Obviously when you are the owner of a website, you’d want to allow visitors from all over the world to access your website. However, there are times when there is a need to block visitors from some countries on a certain webpage or vice versa. One good example is when you host a local contest online and you only want people from your own country to participate. Allowing visitors from your country while blocking the rest is the way to go, so there is no need to manually prune ineligible participants when choosing the winner. If you don’t have a powerful server that can handle the load created by unknown or unimportant bots, it is also best to temporarily block them from accessing your website.

The easiest way to block visitors from a country is by using .htaccess because we can do it ourselves through FTP without installing or messing with the iptables firewall rules. Here we have different places to obtain a generated country IP list in CIDR format for free and another method using a cloud-based web application firewall.

An important note if you want to block visitors by country using htaccess. Make sure you periodically generate a new list because the IP address database changes from time to time or else you might either miss or wrongly block visitor from other countries.
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Every web services must run on a port or else the service will be inaccessible. For example, when you visit a website, your web browser automatically connects to the web server using port 80 because that is the standard port registered in the IANA organization. It is also possible to configure a web server to run under a different port number such as 8080 and since the web browser connects to port 80 by default, you’ll need to instruct the web browser to visit the URL using the different port by adding the port 8080 at the end such as http://www.website.com:8080

Even if you are trying to host a temporary game server, connect to a CCTV, remotely access your router configurations, download media files using a BitTorrent client such as uTorrent, all of the actions mentioned above requires an open listening port for optimal usage and in some cases it won’t work at all if the port is closed.

Fortunately most modern routers already support UPnP whereby the router automatically opens and forwards the required port when it is triggered by the software, saving you the trouble of manually accessing your router settings to forward a port. The only problem is, how do you know whether the port forwarding either manually created by you or automatically through UPnP worked? Here we have 5 web services which you can use to test if the forwarded port is open or closed.
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There are multiple ways to download files from the internet. Still one of the most popular methods is using BitTorrent, but downloading your files from a Cyberlocker is also common. A Cyberlocker is an online file storage service that you can upload files to and then give the links to other users so they can download your files from the service. The most well known service, Rapidshare, is long gone, but others like RapidGator, Uploaded and ZippyShare are names you might have heard of.

While most cyberlocker type services have a free download option, it’s usually restricted in some way. It will usually be by restricting the number of downloads in a certain time period and/or capping download speeds. The number of online file hosting services changes all the time and some get shut down while other new ones appear, but there’s always several to choose from.

To try and keep your uploaded files available for longer, using a service to upload a file to a number of these services at once is quite useful. You only have to upload the file once and it’s automatically redistributed to the selected hosting services. Here we list a total of 15 file spreading or multi host services which will allow you to distribute your files onto several cyberlocker sites in one go.
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It’s probably a good bet that most computer users at some point would like to know where the location of a website is, or to trace a location of an individuals IP address to a region or country. There are many reasons for this, and it could be simply because you are curious as to the origin of a particular company or service before deciding to use it. If you’re a webmaster it’s very useful to know the trends of what people are doing on your website and where they’re coming from, and the IP address of users helps to achieve this.

As an IP address is something each user on the internet is allocated, it’s not that difficult to find out various details as to where the address is currently originating from as long as you know how to get hold of this information. Many services can trace a particular IP address and even pin it down to the town or city it’s currently being used in, as well as telling you the service provider and various other details about where it’s coming from. No personal information such as names, phone numbers or location addresses can be found in this way.
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If you’ve ever posted your email address publicly in online forums or in the comment area of a blog, it is very likely to get harvested by spammers to send unsolicited emails to you. Another common way for spammers to easily and quickly create a database of email addresses is by using software to automatically generate millions of email addresses from a dictionary file and so coincidentally your username is found in their dictionary. This is why a newly registered and unused email address can still receive spam.

The currently most used method to fight spam is to block it using an anti spam system which is either pre-installed in your email server, installing as a plugin to your email client software or a standalone program on your computer. Another way to fight spammers is to bounce a non-delivery notification back to the sender which they might take you off their email address list. Here we have 5 tools which you can use to bounce email back to sender.
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FTP client software is normally used to connect to FTP servers for transferring files to the remote server. There is quite a lot of free FTP client software available to choose from but one of the most popular, if not the most popular is FileZilla. It is a fully fledged FTP client available in both installer and portable versions and is frequently updated and released under the GPL license which is not just free, but staying that way too.

