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mpaert

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Did someone steal my site?

One of my sites is "w w w . p a e r t   dot  com."

I stumbled acros this page (http://www.angelfire.com/hi2/mara/) - could anyone explain what happend here?!"?!?!?!?!?
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gamebits
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I think you should email the webmaster and ask him/her what is going on.

Gamebits
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mpaert

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the strange thing is that some links go back to my site... somewhat completely pointless.. seems like some dodgy cloning script?!"
I would say she's trying to build a site, liked the design you had and tried to build her own from yours.

Either she has no clue to what she's doing or she's far from finished.
No they just copied your source code what you need to do is disable right clicking on your site here is some javascript to help you...
<script language=JavaScript>
<!--

//Disable right click script III- By Renigade (renigade@mediaone.net)
//For full source code, visit http://www.dynamicdrive.com

var message="";
///////////////////////////////////
function clickIE() {if (document.all) {(message);return false;}}
function clickNS(e) {if
(document.layers||(document.getElementById&&!document.all)) {
if (e.which==2||e.which==3) {(message);return false;}}}
if (document.layers)
{document.captureEvents(Event.MOUSEDOWN);document.onmousedown=clickNS;}
else{document.onmouseup=clickNS;document.oncontextmenu=clickIE;}

document.oncontextmenu=new Function("return false")
// -->
</script>
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the thing is that is'a Joomla template, the site exists only in a database, so, not really possible to copy, unless you literally take my HTML... very odd.
yes this is what she did she took your html by right clicking and use view source and then copied you css files
http://www.paert.com/templates/md_macphoria/css/template_css.css
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very rude. I'll fire off an email. Thanks for the code! Do I just add it to the head of the document?
Just because you disable right clicking you hardly stop anyone from taking your HTML code.

Just choose View->Source or check the cache for the page or use telnet to download the HTML or disable javascript or...

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ASKER

actually, that's completely true. is there a way to hide some code that is hardly noticable, but that I can put into Google and fine anyone who's copied it and not removed it?
This will stop most people though She is not a coder or hacker she just wanted his template...She just copied it.. What I would do is use that script and then email the girl and ask her to take it off here site and refer her to another free template that you are not using...
You can encrypt your code...
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lhaluska

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Genius. True Genius!
Disabling right click is not going to make any difference whatsoever, since (as mentioned) View > Source is just as easy and somebody can just do File > Save As anyway.  Don't bother trying to encrypt your HTML either.  Chances are, you'll just create more problems for yourself by messing up your code.  Besides, that encrypter is more for protecting javascripts, not entire web sites.

As mentioned already, this just seems to be a case of a web novice that liked the design and had no idea how to reproduce it without simply copying the whole thing.

Short of contacting this person directly, there's not much you can do.  However, I did notice that they are linking directly to your .css file:
http://www.paert.com/templates/md_macphoria/css/template_css.css

Easy way to break their site would be to rename the css file (after reconfiguring your site to use the new name, of course).  Or, just make a copy of the css file for your site to use, then mangle the one that they are linking too so it completely destroys their design :)  Adding a bunch of visibility:hidden attributes would probably wipe out much of their page.

Hope that helps!
You can make it harder (especially for newbies) to steal your code as lhaluska suggests but in the end it will always come down to this:

The users computer/browser must be able to see the HTML code since that is the way it can render the page. Because of this the user can always get your HTML code.

I would recommend putting a big comment stating your copyright instead and that you dont want your material to be reproduced. My personal opinion is that most people will respect this.

A last comment, as much as I understand you dont want your site copied, dont forget that this is also a compliment. The reason she stole your work is because she likes it.

That said, you can most likely get her not to use it since she will probably respect you and your work. All people are different though.
mpaert, you did read rest of the comments and realize that "encryption" will hardly stop anyone from stealing your work if they really want to?

The decrypter for the HTML will just be one line of standard javascript.
Ditto that...

The 'encryption' idea, in my opininion, was a BAD suggestion.  In my professional opinion, it is defintely NOT worth doing that to your code in an attempt to prevent a situation such as this (and regardless of what you do, this person has already copied your site, so it's going to do nothing about this particular incident).  In addition, you will cause all kinds of accessibility issues by using that method, meaning that people with older browsers or people with javascript disabled probably won't be able to view your site AT ALL.

Besides, that page that lhaluska linked to is not even really encrypting your HTML...  It's just url encoding it (replacing special characters with their HTML entities), then using the javascript function "unescape" to url decode it.  It's hardly an effective way at protecting your code and is easily reversed.