This blog was hacked today, and since I was away from my computer from the early morning until supper time, I have no idea when it happened, exactly, or why. So I’m not taking it personally. Rather, I am now in the process of reconstructing the blog from my backup. If you use WordPress and have any hints on how I might beef up the security here, please feel free to post your advice.

Although my backup is of recent vintage, it is not right up to date, so I definitely have few posts that I need to reconstruct. But if you check back in a day or so, I will probably have everything restored. That’s the plan, anyway.

– RC

UPDATE:

It’s 10:49 pm, and I think I’ve got everything back to normal. Again, if any WordPress users out there know of a good plugin to enhance the security of WordPress, please do tell. I’ve already changed all of my passwords, uninstalled a few plugins, and added an htaccess file to stop anyone but a user on my home computer from accessing the wp-admin directory. Suggestions?

This morning and afternoon, I’ve been fiddling with a new template for Ragged Claws Network. So if you noticed some changes in the look of this site as you were browsing today, now you know the cause.

If you have any thoughts about what I’ve done so far, or you encounter specific problems that you think I ought to address, please feel free to post here.

Thanks for reading!
RC

I suppose I should also mention that I’ve now set WordPress to close comments on old topics after 30 days. The previous policy here at RCN was to leave the comments on all topics open indefinitely in the hope of attracting a few words of polite comment and/or encouragement. Since that hasn’t worked out — fact is, the only visitors to this blog who think it’s cool to post in old topics are link spammers — I’ve decided to experiment with the new setting in the hope that it will at least reduce the amount of spam cleanup that I have to do each week.

And the diversity of visitors! Why, just in the past hour, according to StatPressCN and utrace, RCN received a baker’s dozen of visitors from the following “regions”:

Giugliano In Campania (IT)
Paris (FR)
Beverly Hills (US)
Calgary (CA)
Las Palmas (ES)
Schwerte (DE)
Amsterdam (NL)
Austin (US)
Phoenix (US)
Bogotá (CO)
Syracuse (US)
Farmington (US)
Mission (US)

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg… it’s a pity there’s no easy way to list every region; however, to one and all, I’d just like to say, thanks for looking, and reading, and posting, and linking, and emailing, and… well… just being here. Because the fact is, RCN attracts just enough visitors and feedback right now to keep me wanting to post, but not so many or so much that I feel overwhelmed by the responsibility or overburdened by the time I devote to it.

ANOTHER RANDOM SAMPLE, JUST FOR FUN:

Here are all of the “regions” (with duplicates removed) from which RCN received visitors today, 23 October 2010, between 15:17:31 and 15:55:06:

Seoul (KR)
Barcelona (ES)
Málaga (ES)
Manresa (ES)
Shanghai (CN)
Amsterdam (NL)
Astoria (US)
Winsted (US)
South Burlington (US)
Paris (FR)
Mexico (MX)

Small world, eh?