However there are times when we need to quickly access an FTP server from another computer to upload a file without going through the hassle of downloading, installing, configuring a full FTP client software such as FileZilla and uninstalling the program after we’ve finished using it.

Here are 5 free and easy ways to do it.
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mIRC is a very popular software that is used to connect to IRC servers and chat anonymously with other users. The overall usage of IRC has declined a lot over the past few years with users jumping ship to instant messengers such as Windows Live Messenger, and now to mobile chatting applications such as WhatsApp, Viber, Skype, WeChat, etc. Although IRC is not commonly being used these days, there are still some small and independent companies that uses IRC as a channel to offer free chat support. Downloading and installing an IRC client software such as mIRC just for a quick use may seem a bit overkill. Other than that, it is also possible that a firewall in a company or educational facility may be blocking port 6660-6669 and 7000 (SSL) used by IRC.

An easier solution to avoid installing unnecessary software and bypassing your firewall restriction is to use a web-based IRC client. All you need is a modern web browser and an Internet connection. Since a web based IRC client uses port 80 instead of 6667-7000, it is able to bypass most firewalls because firewall policies normally allow port 80 for their users to access websites. Here we have a total of 6 ways for you to quickly get connected to IRC servers without relying on installing third party software.
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Surfing the Internet seems easy by first connecting to the Internet through your ISP, running your favorite web browser software, typing in the URL to the address bar and hitting the Enter key to start loading the website. It is very straight forward and user friendly if everything goes well but could be frustrating if one of your favorite websites that you visit a few times a day suddenly does not load while other sites are working fine.

Other than instantly ruling out that the website is temporarily inaccessible, there are many other reasons that can be causing this which is your Internet Service Provider is blocking the website, your DNS server is not resolving to the updated IP address, or even your computer is quietly blocking it through HOSTS file. The first step is to make sure that the website is completely inaccessible by everyone and not you alone. A logical way to confirm it is by asking your friends or relatives if they are experiencing the same problem but that wouldn’t be appropriate if it’s in the middle of the night and can get annoying if you’re doing that too often.

Here are 5 online services that you can use to check and confirm if the website is down for everyone or just you alone without bothering other people.
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Using the latest version of software is very important as it contains new features and bug fixes. Some software comes with an update checker where it is capable of notifying the user if they are running the latest version or an older version that requires an update. If the software doesn’t come with an update checking feature, you can visit the official website or software download portals such as CNET Download.com or Softpedia where the version number or date of release is stated on the website so you’ll know if you need to update it.

However, there are some coders that creates really great software but don’t care about publicity at all. Hence they don’t have a website that contains all the information to show when it was last updated nor the file is submitted to download portal websites. It seems like the only way to know if the software has been updated or not is by manually downloading it to your computer and check the version number of the software.

Here we have 5 ways for you to check whether a file in a website has been updated or not without downloading it to your computer to save your time and Internet bandwidth.
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A website can consist many types of files such as images, text, cascading style sheets, javascripts and etc to construct the website’s layout. Any experienced users will be able to identify the items being requested when a website is loaded using Firebug and viewing the Net tab. If you’re trying to analyze a website especially a malware infected one, you wouldn’t want to do that because it would mean that the malware is already downloaded onto your computer.

One of a good and safe way to list all the files from a URL is by using File2HD, a free web service where it can list every single file that is pulled from the link that you entered and you can conveniently download it to your computer by clicking on the result. Other than that, it also offers premium service to help you download thousands of MP3 from Myspace even if they are disabled and not available to download.
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What if I was to ask you “What is your favorite search engine?”. I think the vast majority of you would say “Google” without too much hesitation, and probably rightly so, it’s a very good search engine. Looking at some of the more recent statistics, the giant that is Google has around 90% share of the whole search engine market. The next highest is Microsoft’s Bing with a tiny 4% by comparison. Of course, there may be some slight differences of opinion over a favorite search engine as opposed to the one that gets used most often. Because Google is the default choice in popular web browsers like Firefox and Chrome, most users just use whatever the default is and don’t bother, or don’t know how to change it.

