Tarheel Media has completed one of our most significant client-service investments of the year: an extensive rebuilding and expansion of the Tarheel Media Knowledge Base.

What was once a collection of eight aging support articles has become a comprehensive library of more than 80 detailed guides. These articles document the systems, applications, infrastructure, and services our customers actually use.

The new Knowledge Base provides organized guidance for account access, customer support, website hosting, Cyno, Tarheel Stats, email, domains, security, billing, and Tarheel Cloud.

Then: 8 aging support articles
Now: More than 80 detailed customer guides

A Significant Investment in Our Clients

The new Knowledge Base is more than an expanded frequently asked questions page.

Each article was reviewed, rewritten, expanded, or created specifically for Tarheel Media customers. The objective was to document not only where to find a feature, but also how it works, when to use it, what to expect, and how to avoid common problems.

Customers can now find detailed information about:

• Cyno website editing and content management
• Tarheel Stats and website analytics
• ChatGPT and AI-assisted report analysis
• Website Manager
• Advanced website-hosting controls
• Email configuration, security, and troubleshooting
• Domain registration, transfers, DNS, and Cloudflare
• Website files, databases, backups, logs, and security
• Account access and credential protection
• Support priorities and outage reporting
• Billing, renewals, storage, and bandwidth
• Tarheel Cloud

Cyno Is Now Documented for the First Time

This project marks the first time we have comprehensively documented Cyno, Tarheel Media’s flagship content-management and visual website-editing system.

Cyno allows customers to work directly from the front of their websites using a live visual editor. Instead of trying to imagine how a backend setting will affect a page, authorized users can point, click, type, drag, preview, and save their changes in a visual workspace.

The new Cyno Website Management guides explain how to:

• Open a page in the live visual editor
• Edit text, buttons, links, images, and media
• Understand sections, columns, and content elements
• Add, duplicate, move, and remove content
• Preview mobile and responsive layouts
• Edit headers, footers, and shared content
• Create and duplicate pages
• Manage website navigation and dropdown menus
• Save, preview, undo, and publish changes
• Troubleshoot common editing problems

Customers who maintain their own website content now have a structured reference they can consult whenever they need it.

Start with the Cyno Website Editor →

Put Tarheel Stats to Work

Tarheel Stats provides substantially more information than a basic visitor counter. It helps customers understand how people discover a website, what they do after arriving, which content attracts attention, and whether website activity supports meaningful business objectives.

The new Tarheel Stats and Analytics guides explain how to evaluate:

• Visits, unique visitors, and pageviews
• Engagement and popular content
• Traffic from search engines and referring websites
• Marketing campaigns
• Visitor locations, devices, and profiles
• Visitor transitions and journeys
• Goals, conversions, and ecommerce activity
• Website-performance reports
• Traffic from ChatGPT and other AI assistants
• Custom dashboards, reporting periods, and visitor segments

The documentation also explains how to choose meaningful date ranges, compare reports, configure goals, customize dashboards, and distinguish useful patterns from misleading statistics.

Learn how to use Tarheel Stats →

Analytics You Can Talk To

Tarheel Stats also includes ChatGPT and contextual AI Insights.

These capabilities can help turn a complicated analytics report into an understandable conversation. Customers can ask questions, request explanations, identify possible trends, and explore potential next steps without having to interpret every chart alone.

The Knowledge Base explains:

• How to use the main ChatGPT workspace
• How the green AI Insights buttons work
• What report information is provided to the assistant
• How to ask useful follow-up questions
• The difference between general chat and contextual report analysis
• How to evaluate AI-generated suggestions responsibly
• What to do when an AI feature reports an error or rate limit

This makes Tarheel Stats more approachable for customers who want useful answers without becoming analytics specialists.

Learn how to use ChatGPT and AI Insights →

Get More From Website Manager

Website Manager provides customers with a detailed view of their Tarheel Media websites, email accounts, storage, databases, and hosting resources.

The new documentation explains where to find these controls and how to understand the information Website Manager provides.

