Three tips for ensuring that your hard work is not being stolen:

1. Check your stats – I use Mint, and check it regularly. Typically, you’ll find a link from a forum where someone has pointed out that a site in question is stealing from yours – particulary if your site has been featured on any of the online galleries
2. Copyscape – Just whack in your url and you’ll see if anyone is lifting your text, for example this guy (look just below the ironic “Where Image Meets Imagination”)
3. Pull no punches. While the best way to learn how to design websites is to look at other people’s code to see how they did things, there is no excuse for just lifting sites and changing a few images, or taking text wholesale. So don’t believe the “I was only experimenting” excuse, because I certainly don’t.

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