Category: Website News

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Increase of traffic in the spam department

Has anyone noticed a massive increase of internet spam[wiki] in the last few days? In my email and the comments on my sites, the numbers have spiked quite a bit. Some of the stuff got through, but even those numbers have been trailing off over the past 24 hours. Think the filters and blockers are catching on to whatever it is that is going on. I’d really like to knock down these people’s doors and throw a few haymakers.

Update: Looks like I’m not the only one who noticed this. Akismet made this recent post on their blog regarding amounts of spam lately. This is a WordPress must of a plugin to run on your site, and they processed three million pieces of spam in one day last week.

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Giving RadioZoom its own legs to stand on

Back in March, Andrew from Geek.Farm.Life was gracious enough to purchase the “radiozoom.net” domain for the podcast. He’s in a reverse situation than myself, living in Indiana with his American wife, and a long time listener of my podcast. I’ve posted about GFL before, so be sure to go read that to find out more about his podcast.

Until last night, the domain was a redirect to the site that I had setup within this domain. That’s much easier to market to listeners rather than saying “blah-blah-blah slash blah-blah-blah”. I’ve been content with the setup for some time, but the slight confusion of the podcast name combined with the actual URL for the podcast episodes was starting to bug me. It doesn’t give the podcast enough of a brand, at least for me, if you tell people one thing and they end up seeing another.

It took a few hours to propagate down the DNS chains, but the domain now has full control over the site. All the old links to old episodes still work. The change has allowed me to move forward with ideas that I couldn’t implement otherwise. These are more noticeable behind the scenes, and that really matters to me more than you. This also means that it’s less I have to think about while falling asleep at night.

Once again, many thanks go out to Andrew for helping to make this possible. Go check out RadioZoom.net and see for yourself.

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Confessions of a tinkerer

One thing about reading up on so many blogs and websites through RSS feeds is that you have to make an effort to actually see how some one’s design to their site looks.  If that applies to you, then you never notice how I constantly tweek the design to my site.  I can’t help it.  It’s a tad bit on the obsessive side, but I never find myself happy with what I have when it’s so easy for me to change it.

If you are one of those people who still go the “old school” route and surf into my site everyday(like all good boys and girls should), then you notice these changes.  Over the past day, I’ve done a variety of subtle to not so subtle changes to different things.  And when you start in one place, you end up doing one of two things.  You screw something else up, or that one change leads you down a path of wanting to change even more things.  It can be addictive.

I doubt that what you see will remain exactly the same for very long.  At least now you know.  I tinker.  It’s what I do.

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My blog was hacked

When I woke up this morning, I went to delete a spam comment that got through my defenses, but WordPress wouldn’t let me log in. I tried my login and password a few different times and got nothing. That’s when I started to get that feeling. You know that one I’m talking about?

“This site hacked by” whatever the name was. I’m kicking myself for not getting a screenshot of it, but there was a large wolf image with some language that I was unfamiliar with. There was also a sound file that was posted along with it. It started out with some deep voiced man saying something very foreign, followed by some drums and horns. I was still sleepy eyed and increasingly pissed off that I didn’t take in all the details.

I was able to work around WordPress and get into the SQL database, delete the post, and get my user accounts reset. On top of that, I was running WordPress 2.0.3. I might have waited too long to do the 2.0.4 upgrade that apparently had some “important security updates”.

I’m not sure how this person hacked my site, but everything seems to be back to normal. I’ve done all the neccesary steps. Backed up my site, changed all my passwords, and done needed upgrades. All this after being knocked down with a troubling sinus cold thing all this week, this morning being the first day that I’ve woke up and actually felt good. I’m totally going running right now because that’s a lot better than punching a wall.

Update: Rebecca was able to grab a screenshot of it this morning and has it on this post.

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Burn all you spam monsters! Burn!

I’ve been getting slammed recently with spam on all things WordPress related.  For a while there, it was subtle.  Just a comment or trackback every so often, usually on the same post for a series of days, even weeks.  I monitor a lot of the activity, and it’s fairly easy to clean up and block.

That was until I woke up one morning to nearly three hundred of these things.  They’re getting better at these things, too.  Comments with full sentences that actually convey thoughts across numerous posts.  The URLs are getting harder to spot for this crap as well, even if you try to moderate for people posting them into the body of the comments.

I’ve put some lines of defense up while holding my breath.  I’ve only been in the WP world for a hand full of months now.  This was bound to become a problem at some point.  Akismet is my hope for now.  Anyone have any success with it?  Or might there be something better?

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Restructuring the RSS feed of my site

I’ve been reading various sites lately where there has been a sudden revelation about RSS[wiki], or Really Simple Syndication, by several bloggers. As far as explaining this to those who still don’t know what RSS is, I really don’t want to get into too much explanation. For that, I’ll link to this post and that post. Those two gals have a pretty good grasp of what’s going on.

When I was using Blogger, I setup a RSS feed through FeedBurner, which is a great, free service that seems to syndicate damn near anything you direct at it. In fact, it’s what I still use to publish my podcasts. Making the switch WordPress, I let all my RSS needs be served through it and forgot about FeedBurner. I knew a few people were subscribed through it, so it has stayed afloat. That’s really about it.

Today, I dove back into FeedBurner and discovered lots of benefits in pushing my RSS feeds through their service. It makes total sense, and I think I might have screwed some people up when I changed the permalinks on my blog a few weeks ago. Hopefully you’re all still with me and will forgive the error of my oversight there.

I encourage you to subscribe to the (beefed up) feed:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/audihertzrss

I also emplore you to learn more about RSS and how to use it. I use it to swarm through sites and pages of information every single day. It saves a lot of time and keeps the latest news coming in as soon as I want it to. (Insert annoying voice over guy here) And you can too!

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Ringtones and Wallpapers

I’m trying something a little new and branching out with my creative endeavors. I’ve added a new section to my site called “Downloads“. This is where I will be posting various things for anyone to use for whatever purpose it is.

Essentially, I am doing my best to share the ringtones that I have been creating lately. Additionally, I’ve been playing around with some of my amateur photography skills to create wallpapers for computer desktops. I’m still learning, but since I have found some satisfaction in my own personal use, I thought that I should share.

I would love to get feedback from people as I expand the library. I’ll do my best to make a post here when I do update any of the collections.

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I Told You I was Going to Do It

As of today, I break my ties with Blogger. The ride was fun, but I just could not do everything that I wanted to with their service. Combine my podcasting efforts with everything else I would like to be doing with blogging, it was just time to make a change. And yes, welcome to the world of WordPress. If you think this is a dramatic change, try diving head first into learning how it works. I’m sure I have a lot more to learn, but I have a pretty good grasp on what’s going on.

On top of that, I decided that up till this point, I had blogged myself into a corner in terms of the structure and conduct with the way this site had become. The weird name for my domain is one thing, but I felt that I could not branch out as easily unless I did something drastic. All the old posts are here, but I cannot say if they made it over in one piece. We’ll find out about that as we go along. The pictures are here as well. I also have a much easier way of uploading and posting them now, so expect more of those in the future. It’s a far cry from hand encoding them. Yes, I’m that old school and picky sometimes.

What’s going to happen in the future? I really cannot tell you at this point. I just feel better with this change and the flexibility I have now.

This might be unveiled sooner than I anticipated, but this is what happens when Rebecca works unexpectedly late, even on Valentine’s Day.