Since Lin had to go to work today, and we didn’t get to work on the yard this morning, I have spent a while looking at other blogging systems to use instead of Wordpress. Even though some of them look very interesting, I won’t be switching. I simply don’t want to change my work-flow or be forced to learn a whole bunch of new stuff just to run my web site. I don’t have the time, energy, or desire to do so, and I really do like Wordpress.

What does this mean for Just Orb and its users? Not much will be changing. I started deleting the user database the other day, leaving only those people I personally knew or who visited and commented regularly, in case I decided not to do away with user registrations for good. I will delete the rest of the user base. Registrations are going away for good, and what that means is no more filtered or “friends only” posts at Just Orb. With the last upgrade, they had become something of a hassle anyway, so I am not sorry to see that functionality lost. It will simplify my blogging life significantly and solve a few database problems I was having as well.

Unfortunately, it will not simplify my readers’ lives. Though there won’t be anymore “friends only” posts on my actual domain, which has been true for a couple of months now, I will still be making filtered posts. I will be making them over at Livejournal, where I have been making them lately anyway (such as they are, you really haven’t been missing too terribly much — my life is not so full of drama these days). Livejournal is significantly better at the whole “friends only” thing, and it has always given me much better control over who gets to read what. As annoyed as I sometimes get with the people who run LJ, I have been using it for a very long time, and I do love the system over there.

What does that mean to someone who wants to have access to the stuff I don’t want to post publicly? It means they will have to create an account at Livejournal, visit my LJ profile, and “friend” me to get on my friends list (it’s a little button near the top of the profile). I hate to cause anyone any hassle to read my private drivel, because so many of my regular readers at Just Orb are more than just “readers” to me, but I need both my web site and my data to be secure. Right now, this is the best way to achieve that goal. It won’t be all bad for those choosing to sign up at yet another web site though! After pay day, I’ll go ahead and pay Livejournal again to remove the ads and get back the paid user features, some of which people who do sign up may like … like getting to send text messages directly to my cell phone. Yes, you’ll be able to drive me crazy with text messages anytime you want, and won’t that be fun!

So, bottom line is there won’t be too much changing around Just Orb for my readers, at least not all of them. There will be no user registrations and no filtered posts at Just Orb, and anyone interested in hearing my really intense griping can sign up at Livejournal and get on my friends list (actually, most of the people who would care already have LJ accounts), and all I really have to do is find some money to may Livejournal to get back full functionality and get rid of ads. In theory, that all sounds easy enough. Let’s hope that theory of ease holds out as I start making the changes, which will likely happen sometime early next week (or sooner if the weekend laziness doesn’t set in too thick).

I apologize for any weirdness or hassle this all will cause anyone, but I have to have a web site that isn’t getting hacked and isn’t trying to infect other people’s computers. If it’s any consolation, I am the one who will be dealing with the most hassle as I try to get things done in the background quietly and without disturbing the Just Orb flow.

If anyone has any questions or needs help figuring out how to sign up for a Livejournal account and getting on my friends list, do ask! I don’t want to lose anyone during this transition, and I still want anyone who wants to to be able to read anything I have written. I love all the people who visit Just Orb regularly … some of you are almost like family, and many, many of you I consider good friends!

Now all I have to do is figure out what to do with the ever increasing archives at Just Orb. There’s been some problems with them since the last upgrade, and while they are all mirrored at Livejournal, the comments made at Just Orb are not mirrored over there. That’s just something I will have to work out on my own. It isn’t like all that many people bother with reading any of the stuff from the past years. I suppose I will deal with the current crisis first and then worry about the somewhat busted archives at Just Orb. And by “worry about” them, I do mean going back to just ignoring the problem in the hopes some webmaster fairy comes along and sprinkles fairy dust on them to solve the problem for me. The archives, they are easy to ignore.

And so ends a long and boring post about the to-doings at Just Orb. I’m going to go eat some leftover pizza and then putter in the yard a while. It’s too pretty outside to be sitting in front of a computer.

For the Wordpress users out there, here are some links to information about ways in which WP has been exploited using iframe injection. Let me say first that it’s been happening to a lot of people, it’s been happening for a while, and from all my reading it seems nobody really knows exactly how it is happening. I’d also like to note that even people who have upgraded to the newest version have had it happen. I repeat: even people using the very latest version have experienced it. It appears to be a problem with having registered users and/or the xmlrpc.php.

iframe injection problem?

wp-stats[1].htm Downloader Virus

An Old WordPress Version Can Get You Banned In Google

There’s more out there to be found on this, but these posts and threads are the ones supplying the most information about how to fix it and what it is. If anyone has any questions, I might be able to answer them.

When I get back from the store, I’ll be doing some thinking about what to do with my web site. I hadn’t planned to do anything drastic with it, but the situation has changed. Now it looks like I either need to upgrade to the newest version of WP, which is still having problems and which has an admin interface I hate, or switch to something else, which just sucks. There’s sure to be at least one whining post today about it.

