The cat’s out of the bag…

Well, I’ve been keeping something from you, and the time has come to fess up. It’s all about this…

Note the “Modules Menu” across the top under the header graphic. There are some more revealing snapshots below, but first, a little background…

Some time back I emailed all members of The Hacker’s Nightmare to advise that in future I would be publishing most of my posts, warnings, notifications and articles on this blog. Prior to that I had always corresponded with members exclusively via e-mail, but I was always fighting…

Mail failures & other challenges

With any large membership list there is always going to be a percentage of members who want to receive your messages but won’t get them, often through no fault of the sender or receiver. Such are the vagaries of e-mail (not to mention some of the stupid practices engaged in by many “providers”).

Anyway, even using the most reliable of commercial e-mail delivery services, it got to the point where various forms of delivery failures were happening so often that I had to rethink my communications channel.

Another advantage of going the blog route is that it makes useful information and timely warnings available to a wider audience.

While members will always have their perks and advantages, it has long concerned me that so many people are vulnerable and exploitable because often they just don’t know that plain language help — advice that THEY can understand and implement — really is available.

At least with a publicly accessible blog there is always a chance those folks will stumble across it, especially one like this that is steadily climbing the popularity rankings.

Guilty As Charged!

But of late I’ve been very conscious of the fact that my communications haven’t been as frequent as they used to be in the pre-blog days. Some of our long-standing members have voiced concern and to that I must plead no contest.

My publication slow-down was definitely not through design, laziness or lack of interest, but their dissatisfaction is justified never-the-less.

So now I’ll offer up my excuse. I hope it’s good enough.

In My Defense, Your Honour

You see, for the past several months I’ve been completely absorbed in creating a new membership site, and unfortunately something had to give way. Publishing the sort of articles I like to provide would have taken valuable time away from that development, which I consider to be very, very important. And I hope you will see it that way too.

The new site will replace The Hacker’s Nightmare member site and will be closely integrated with this blog. Here are a few of the most important points, some of which I will expand on further in future posts:

• This blog will stay public; it will not be hidden behind the membership site login;
• The Hacker’s Nightmare e-book is to be withdrawn from sale;
• The current Hacker’s Nightmare member site will disappear;
• Existing Hacker’s Nightmare members will be automatically grandfathered into the new membership;
• Although the blog will remain public, the membership site will be available to members only;
• Members will benefit from a number of perks, bonuses and special services, as well as having full access to all the reference material, none of which will be available to the general public.

I’ll have more to say about those and other changes in the near future, but right now I need to clarify two of those points:

1. Although The Hacker’s Nightmare e-book will be withdrawn from
sale, all of the material from these substantial resources…

• The Hacker’s Nightmare
• Seven Steps to a Clean PC
• The E-Mail Encryption Guide
• Spam Warfare

…will be included on the new site in a new format.

All of that material, much of it updated, PLUS a lot of new stuff you haven’t seen before, has been categorized into topic-specific modules. The graphic above that I opened with shows some of those modules on the Modules Menu across the top of every page. Each Module has its own Topic Menu down the left-hand side of every page.

Call that a “beta peek” — the page design and layout might change before or after public opening. I’ve been much more concerned with providing lots of quality content than with appearance, although I do think the appearance passes muster for the time being. Also, no doubt more Modules will be added as time passes.

2. Now a few words about the automatic inclusion of existing members
into the new site. In the interests of brevity I’ll refer to those
dedicated people as Old Members.

Old Members won’t have to do anything to gain access to the new site. Once I close the old site and open the new, your existing login credentials should still work fine.

When you purchased The Hacker’s Nightmare I promised you lifetime membership of the member site, and I’m not going to go renege on that promise just because the site is changing. Old members will have full and permanent access to all the reference material.

But what Old Members won’t have automatic access to is some of the services and bonuses that are completely new to the new membership site. There’s a good reason for that:

These services cost me real money, ongoing, but I’ll be providing them to members either free or at-cost, as a benefit of membership.

New Member Benefits

Bonuses and benefits for members are something I’ll be working on continuously. For now I’ll just mention one so you’ll understand that I really am going to be absorbing costs.

Every monthly member will be entitled to free registration of a domain name of their choice PLUS free website hosting for that domain name PLUS a personal website displaying any of your own details that you wish to share PLUS a personalized Contact Form on the website.

The Contact Form is an important security and anti-spam feature that I’ll discuss further in a future post.

I’ve made the website creation process so simple that absolutely anyone can take advantage of it. You order your personal domain name via a simple form in the member’s area. Then, all you need do to get your personal website up and running is answer some straight-forward questions on another short and simple form. The same form allows you to upload an image if you wish.

And be assured this is no server-in-my-basement setup. Your personal website will be professionally hosted on a fast 64-bit web server running Windows Server 2008, located in a professionally managed data-centre.

And yes, you will OWN the domain name. It won’t be owned by us and just loaned out to you, a ploy used by some unscrupulous membership site managers. If at any time you should decide to cancel your membership the domain name is still yours. Of course you will lose your free hosting if you leave us, but that’s something you can take up with any commercial provider.

So What Will This Cost?

The normal monthly membership cost has not been finalized yet, but I guarantee there will be no shocks, no unpleasant surprises.

Membership will be open to new members for a very reasonable monthly fee.

Old Members, who will have free access to all the reference material, will also be eligible for a significant discount on the full membership, thus gaining unrestricted access to all the new bonuses, services and facilities as well.

Stay Up-To-Date

If you would like to be kept informed of progress and developments with the new membership site just provide your name and e-mail address below. Whenever I have new information to share relating to the new site you’ll be notified.

Given the numbers involved I’m probably going to have to to restrict membership numbers initially, as I have to be sure we can service members properly. Also, we just wouldn’t be able to handle hundreds of simultaneous requests for the free website hosting.

Everybody will be catered for eventually, but at the outset preference will be given to those people who register their interest in the new site. So to avoid delay please register below now!

If you have any interest at all in your online welfare and the health of your computer you should stay tuned. I’ll be describing and demonstrating some surprising features.