Site Hacked… Now Running WordPress 2.5

Posted by Harmony Rousseau on Apr 8, 2008 in About This Site | 0 comments

I learned today that my site was hacked and specifically, someone inserted code in my site’s footer. I’m still not sure what, exactly, that code snippet did, but Google and StopBadaware.org thought my site “might harm your computer.”

Google generally pulls any site with questionable malware out of the search results, but when I went into my Webmaster Tools, I saw a malware warning.

Not good.

I assume the hack was caused by one of two things: an easily breakable password or a bug in the WordPress code. I’ve since changed my password and upgraded to WordPress 2.5. (If you plan to do this, be sure to back up your database and deactivate all your plugins. I had another blog which I didn’t deactivate all the plugins and ended up spending hours troubleshooting. Having learned my lesson, I deactivated everything and found the upgrade painless and without hitch.)

What is RSS? How To Subscribe To This Site’s Feed and Get Immediate Updates

Posted by Harmony Rousseau on Apr 7, 2007 in About This Site | 2 comments

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a way to deliver the content of your site so that people don’t have to visit your site to view its contents. People read your content by subscribing to your feed in their favorite feed reader software. This has a number of advantages:

1. People are notified immediately when your site is updated.
2. It’s convenient – people that read a number of different news sources and sites can read them all in one place rather than have to visit each site individually.