Depending on the account and service plan, customers can use Website Manager to:

• View hosted websites and account status
• Manage email accounts, aliases, and passwords
• Review mailbox and website-storage usage
• Monitor bandwidth consumption
• Review database limits
• See warnings and recommended corrective actions
• View projected bandwidth usage based on current activity
• Access website statistics
• Open eligible management and control-panel tools

Website Manager can even project whether current traffic patterns are likely to exceed a hosting account’s bandwidth before the end of the billing period. This gives customers an opportunity to investigate unusual activity, optimize a website, or arrange additional capacity before usage becomes disruptive.

Understand website storage and bandwidth →

Advanced Web Hosting Guidance

Eligible self-managed hosting customers also have access to advanced hosting controls.

The new Website Hosting section documents website files, databases, PHP versions, scheduled tasks, redirects, subdomains, application installers, traffic reports, error logs, backups, security tools, and other advanced functions.

Customers can learn how to:

• Upload and manage website files
• Create and manage databases
• Change supported PHP versions and settings
• Create scheduled tasks
• Configure redirects and subdomains
• Install supported website applications
• Find website logs and traffic reports
• Understand backups and restoration
• Protect directories
• Diagnose website problems
• Maintain a self-managed website securely

Advanced control-panel access depends on the customer’s service plan and whether a website is managed by Tarheel Media or self-managed.

Explore advanced hosting management →

Guidance for the Services You Already Use

The Knowledge Base also provides extensive guidance covering:

• Email setup for phones, tablets, Outlook, and Thunderbird
• Email aliases, forwarding, automatic replies, storage, and spam filtering
• SPF, DKIM, DMARC, greylisting, bounces, and delivery problems
• Account passwords, two-factor authentication, phishing, and compromised accounts
• Submitting and tracking support tickets
• Response priorities and reporting service outages
• Nameservers, DNS, Cloudflare, and reverse proxies
• Domain registration, renewal, incoming transfers, and outgoing transfers
• Website backups, storage, bandwidth, SSL certificates, and migrations
• Billing terms, renewals, suspension, and restoring service
• Tarheel Cloud accounts and shared resources

Two Convenient Ways to Visit

The new Knowledge Base is public, searchable, mobile-friendly, and available whenever it is needed.

Visit Directly

Go directly to:

kb.tarheel.media

Visit Through Your Tarheel Media Account

Customers can also:

1. Sign in to Tarheel Media.
2. Open the Support Center.
3. Select the Knowledge Base.

When accessed through the Support Center, the Knowledge Base opens in a convenient lightboxed view without requiring customers to leave the Tarheel Media website.

Built to Help Our Clients Accomplish More

This project reflects our continuing commitment to giving Tarheel Media customers better tools, clearer information, and greater visibility into the services supporting their businesses.

The Knowledge Base will continue to grow as our services evolve, new features are introduced, and customers identify subjects that would benefit from additional guidance.

We encourage every customer to explore the new resource, bookmark it, and return whenever a question arises.

Explore the New Tarheel Media Knowledge Base →

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The post AI SEO Service by Tarheel Media Transforming Manual SEO with LLMs and Continuous Competitor Monitoring appeared first on Tarheel Media Digital Marketing.

We are expecting this update to take about 9 hours but could run longer if a transfer fails and has to be restarted.

Start Time: Sunday, March 30, 2025 @ 1:00 am

Expected End Time: Monday, March 31, 2025 @ 10:00 am

The post Maintenance Window appeared first on Tarheel Media Digital Marketing.

Polyfill.io supply‑chain incident: what happened

In the past few days a supply‑chain incident involving Polyfill.io disrupted a large number of websites. Polyfill.io, a service that delivers small JavaScript polyfills to add missing browser features, allegedly distributed suspicious code that injected into many sites. Some reports estimate the impact reached more than 100,000 domains. Operators and investigators took the Polyfill.io domain offline while they responded.

