Keep The Wrekin wild

 

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MAP
I'm putting together a map of the tracks and walks and everything!

HOW TOS

  • How to join up to this site: it's open, any one can become a member. We totally hide your email address from spam bots too. Just join up!
  • How to post a news item to the front page: you'd need to be a member, then post one. It won't get to the front till an editor approves it (just so there's no funny biz ;-)))
  • How to add a discussion group message: best place for questions!!! Again you need to be a member, then post a discussion group message. Remember to click the email reply box so you'll not need to keep returning to see if anyone has answered your mesage.
  • How to leave a comment: just click the greyed out comment link below any news item! If you're already logged in as a member this website will remember you, if not add your email address and name and you'll be quickly signed up.
  • How to alter your preferences: when logged in go to your Prefs page. Tell us a bit about yourselves. Nice to know who's here.

An independent group of individuals who share a love of The Wrekin and a determination to see it preserved for the good of its communities, landscape, wildlife and heritage.

Read more about Purpose, principles, activities and structure.

Some promotions about The Wrekin:

The Wrekin Hill
Allan's Twh cover
This book is available for £12.99 from all good booksellers and the Halfway House after the launch on 8th April 2007, or direct from Allan himself, in which case send a Sterling cheque for £12.99 made payable to ALLAN FROST  at 1 Buttermere Drive, Priorslee, Telford, Shropshire, TF2 9RE, United Kingdom. Overseas buyers should send an International Money Order for that amount (there is no additional charge for postage for this book).

Wrekin Wraiths, Rebels and Romans
Wrekin Wraiths
The book is available from all good booksellers and the Halfway House on The Wrekin after the official launch at the end of October 2006 or direct from Allan himself, in which case please send a Sterling cheque for £5.99 made payable to ALLAN FROST at 1 Buttermere Drive, Priorslee, Telford, Shropshire, TF2 9RE, United Kingdom. If you live outside the United Kingdom, send an International Money Order for £6.99 made payable to Allan Frost at the above address.

Fern Ticket
fernticket.jpg George Evans, the venerable chairman of All Friends Around The Wrekin has a booklet out. Already on its second reprint and the only book about The Wrekin, like ever!

Join George for a walk up and around The Wrekin, learn all the important landmarks and all the historical aspects of The Wrekin.

BTW: A fern ticket is the mythical permit to adventure on The Wrekin or in its magical forest. Couples spotted leaving a dance at the Forest Glen were asked. "Have you got your fern ticket?"

Wrekin Recipes
cookerybook.jpg
Recipes taught to the pupils of Wrekin Road School in 1904 with Emmie Teece's memories of the Wellington area in the years before World War One.
£2.99 All proceeds to the Wrekin Appeal

Available from : Langlands Records, Wellington; Shropshire Wildlife Trust, Abbey Foregate,  Shrewsbury

Referral spam



You've heard of email spam. There is also referral spam. These are apparent links from other sites to ours. That is, when someone includes a link to us on their site, and some one clicks on it, it sends what is called a referer (spelt incorrectly, but for us techies, correctly). This page gathers them. This way we can see, at a glance, who has been sending traffic. Usually we see google links and can see the search query, which is useful and interesting.

bad referers:
Above, the most common and offensive links have already been removed, but still some unassuming sites slip through.

However, google is the problem. You see google ranks sites by how many other site link to it. Porn sites who are furiously competitive try to get higher up in google's results by creating as many links on other sites as possible. Thus, the pay companies to pretend that someone has clicked a link from them to us. They fake it. They are fake referers. A long time ago, two years, I blocked google from seeing any such. stats/referers pages on all my machines. Thus, they are doing something quite pointless. Still they came. Indeed the plague became so bad I did more. I caught them in a honey pot, before they got to any site.

This cleaned them up, our referral pages were once more useful. Unfortunately, this is a war. Still thay come. It's an arms race. The IP addresses I ban are responsible for 99% of the smut and gore. However, some are now starting to slip through.

pornspammers.jpg
Above, a partial list of IP addresses that are banned from accessing this machine, and the referer that that IP last tried to promote. Note, this referer web address changes over time, that is, within a few seconds that one IP address will attempt to promote perhaps a hundred different porn sites.

So, I've added a new page, for editors only, here we can tick box them out of our referers. However, this needs a human to visit every 24 hours, preferably just after 10 am, when the referers for the past 24 hours are built, to delete the nasty links, before any blue rinced lovely ladies, or outraged gents see such links and after clicking through die of shock thinking us polite Wrekin people are in fact associated with such sites and could we possibly also be some sort of secret dogger group plaguing The Wrekin, according to gossip?

delete bad guys:
Above, the new refererRemover page for editors only. Tick the box and submit to remove referral spam.

Erm... We aren't we're good people battling against the baddies.

Referral spam is now explained. Now, about comment spam... Well, we're not suffering from this at the moment </touches wood>. And this is a particularly nasty form of spam, as it can be both machines, which can post millions of such comments, and humans, which are much, much harder to spot and control.


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