First and foremost, I am the opposite of a Super Geek. I’m slightly nerdy, and I love my electronic gadgets, but that is where the Geek stops for me. I’ve had more recent moments of electronic “duh” than I could even begin to describe.
1) Fried 2 iPods within a 24 hour period.
2) Thought I killed my Garmin, when in fact the battery was just really really dead.
3) Thought I killed my iPhone, when in fact the battery was just really really dead.
And these are just a sampling.
Most recently, my blog was hacked. Specifically, someone hacked into the server at my web-hosting company and put files onto the server that changed the direction and path of my RSS feed. This caused quite a ruckus in my universe, and led to the loss of several Feedburner Subscriptions. As it turns out, however, it wasn’t a total bust, because I didn’t end up losing all of you, and now I have even more subscriptions than before (hi new lurkers!)
I’m telling you this not because you’re reading a techno-nerd blog, but because many of us are blogging with zero knowledge of how this whole process works. So, I just want to mention a few things for everyone who, like me, are blogging without any serious technical knowledge.
The most important thing to me right this very moment is making sure that I’m changing my passwords regularly, and I also ended up changing web hosts. Not specifically because of Mr. Hackety-hacker-pants, but the decision was slightly motivated by this incident. Mostly, I wanted to save money. Secondly, I wanted added security.
With all of the various web-hosting companies out there, I had no idea which company to go with. I took the advice of my web developer, and I also used the vps web hosting site in order to come up with the pros and cons of each site. This site was so helpful. They have a list of the top 10 web-hosting companies, along with reviews of each. I highly recommend this site for anyone considering self-hosting their blog, or if you want to transfer your domains to a new host.
I ultimately decided to go with the company that my web developer recommended because I trust her judgment more than my own.
Hopefully with a better hosting company and added password security, I won’t run into that problem again.
Here are some suggestions from WordPress.org to keep your WordPress blog safe:
1) Upgrade to the newest version of WordPress, which has security updates for the lastest worms and viruses.
2) Create a new user (besides the “admin” user that is standard with your blog). It’s more difficult for a hacker to crack both the username and the password. If they already know your username is “admin”, that’s 1/2 of the equation.
3) Use a strong password…one that doesn’t include your name or something easily cracked. Harder for you to remember, but also harder for Mr. Hacker pants to crack.
4) Check out the Login Lockdown plugin on WordPress.org’s plugins page. This plugin keeps a log of all of the filed login attempts on your server. Checking the log could make you aware when someone is trying to hack your site.
5) Set your site to create automatic backups every week, and have the backup emailed to you. That way, if something terrible happens to your site, you always have the most recent version saved in your email so you can restore the site.
Ok, techno-nerd lesson complete.
Back to our regularly-scheduled food and injury party!
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