How Cloudflare responded

Cloudflare moved quickly to reduce exposure. The company replaced references to Polyfill.io with a secure mirror served through cdnjs and has said it never recommended Polyfill.io. Cloudflare’s action reduced the risk of further automatic propagation through CDNs and reverse proxies.

Polyfill.io’s response and ownership concerns

Polyfill.io has publicly disputed the allegations. At the same time, reporting shows the project was in the process of being acquired by a Chinese firm, which raised additional concern because of that buyer’s reported ties to the Chinese government. Polyfill.io’s public statement is here: https://twitter.com/Polyfill_Global/status/1805923380857897277.

Who this affects

We do not use Polyfill.io, so our systems were not directly dependent on it. However, sites that relied on CDNs, reverse proxies, or other intermediaries sometimes received Polyfill.io assets even if the site owner never included them directly. That’s why some organizations saw collateral impact despite not calling Polyfill.io in their own code.

What you should do now

Remove any references to Polyfill.io from your projects and replace them with a trusted alternative. Cloudflare’s cdnjs mirror offers a non‑breaking option that serves the same polyfill content. Also audit other third‑party front‑end dependencies, and prefer self‑hosting critical libraries or pinning and hosting copies you control when practical.

Offer of help and next steps

If you want assistance locating or replacing Polyfill.io references, or if you’d like a broader audit of third‑party scripts and CDNs, we can help. We will continue to monitor the situation and share verified updates as more information becomes available

The post Breaking News: Web Service Scandal Unfolds with Polyfill.io and Cloudflare appeared first on Tarheel Media Digital Marketing.

Betsy Ross was born in Elizabeth Griscom in 1752, was an upholsterer in Philadelphia during the American Revolutionary era. Although the story that she sewed the first U.S. flag is likely apocryphal, Ross did create flags for the Revolutionary War effort.  Legend has it that in the summer of 1776 (or possibly 1777), General George Washington visited Ross to discuss a design for the new nation’s flag.  According to the tale, Betsy finalized the design, arguing for stars with five points (instead of six) for practical cutting.

We have also set our pride logo for the dates of June 14 through July 14 to represent this occasion.  We feel this flag connects our company to America’s founding era, emphasizing our roots and commitment to American values.  The Betsy Ross design evokes nostalgia for simpler times and celebrates the enduring spirit of the nation.  Additionally, we feel associating with this iconic flag enhances our brand image and resonates with patriotic customers.

The post June 14: Congress Adopts Betsy Ross Flag appeared first on Tarheel Media Digital Marketing.

The post Email Phishing Alert appeared first on Tarheel Media Digital Marketing.

As it turns out, this has now become a very big deal, even Linus and other popular YouTubers are sounding the alarms with the FBI issuing a new warning about this scam and a scam that uses the exact same tactics to appear as if someone is sending email from the FBI, itself.

How does this scam work?

This scam works by an attacker first compromising the email of a victim, usually a business owner or someone very high up in that business that other victims wouldn’t generally question.  They sit and watch how they conduct business and then will very closely mimic language and regiments of that business owner or business person.

Once they have enough information to construct a conversation that would appear to be exactly that person, they attack by sending out emails requesting money or private information (PII) which helps them collect money in fraudulent bank accounts from other victims.

What we have done

The attack on our customer only happened through Microsoft because it cannot happen on our servers.  We are using both SPF and DMARC DNS records for our email services which specifically lets other email providers know when there is something wrong – that is someone who sent out an email that did not physically come from the IP address listed in those records.   Unless the receiving provider doesn’t check these records, it is an impossibility for someone to get an email from one of our customers and not know something is amiss.

Otherwise, there isn’t much we can do further until other technologies develop.

The post FBI WARNING: Dangerous new email scam appeared first on Tarheel Media Digital Marketing.

How this attack works

These attacks do not require a server or network vulnerability. Attackers overwhelm resources with legitimate-looking requests to exhaust CPU, memory, connection slots, or packet-handling capacity. Imagine a PO box that receives so much bulk mail in one day the post office must start returning mail because there’s no room — that’s what a DDOS does to a server.