And thanks again to Ekim for bringing the virus thing to my attention. I’m on a Mac. I wouldn’t have noticed, it would have rolled off the front page, and shortly Google would have banned me for having a web site that infects people’s computers with a virus … and I wouldn’t have known I was doing such a horrible thing. I am so incredibly sorry if anyone had any computer problems caused by my web site being hacked. I feel awful and sad about it. I am so, so sorry.

OK, I did warn everyone that I was closing registration and though I was going to try not to delete the entire user list, I might have to do that. Well, I am going to have to do it and will be doing so later this evening. Someone, most likely someone who has a registered account at Just Orb, has been adding malicious code to my posts. Only three in the last year, but thankfully one of the posts was on the front page today, and Ekim noticed and informed me. Thank you, Ekim!

Apparently there is some exploit in Wordpress that allows this to happen, and even upgrading to the newest version doesn’t fix it. As much as I am loath to stop using Wordpress, it looks like I will be investigating other blogging software. Unless you are a blogger, you cannot know how much it sucks to have to change software. It really, really sucks. Trust me.

No matter what comes next, there is likely to be a big mess around Just Orb for a while, and I do apologize for having to delete my user list. As it is now, I don’t believe I will be opening registration up again, as it seems like that will either lead to some asshole signing up and doing crappy stuff to my site again, or we would all have to jump through hoops in order for me to only let people sign up that I want to sign up. I don’t know what I am going to do about that yet. We’ll see, I guess.

I just thought I would give everyone a heads up that there’s going to be some turmoil at Just Orb, that there’s been a hacking incident, and that I am trying to stay on top of things. I really don’t have time to deal with all this, but I suppose I will find the time, won’t I? This is not what I needed to have happen on a day that was going rather well … aside from the morning aphids and ants issue.

Anyway, if you use Wordpress, you might want to search your posts from within Dashboard for “noscript” and “iframe” and wp-stats.php” in case someone has done it to your site as well. After I have found some good links talking about this issue, I will post them. Right now though, I need to go have some cookies and milk and play with my cats.

I am becoming disgruntled with my web host. It’s still a low level of being disgruntled, but it’s growing. There has been a lot of weirdness and intermittent downtime lately. It seems that at least 50% of the time when I visit my own web site, it’s can’t connect to the database, or it just isn’t loading at all. It’s never for very long, but when it happens all the time, it does get annoying.

But I hate looking for new hosts, and I hate moving my web site, so I’ll put up with it for a while. I’ve put up with much worse from web hosts. This is still a minor problem, but I’m keeping my eye on it.

As I was working on the updates to my blog’s banner the other night, the thought crossed my mind that I could change the name of my blog. I do own two other domains. I always meant to use them for something, but the “something” never got beyond the “something” stage, and lately just keeping up with my life and one web site is occasionally a chore. But I could use one of those domain names and change the name of my web site. I could.

That would be weird, wouldn’t it?

I’ll just blame this crazy idea on too many days of alternating ibuprofen and Tylenol-3.

That working file with all the nicely laid out layers I was looking for? Guess where I found it.

On the iMac.

So all that bother with the old PC was for naught. This is the story of my life. But … I have the file, and now I can do some editing!

There isn’t going to be a big web site redesign. Yes, this is the sort of thing I decide at 3 am after a rather crappy day.

I always said that one day I would create a site design that I loved so much, I wouldn’t want to change it the next year. The current one has survived two now. It’s not a lack of inspiration. I have done several total site redesigns over those two years, but they never make it to the site, and eventually I wipe out my sandbox and start fresh. It’s a satisfaction with this particular site design.

If I can find the old Photoshop files on my old computer, I would like to update it a little. It never really was finished. There were a few things I meant to add, and I never meant to have that tagline forever. But then I got sick, my cat died, and I got a new computer, and I never got back to it. Such is life.

Anyway … I am about 99.999% certain there will be no big web site redesign any time in the near future.

There will be some changes around here regarding memberships and registrations. There’s going to be a little more vetting of registrations, and a few rules. I know. That sucks. More later when I work it all out in my head and figure out how to make it all function. It’s just that a lot of people who only read my blog or the RSS feed have been missing out on some stuff I wouldn’t mind sharing, but the list of registered members is so huge and so full of people I don’t know at all, I can’t just make it a post for members, I have to filter it. That has been a pain in the butt, and so I don’t do it. I put it over at Livejournal on my friends list, which is significantly smaller than the friends list of my life. I’m not going to ask that everyone who wants to read those posts join LJ. I don’t even want to be over there anymore, really. So things have to change a bit around the blog. I’ll post a FAQ before anything major crazy happens. I do have that communication thing down pretty well.

I need a plugin that gives me the email address for everyone who has ever commented on my blog and is a registered user. I wonder if such a thing exists?

But first, I better get some sleep. I have got to go to the store tomorrow.