Request for WordPress help

I need a bit of hands-on time with someone who knows how to troubleshoot WordPress installations. I recently had to upgrade my WordPress installation due to an exploit that inserted a malicious URL in one of my widgets. Since then, my spam filter has not been operating correctly. I am not sure whether Akismet is… Continue reading Request for WordPress help

I have a Patreon page

I created a Patreon page just before leaving for vacation on 2 Aug. The background to this is that while I’m now getting some regular bucks for working on NTPsec, it’s not a lot. Royalties from my books have been dwindling and my wife Cathy isn’t making all that much from legal contract gigs that… Continue reading I have a Patreon page

Spam alert

Yes, I’m aware of the spam on the blog front page. The management does not hawk dubious drugs. Daniel Franke and I just did an audit and re-secure of the blog last night, so this is a new attack. Looks like a different vector; previously the spam was edited into the posts and invisible, this… Continue reading Spam alert

Admire this?

Regulars: If you’re seeing the blog’s main page with a blue bar across the top, directly below the title, then you’re probably seeing the “Admire” theme. It’s an improvement over TwentyEleven, and I’ve figured out how to disable comment nesting. Let me know what you think: is this an improvement over the old Live Steam… Continue reading Admire this?

Hold on to your hats…

Hold on to your hats, I’m going to be experimenting with some theme and sidebar changes for the blog. Don’t be surprised if it looks different than you’re used to…

Site statistics are enabled

I finally got around to installing a site statistics plugin on this blog, about 20 minutes ago. There have since been 94 views. I’m mainly interested in the order of magnitude. Do I have 1K readers per day? 10K?, 100K? My wild-ass guess is on the order of 10K. Now we’ll see.

Berlios is dying…

I just got word that berlios.de, where I have several projects hosted including GPSD, is going to shut down at the end of the year. This is a huge pain in the ass. It means I’m going to have to bust my hump to get us to new hosting space. Moving the git repo won’t… Continue reading Berlios is dying…

Blog outage for upgrade

Hey ho, another day, another mandatory WordPress security update. There will be a brief outage. Possibly there might be a prolonged one. The management regrets any inconvenience. UPDATE: That’s done. We now return you to your regularly-scheduled flamage.

Why spamrape happens

One of my regulars writes, re the recent spam-raping of the blog >I’m still trying to figure out what the attack was. All the comments were replaced by spam? No. What happened was that on Sunday night I caught a bot in the act of replacing real comments with spam, oldest first. It was working… Continue reading Why spamrape happens

The Rape of the Blog

(Part of this is a repost. The problem it described have been solved, at least until someone finds the next hole in WordPress. I have restored it to keep the record complete.) Sometime late Sunday night or Monday, I wrote: My blog is being raped by a spambot. I first noticed about a half an… Continue reading The Rape of the Blog

This blog got wormed

This blog is one of many that got hit late last week by a particularly nasty and invasive worm targeting WordPress sites. (No, it wasn’t a botched upgrade, as I saw at least one commenter speculate.) The first symptoms showed up either late Thursday or early Friday of last week, when links from the main… Continue reading This blog got wormed

IntenseDebate is deactivated

I have deactivated IntenseDebate. Its maintainers tell me there is no way to disable pagination of comments, a feature several of my regulars justifiably complained about and I loathed. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

I may have to disable IntenseDebate

I may have to disable IntenseDebate. The interface for approving/deleting/spam-flagging posts seems broken since sometime yesterday; I suspect some sort of database problem at intensedebate.com, as my local Javascript hasn’t changed. If you have left a comment which has not appeared, have patience. I will try untangling the mess from my home machine Sunday night… Continue reading I may have to disable IntenseDebate