This is what tipped us off:

What we observed

Typical VLAN traffic averages about 35 kbps. During the attack we saw interfaces stuck at 4+ Mbps, which is alarming even though the network can carry more than 10 Gbps. The problem here is packets-per-second that strain routers, not raw bandwidth. If we weren’t using octa-core routers and modern edge filters, some services would have dropped.

All traffic used user-agents reporting Mac 11 and Chrome 87, which we believe are forged. The bulk of requests originated from IP ranges in China, with occasional sources in the U.S., EU, and Russia. Right now they appear to be targeting an American Christian church site for bandwidth exhaustion.

On other sites, such as an office furniture site, attackers retried repeatedly over several hours to force downtime:

Mitigation status

So far we have mitigated the attack and it has not grown in strength. We have seen short bursts since it began, but upstream filters and our edge rules have been effective.

We have collected more than 11,000 IPs making blanket requests. As upstream providers apply filters, the attackers’ effectiveness drops and the attack eases.

The attack pattern looks random across subnets and networks. It does not appear to target a specific site type beyond being U.S.-focused.

UPDATES

5:46 am: Our upstream providers report this may form part of a larger campaign meant to strain United States internet infrastructure. They see similar attacks across many customers.

5:52 am: We have almost entirely neutralized the initial DDOS surge.

11:00 am: Attackers shifted to Slowloris-style tactics, attempting to hold many slow connections and strain servers at the application layer. We adjusted timeouts and connection handling and again mitigated these attempts. The transition is visible below:

3:35 pm: Issue closed. Attacks have ceased and we do not expect further impact to our services at this time.

We will continue to monitor traffic and remain in constant contact with upstream providers. If anything changes, we will post updates here.

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CELEBRATING THE EMPTY TOMB!

We wish everyone a happy holiday season!

HE IS RISEN!

Matthew 28:6, Luke 24:6

The post Empty Tomb Celebration: Limited Support and Services appeared first on Tarheel Media Digital Marketing.

A NEW WAY TO EDIT

If you’re familiar with our old framework, this one screenshot alone will more than tickle most of our clients.  Gone are the days of opening a box and editing text on your website.  Now, you simply edit your website just like you would edit a document in a word processor like Microsoft Word.  Virtually everything from the header, and the footer, to the content of a page or blog post can be edited or added in the exact same context you just saw.

IT'S A SPEED DEMON!

But that’s not quite all.  The powerhouse that Cyno is isn’t just in its editor but in its modular design with you at the helm.  That means this new framework is truly scalable to your needs, a genuine one-size-fits-all framework for any website solution.   I imagine that sounds a bit odd, so allow me to explain.

Cyno works differently than other frameworks.  It has many modules you would need for a website – counters, meters, blog postcards, archives, projects, product pages, image CSS, and JS tricks (lazyload, etc),  the works!  However, these modules simply don’t load until you’re ready to use them. Then, and only then are they enqueued into the website’s javascript and back-end PHP meaning your website uses fewer resources by using only the resources it needs which means your website runs LEANER and FASTER both on the server and in the client’s web browser!  This optimization alone has improved our clients’ websites (and ours) by over 560% by simply not loading modules that aren’t necessary for your solution.

INBUILT SEO

Cyno comes with its own SEO solution using Generative AI to automatically flag content and tag it so search engines know how to better categorize your content.  And this all happens without you even knowing.

GETTING UPGRADED

The best thing is, the upgrade to Cyno is likely less expensive than you might think. Only costs us an average of 3 hours per upgrade, the biggest cost will be the per-domain license for other proprietary software we use in this framework which includes our cost in the inclusion and support of premium WordPress plugins such as FileBird which our framework depends on. For less than $400.00, your website will not only look awesome, but you can manage the content in a more meaningful way while preserving its original awesomeness.

For that price, you can expect significant visual improvements to your website as well as new features you can deploy yourself and with little to no design knowledge or web development skill whatsoever.

The post Cyno™: A revolutionary way to manage website content appeared first on Tarheel Media Digital Marketing.