In David’s case (And I would assume most cases…), the domain was stolen by first hijacking the email address associated with the domain name registrar.  Once the email address is hijacked and the domain name transfered, the hijacker will use the domain name for their own purposes or attempt to extort money from the victim for return of the domain name.  If you read David Airey’s post, you may have noticed that the hijacker has posted requests for an extortion payment in the comments. 

Domain hijackers are the epitome of sleaze indeed…  

Better-Whois.com has a good list of tips for preventing domain name hijacking.  Below are a couple of the most important tips:

• Use an email address that you own for domain name registration.  Don’t use GMail, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc.  These addresses are more easily compromised than an address that you own, and may expire without any notice.  When I refer to an email address you own, I’m referring to an address that you have purchased from your ISP or hosting provider.
• Make sure that your contact information is up to date with domain name registrars, so that you are notified of any changes or upcoming expirations of your domains.
• Consolidate your domain name registrations so that all of your domains are registered by the same registrar.  This makes it easier to manage your domains.  Most registrars will provide you with a management console for your domains, so that you can see their status easily.

The entire article can be read here –  Better-Whois.com – SPECIAL REPORT: How to protect your domain name from hijackers, porn pirates, and your registrar

David Airey :: Graphic and Logo Designer – I’ve provided a link to David’s new site to aid in rebuilding his lost links and search rankings.

Ready.gov parody

Via Reddit

The first tip on the list is the most important:

1. if you are not, start blogging today

This is a tip for anyone who is remotely interested in blogging or anything else for that matter. Blogging is a remarkable way to share your expertise, opinions, rants, etc. in a public way. I am very new to blogging myself, and it is a lot of fun. I wish I would have started sooner.

via Problogger – Group Writing Project Winners

Image Resizer Power Toy from Microsoft
Picassa from Google

Lifehacker Articles:
Resize Images in Windows Explorer
Picasa Photo Manager

To simply resize my images, I ended up using the Image Resizer Power Toy from Microsoft. It is incredibly easy to use and does as advertised. To see what images I had to resize, go to my article titled “Build a Folding Workbench.”

It is called Subrosa, and it is designed to work with all WordPress contact forms. I successfully set it up with Contact Form ][. To see what it looks like go to my About page.

The plugin uses public key cryptography to encrypt the message. To put it simply: The message is encrypted with your public key, which is stored on your web server. When you receive the message, your private key is used to decrypt the message. Only your private key can decrypt the message.

Subrosa – Encrypted contact form plugin for WordPress

The editor also has a terrible time with images. Trying to align images and text will drive you crazy. Even if you manually edit the XHTML, it often does not save your changes. This makes it impossible to properly format a post.

For now I’ve resigned myself to accepting the limitations of the Wordpress WYSIWYG editor. It is easiest to just resize an image so that it takes up the entire width of the post area. That way you don’t have to worry about text wrapping and alignment.

If you’re interested in other text editors for Wordpress, check out the links below.

Mudbomb’s WYSIWYG Plugin for Wordpress – Plugin that replaces the existing Wordpress editor

W.Blogger – client side blog tool. Write and save posts on your local PC for publishing later. Allows you to use one tool to post to multiple blogs. Works with the most popular blog publishing systems.

Performancing – client side blog tool integrated into the Mozilla Firefox web browser.