorks" has been indexed by google together with the rest of our front page. Talk about respecting your paying costumers ... Not only have joomlaworks added it, but actually decoded it in order to hide it better... It would be nice to hear what is the rationale behind this and if we can relay on that this will be deleted in upcoming versions. I'm sure Joomlaworks doesn't mind that we removed it ASAP from our two sites using the module. This doesn't really make me want to use any other joomlaworks component or modules if it can be avoided.     
 

[mishimasan]

I thought that paid versions were advertisement free?

[rued]

This is not only bad for a paid version, it's bad for all versions of extensions. Because they're messing with the sites listings in search engines, and in worst case scenario their ranking - because of hidden texts like this.

Also it can include a security risk if someone discovers a security hole in the extensions, they only need to do a simple search in Google to find hundreds of sites witch they can attack - even the version number is public announced by this code.

I thought the guys behind JoomlaWorks was smarter than this, but now they have lost quite much of my respect - and in the end my money ...

[Fotis]

Please don't rush into any assumptions.

The version code is a measure for us to monitor piracy through a simple mechanism.

IT IS IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND that this link has a "display:none;" CSS property so that Google will ignore it (per Google's crawling policies), yet we can use it for our legitimate tracking purposes without interfering with our customers SEO etc.

That means Google and other search engines DO NOT TAKE IT into account.

To further strengthen this, we also plan to do an update soon to v1.7.3 adding a rel="nofollow" attribute to the link or perhaps removing the link entirely, yet keeping the version numbering.

Let me also remind you that other extension developers follow this path, to stay away from encryption, e.g. Azrul's Jom Comment. Check for example this site using Jom Comment:

http://www.compassdesigns.net/joomla-blog/Do-You-Have-a-Refund-Policy.html

...and look for the hidden link in the source code back to azrul.com.

Although we do not recommend removing this (hidden from Google and other search engines) link, we can't stop you from doing so, cause anyone has their reasons. For your information, to remove the link simply look for an echo $crd at the bottom of the main module file and comment it out.

We really have enough hard time dealing with piracy and we do not want to start using ioncube encryption. I hope you understand. We value our customers and their privacy.

Regards,

Fotis
JoomlaWorks

[keh]

The claim that google does not index the joomlaworks.gr reference on the critical front page of any site that use the module is plainly untrue, as the attached screen shot from google clearly shows in our case.

I really respect your work and the need to protect your work from piracy, but you have to find another way around it that doesn't betray your paying users critical work on SEO in the process.   

[Fotis]

1. The text is spidered but not taken into account. If it did, JoomlaWorks would have a pagerank of 10. We don't.

2. I have already stated in my previous post how to disable the copyrights/version code.

Thanks.