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Frequently Asked Questions

 

Who the heck is Scarafaggio, and how does he pronounce his name?

Scarafaggio is pronounced scah-rah-FAHZGE-ee-oh and is the Italian word for cockroach. It's also sometimes used generically for pest bugs in general, not unlike the Yiddish word vantz.

Do you get a lot of hits from Italy?

Yes.

Is this site for sale?

Not explicitly, but I'll listen to offers. If you are qualified to maintain a site of this nature and are interested in buying the domain and/or the entire site, please contact . Please note that this is a revenue-generating site and any offers will be evaluated against average and anticipated revenues, so please don't insult me with cheap offers.

Are you an exterminating company?

No, this is not an exterminating company. I spent about 25 years in the pest control business before changing careers, however, and I have been licensed in numerous pest control categories in multiple U.S. states. I also was trained in Vector-Borne Disease Control by the U.S. CDC.

Why is this site so boring?

It's not boring. It's straightforward, informative, and functional. It even has the occasional joke thrown in. If you want something more entertaining, however, then I suggest you try A Bug's Life.

Why are there so many ads and monetized links?

One reason is because hosting and bandwidth aren't free. If you like free Web content, then you should love ads. Ads pay for the content.

In the case of this particular site, the ads themselves also are intended to be educational, informative, and helpful. I've tried very hard to link to products that I personally have used, would use today if I were treating the pest problems in question, and believe are the best products for you to use. When I've linked to product search pages, I've tried to phrase the searches and use search parameters that I believe are most likely to return relevant results and the most useful products.

In short, I put quite a bit of thought and care into the ads. I consider them part of the site's useful content.

Do you get a commission when I click the ad links?

Usually you actually have to buy something or sign up for a free trial in order for me to get a commission. I don't use pay-per-click ads on this site because they typically give the webmaster little or no control over what the ads promote. I don't want to promote products or services that I wouldn't use myself.

Why can't I see your email links? / Why don't some of the links work? / Why doesn't the menu work?

I use JavaScript to make it more difficult for Web robots to harvest email addresses. JavaScript is also used to open some of the image links in lightboxes, and to make the menu and the site itself responsive to viewport size on mobile devices. If you can't see the email links, if the image links aren't working, if the site doesn't look right on a mobile device, or if the menu isn't working, then either you have JavaScript disabled, or you are using a poorly-written ad blocker that's too stupid to tell the difference between ads and content.

Can you recommend a dependable exterminator in my area?

Not at present. The founder of the International Pest Control Operators Association (IPCO), my friend John Fasoldt, passed away in October of 2018. Since then, the IPCO Web site is no longer active. If I can obtain rights to the domain and the site, I may resurrect it; but it's uncertain whether the organization will regroup even if I can obtain the rights.

Because IPCO was the only pest control operator association I know of that actually screened and evaluated companies prior to their being accepted for membership (rather than just including any company willing to pay a fee, which is how most associations do it), I no longer have a referral association that I feel comfortable recommending. I suggest you ask your neighbors who they use or check public review sites for feedback from other customers.

I have a bug that isn't listed on your site. It looks like...

If you would like to see a particular pest listed on the site, please contact , and I'll consider the pest for inclusion when the site is next updated.

What software did you use to write this site?

The current version of this site was hand-coded in PHP, HTML, and JavaScript using a code editor called WeBuilder, which is my all-time favorite PHP and general Web site code editor. It's not a WYSIWYG editor. It mainly speeds up coding, checks code for errors, and provides an integrated preview pane. It just does all of those things very, very well.

Where resizing or other image editing was necessary, I used either Affinity Photo or Affinity Designer for the newer images. The very few images carried over from older versions of the site most likely were edited with the no-longer-supported Macromedia / Adobe Fireworks.

 

About This Revision

This site was originally written in 1999 under a different domain than the current one, and has been revised several times. The most recent revision was in January 2021. The main reasons for this rewrite were:

Thank you for you interest in Scarafaggio.info.

 

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