I was poking about in my referrers log and saw an commonly occuring but completely mysterious URL from China. I thought. “This is interesting, someone linking to me, lets see what they have to say.” I went there and what did I find…. my site staring back at me, well almost.
Now I’m not sure if I should be flattered or a bit annoyed for myself and the nice person I asked to borrow their design from. The most annoying thing there is a big fat “design, all rights reserved” at the bottom of the front page. At least it don’t appear on other pages.
Annoyed though is probably too strong a word, I’m more amused by it. I’ve just checked the source and the meta data is all identical to mine, down to including bits of RDF XML in the body too. They’ve even used my user tracking gif at the bottom of the page as an email button.
I think I will try contacting them and seeing if they reply, could be fun…
April 5th, 2004 at 12:30 pm
It’s pretty common that but well done for spotting it.
If you use absolute URLs in a webdesign it’s especially easy to catch site rippers - they don’t usually take them out at first.
April 5th, 2004 at 12:36 pm
Let’s face it though, are they a rival industry?
It’s a weird sort of compliment though isn;t it?
April 5th, 2004 at 12:58 pm
site rippers are often very amateur. My old site was ripped but they left my links in so they went to the ripped site and clicked through to mine. Too sad.