I have to say, my favorite web search engine is definitely Google and I’ve been using it for many years, way back to before it became really well known. If I can’t find anything that I’m looking for in Google, I’d usually just give up. Sometimes it’s probably just simple laziness on my part to not bother searching in other search engines for the same thing, the results would probably be the same anyway, right? But on average, if you did a Google search and then a Yahoo or Bing search using the same search words, they will actually not be the same! It is said that 70% of the first 100 results you get from each engine you try will be different. If you think about it, this makes sense because each company will use different code and search algorithms as well as differing in their ways at filtering useless or undesirable content etc.

What could be of use sometimes then, is physically performing a search in more than one search engine, there might just be that one website that shows up in one and not the others which could make the difference. Wouldn’t it be great if you could do this by using more than one search engine at once? Well fortunately, there is a way that you can! I found a way that can save my time (and yours) and get more results in less time.
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With hundreds of millions websites on the Internet today, there are tons of information that can be found using search engine such as Google and Bing. New websites are being created every day, thanks to the free blog publishing services such as Blogger/Blogspot and WordPress that allows anyone to have their own website live on the Internet within minutes without any technical webhosting knowledge. All of these websites are not necessarily in English and some of the really good articles are written and published in other languages such as Chinese, German, French and etc. Sometimes when we searched for something that is so rarely being published or discussed on the Internet, it is possible that we find some results that aren’t in English.

The first step in trying to get the webpage with unrecognizable foreign language properly translated is to find out what is the language being used. It is nearly impossible to make a wild guess because there are thousands of main languages, but thankfully here are 8 ways that you can use to automatically identify the language on any text written on the webpage.
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Sometimes you might have a need to send an email to somebody but you don’t want it to remain on their computer, for security or personal reasons. Unfortunately, it just isn’t possible using the normal emailing system to send an email to somebody and have it auto delete itself after they have read it or after a certain period of time, just think of the kinds of security issues that would bring.

Although you can’t do it with your normal emails, there is an alternative which is basically the next best option. That is to use a secure web service where you can leave your message, then you email and send a unique link for the message to the other user and they can visit the webpage and view what’s written. The link and the message both expire after viewing or a set period of time meaning your message never existed.

Here we have found a selection of online services that can help you send a secure private message that will self destruct afterwards. It’s not left on a server somewhere, not in another users mail application, can’t be accidentally forwarded and it can’t be read by anyone else apart from who you sent it to.
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Something you might need to do now and again is convert a document or a type of text file to the Portable Document Format (PDF). Although there are several tools that can handle this task including freeware, quite often they need to install some sort of driver files and set themselves up as printer devices which might not be something you really want to add to your computer if you’re only going to use it once in a while.

An obvious solution is to turn to the internet because there is a wealth of options available for you to upload your file, get it converted, and then download it. This means you don’t have to install a piece of software or any of the drivers or devices they keeping your computer clean from unneeded extra’s. Here’s a selection of 7 free online services that will let you convert a multitude of different formats to PDF quickly and easily.
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It’s pretty much the case these days that for the majority of things you do on the internet, you are required to create some form of account which asks for email addresses and names, even for the most innocuous of things. You might click on a link to read a newspaper or magazine or website article and it asks you to create an account to be able to read it fully. Similarly several eCommerce sites want a full name, address and email account before they will even give you an idea of the item’s shipping cost.

The list of sites that want your details even if you’re going to be visiting only for a minute or two is endless, but of course private or invite only sites and those which offer paid services such as movie streaming you can fully understand needing an account. Quite often an easy way is to use fake personal name and address details, then use a temporary disposable email address so you don’t get spammed but you have somewhere your account activation emails can be sent to temporarily.

A simpler way to get around not having to register on a website yourself with real or fake details, is to use someone else’s details that they have willingly shared with you. Just enter the supplied user name and password and off you go. Here’s some useful sites that do just that and offer shared login details that someone else has created for a website but you are free to use as well.
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