Must have pissed someone off. We got hacked.

Well, it happened again.  Was a good run, though, making it around a year and a half since the last attack.  I’m currently looking through what they’ve gotten into.  I had to change the theme since I do not have backups with me (on campus right now).  When I get back to my apartment I’ll re-upload the site and get it all fixed up.

Trying to keep a positive attitude.  When this happens, I know at least someone is reading the blog.

Update: Hacked again.  Trying to implement changes as fast as I can to stay ahead.

    • Thanks, I’ll look into implementing some of those changes. I keep everything up to date and make regular backups. I guess it just goes along with the territory of not being skilled enough to write my own website code and having to rely on WordPress.

      For now, I hope this website look doesn’t scare away all our readers while me implement changes and such. 😉 I don’t think it looks too bad.

      • Actually I work with WordPress as the basis for my professional websites (I design corporate themes for a living), and it’s pretty secure, but there are always ways around if one is really intending on messing with others.

        Those two plugins linked at the end of the article or similar ones (there are tons of different ones with similar purposes) are a great start to block some of the most well known security holes, so it should improve a lot your security.

  • I have to redo the Chrome extension I created for the site, but still doesn’t seem horrible as is. I do like seeing your reply more visibly then it was before (nested rather than flat).

    • I love this theme for many reasons, but I miss our old look. I’ll design a header logo for this one and see how it goes for a few days. Maybe it’ll be worth keeping if I get enough positive response.

      I’m wondering if my theme was what gave them access since it was a really, really old one. My theme is also the only thing they hacked, as well as my admin account. I have since gone through and tried to see anything else done but can’t find anything. Hopefully just the theme files were hacked.

    • If I knew of one that I could switch to, I would. If I could write my own, I would. I feel a bit stuck using wordpress. I want the control of having my own domain hosted under my control and I want the tools that wordpress gives me.

      I’m very open to suggestions if you have any on what platform to use.

      • You’re using WordPress.com, or do you rent a shared hosting somewhere? If you’re hosting it on WordPress.com, maybe you really should switch to a private server and make your own WP installation there. I personally use and recommend Bluehost.com as a hosting provider. Great price, and amazing service.

        If you’re already using your own server… you have to ask yourself: why do you want to change to another platform?

        Is it security? All platforms have *some* security problems you’ll need to deal with, so it’s a matter of finding how to deal with the one you decide to go with.

        Is it features? What features do you want that you currently don’t have? Do you have usability problems you can’t seem to fix with WordPress? As I mentioned before, WP is my bread and butter, it’s what I recommend to my clients, so it’s what I can really talk about. There are thousands of plugins to help with most features one might need, and blogs are pretty much the simplest use one can make of it, so there are probably some easy solutions for whatever you might need. Ask away and I’ll be glad to point you on the right direction.

        Now, if you’re really unsatisfied with WordPress, and that’s perfectly reasonable, I would recommend the link below as a good starting point for choosing your next platform. It’s a great overview of the best blogging engines on the market on a reference website for graphic designers (which is my field). I would probably recommend them on the same order you find there, tho I can’t vouch for any of the other systems, since I don’t use them.

        http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/08/29/10-weblog-engines-reviewed/

      • A couple of websites to check if there’s anything you can do to stop this:

        http://codex.wordpress.org/FAQ_My_site_was_hacked

        http://ocaoimh.ie/2008/06/08/did-your-wordpress-site-get-hacked/

        After going through this checklist, I recommend installing those plugins I recommended earlier. Keep your WordPress installation and plugins updated, and make sure to use good strong passwords.

        After that, if you really feel it’s worth dropping WP for something else… I can just wish you the best, there are some great tools out there.

  • The indented comments are easy to read through. Also, the top bar is easy to navigate and read over. The bar on the right could use some cleaning or redesigning but I kind of like it.

    White and Grey isn’t my favorite color combination but I don’t know if that can be changed. It’s pretty plain but sleek.

  • They are now installed. I’m hoping that they keep out the bad guys. I also found several files, that WebsiteDefender told me about, that I removed.

  • Do you guys like our tried and true theme we have here, or the one I had up earlier? Assuming you saw it earlier.

  • I hate your banner! Too much SWTOR and too little GW2! 😛
    On a more serious note, your site is easy to read, thats the most important thing imo, it does however mess up in some mobile browsers but that might not be a priority of yours ^^

  • I couldn’t find a GW2 picture I like yet. The site works ok on my mobile Safari, but admittedly I do not have an innately “mobile friendly” layout.

    • Haven’t tested this new look on my Android, but the old site messed up quite heavily on some Android browsers (stock one was fine though). But nvm, you can’t cater for every possible browser on every possible mobile device out there anyways. 🙂

  • TBH I prefer the other one, Twenty-Eleven. With some quick customizations (which you can do directly on the WP control panel) you can make it look awesome and more “you”. It is my professional opinion that making websites take the full width of the browser makes the text harder to read on larger monitors. As for mobile ones… there are plugins that can format the site to a mobile friendly look without messing with your current theme. Just search for “mobile” on the Add New Plugin page.

