Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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WordPress and PHP based sites have altered and extra files – check yours!

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If you use WordPress or any other website platform that used PHP you should take a look at your files to see if any changes have been made to them in the last month.

A month or so ago I noticed that three of my WP sites suddenly said that they were using version 2.5 … heck they really weren’t even using 2.3.3 yet! Remember I was behind in my updates. So I decided to use my FTP program in order to take a look at the files on my server and much to my amazement I found that a lot of files had the date 10/4/2008 as the last time they were modified. Oddly enough I noticed the change to wp 2.5 on a few of my sites prior to all the file changes on the 10th of April. I wrote a post about it (see link above) on the 8th of April.

In addition to file date changes I found extra files some with PHP extensions, others with pngg and jpgg extensions.

I also found that a line of code had been added to the top of many of my files. Just go to your WordPress theme editor and take a look at each file for the current theme you are using to see if there is code with MD5 and debugger in it at the top. If there is you can remove the code with ends at exit >.

I went to WordPress.org to see if I could find anything about sites getting hacked or attacked and the first time I searched wordpress.org and did a Google search I didn’t find much, but last weekend I found lots of info. You can learn more by reading this WordPress security issue discussion.

Apparently a number of sites have been hit. That’s why I’m urging you to take a good look at your files to see if code has been added or if new files created.

Like I said I discovered changes on my sites shortly after they were hit – maybe April 12th or so, but I didn’t realize how widespread the problem was until I started digging deeper and got more information. I’ve basically spent a good portion of the last two weeks going over EVERY file on my web hosting server – even the /TMP directory.

It took me so long because I’ve got a lot of sites.

I even went through my Joomla CMS sites directories as well as my HTML based websites directories and I found extra and altered files there too, so if you run a few different kinds of sites don’t forget to check everything.

I also changed the passwords on all my sites as well as my server password. Every password for each of my sites is different.





Updating the Do Follow Blogroll

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Over the past week I’ve been slowly, and I mean very slowly thanks to my big allergic reaction earlier in the week, going over the Do Follow Blogroll that I maintain.

As anyone that’s part of the list or who’s spent time visiting the sites on the blogroll knows not all of the blogs listed on it are dofollow. Some have reverted back to nofollow.

While I know some have reverted back by choice and just neglected to inform me so that I could take their sites off the list, others might have changed blog themes or upgraded their blogging platform installation and forgot to turn their dofollow plugin back on.

Even I had a dofollow problem a while back. When I updated my Bad Behavior plugin it interfered with the do follow plugin. As it turns out the older version of the Google Sitemaps plugin I was using was interfering as well.

A month of so ago I updated my plugins to the latest Google Sitemaps and Bad Behavior plugins, and updated my permalinks (as some articles suggest you do that when you make changes to your site) and Ta Da … Lucia’s Linky Love dofollow plugin was working again.

So … if you happen to be using a dofollow plugin and it doesn’t appear to be working, try turning off all of your plugins and then turning them back on one by one. This might help pinpoint which ones are interfering with others. Also take a few minutes to upgrade your plugins as well and then update your permalinks.

This might just solve your problem.

Now back to what I was saying …

I’m going over the list and contacting any bloggers who’s sites don’t appear to be following anymore. If I don’t get a reply back within a reasonable amount of time or find evidence on the site, such as post stating they are no longer a dofollow blog, I’ll be removing those sites from the list.

The list is huge so it will take me some time to go over all of the sites.

If anyone does discover a site that seems to no longer be a dofollow blog I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know so that I could check the site for myself and contact the blogs owner.

BTW I’ve also been delayed in adding new sites so I’ll be going over requests shortly as well. If you request that your site be added to the list please be sure that your site really is dofollow and that it’s a few months old. I generally don’t add brand new sites to the list unless they are owned by a blogger who has other blogs that they update frequently.

I know where rainbows end up

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Just imagine if there really was a lot full of used rainbows. LOL Wouldn’t that be cool!

This week I’ve been spending my days trying to update my sites. Yes I’m still working on getting a few sites upgraded to WP 2.33 and then once that’s done I guess I’ll do it all over again for WP 2.5! Some of my sites have really old themes so I’m replacing the theme and widgetizing those sites. It’s slow and tedious work. Sometimes I think I’d rather be looking for Branson real estate or a great holiday deal than staring at my computer and tinkering with code!

Oh and I still have the flu or some kind of bug or maybe the flu that I had earlier this week bothered my Crohns … something’s still going on. I just feel yucky and feverish. Hopefully I’ll be back to as normal as I get soon!

Lost Posts and Travel Deals

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I lost a post. Earlier today I started writing a post about how we’re finally getting our DLP TV fixed. It actually ended up being kind of a rant about the company that we had purchased the TV from in the first place.

I was almost done the post, but then I noticed the time. Chris and I each had an appointment with our family doctor. So I saved the post and shut down the laptop. Unfortunately when I logged back into WP I couldn’t find the post. Grrrr.

I haven’t lost a post for a long time. I wonder what the heck happened. Certainly I was writing it for long enough that WordPress should have backed it up automatically.

Oh well. The moment is gone, and I’m sure it wasn’t the most interesting post.

I do have a couple of Travelocity deals for any of you that might be planning a trip in the future though!

NOTE: The first On the Spot deal expires today so if $46 one way airfares sounds good to you take advantage of this offer!

and then there’s this deal which offers a great price for round trip airfare. You’ve got until April 4th to take advantage of this one.

Enjoy!

Oh BTW I did find that other post. I’d meant to write it on this blog, but I guess I accidentally started it on one of my other blogs! Oops! I guess I’m still recovering from the flu. Yeah … that’s it … blame it on the flu.

Finding new themes for my blogs

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The other night I spent the whole evening trying to find new WordPress blog themes for a few of my sites.

One of my sites has a really nice theme that I like, but when visitors using IE come by and try to leave a comment they have to scroll over a huge empty space to reach the comment area. I’m not sure why that theme does that. It looks great in all the other major browsers, but has that one problem in Internet explorer.

I’m supposed to be having a new theme made for this blog. It should be ready by mid April according to the designer. However, I’m planning on updating this blog to the latest version of WP and I’m not sure this clunky old theme will hold up. It’s not widgetized and the sidebars are composed of tables! See I said it was old and clunky. That’s probably one of the reasons this site loads so slowly at times too. So this site might have a temporary theme until the custom theme is ready.

Have you spent any time looking for new themes or templates for your blog?

I came across some amazing layouts and I also came across some terribly bad ones too! Some templates were set up for ads and I don’t know what the designer was thinking as there are so many spots for ads that you might as well plug that sucker in and light it up like the digital signage in any big cities downtown area!

I did find some beautiful themes though. Some are of the new magazine style and the rest are three column themes. I’ve always been partial to themes with two sidebars even though I know ones with single sidebars usually look much more organized and cleaner.

Perhaps over the next few days I’ll spend some time writing up a post or two about the great WordPress themes that I discovered on my blogging and tech blogs. I haven’t been writing in either of those blogs much this year and I think a few articles about blog design and WP themes might be just the thing to kick start those blogs again. I’ll let you know when those posts are up and if you’re interested in finding some great WP themes you can pop over for a visit.

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