    About the header… if you’re looking for good GW2 art, I recommend Kekai Kotaki’s website, he’s the lead concept artist for ArenaNet.

    http://www.kekaiart.com/

  • @Kemwer – that’s why I created the chrome extension for this site formatting the CSS the way I see fit. I prefer bare bones with text the full length of the site.

    @Keen, I noticed that you changed the messaging system back to flat instead of nested. I take it you preferred the old look for responses?

    Also, I think a DaoC themed banner would be awesome! 😀

  • Seriously, what moronic loser would waste his time hacking a video game blog? Seriously? Really seriously?

    Glad you got it back quick 🙂

  • @Steel: It’s the theme. I don’t know how to add nested comments in a theme on my own. I don’t know if this one is compatible or not. I might play around with it later to see. I use a highly modified version of some really old theme, but I’m used to it and like how it looks. I’ll play with another look and put it up for you guys to see. You can tell me which one you like more.

  • Disclaimer: I do not have a blog or experience with WordPress to know if the above is even possible.

  • I like the idea, but I don’t have the technical expertise to do it (nor to confirm if it is possible). I might just upload the new look for a day and make a poll or something.

  • big issue with WP is there is a massive amount of tools to hack it since it is so common i would bet that whoever did it does not really have a clue as to what exactly is it that they exploited. My suggestion is to either pay some $ to someone who is an expert on WP or use something more obscure and perhaps become an expert in that it is a useful skill

  • Let me know what you guys think of this look. I’m not completely satisfied with the top banner. I wish I had more space to make it bigger but I haven’t figured out where to edit it to give me more space.

    • I personally prefer the original format. It has always been among the best blog formats that I have seen.

    • Just to give you some info on customizing your header, currently your header space has 950px by 126px. The header image has a 25px margin on the top, which you can edit/remove by going on the Theme Editor on your admin panel. The editor should open directly the “style.css” file. There you can find the code below:

      .logo {
      margin: 25px 0 0 0;
      }

      It might be kinda garbled on the code editor (to me it shows all code on a single line), so just hit Ctrl-F and search for “.logo”. Edit the value “25px” to whatever you want, even zero, and hit Update File to save. This way you can use the entire area of your header for your image.

      Just don’t try to use images taller then 126px. The dark background for the header is actually part of a single image that is the background for the whole page. You’d need to edit this image to make the header taller.

      • @Kemwer: You’ve been a ton of help so far. I really appreciate it.

        Would you happen to know how to change the width of the sidebar?

  • Even if I don’t comment much, I do read the blog constantly on your RSS feeds, ever since WAR was announced. I’m glad to help. 🙂

    From what I see on the code, this theme uses what we call a CSS Framework, which is a standard code for defining the width of columns. This means that you shouldn’t really change the value in pixels for each column, instead of better edit the framework information.

    In practical terms, what this means is that on your HTML code you’ll find a bunch of codes such as this:

    This specific framework divides all content into 24 standard-sized grid of columns, and for each block you set how many of those columns you want to use. Your header uses the “span-24” code, meaning it takes the full 24-column width, the main content block uses 16, and the sidebar takes 8.

    So to change the width there, you need to find all references for those numbers on the theme files (the .php ones), and change to what you want. If you want a thinner sidebar, change the two columns to “span-18” and “span-6”, for example. Which files you’ll need to make this change on depends on the theme itself, and I can’t see that from my end.

  • @Proximo – use Pulse and add the keenandgraev.com RSS feed to it. You can then read it perfectly fine. Also, I use Dolphin Browser as my default as it seems to work the best out of the 10 or so Android browsers.

  • @Kemwer: Struggling to fix a few things, if you’re still around to help.

    I can’t figure out how to get the search input on the sidebar to fit now that I’ve shrunk it.

    Also can’t figure out how to increase the comment font size. Any hints?

  • @Keen: for the search field, search for the following:

    #s {
    width: 190px;
    padding: 2px;
    margin: 3px 0 0 0;
    background: none;
    }

    From my tests, changing the width to 130 makes the search button fits nicely on the column there.

    About the comments, the current code is as follows:

    .commentlist p {
    margin: 10px 5px 10px 0;
    }

    There’s not font size definition, so it’s going by the standard size of 12px for the page. After the semi-colon insert the font size code, so it looks like this (line breaks don’t matter on CSS):

    .commentlist p {
    margin: 10px 5px 10px 0;
    font-size: 14px;
    }

    That should make things the way you want them. Let me know if you need something else.

  • @Kemwer: All of your tips have worked like a charm. I owe you, and if I had the money I’d hire you on as a webmaster. 😉 Thanks for all your help.