Technically Speaking

So, I lied. Sorry about that. I didn’t know I was lying. In fact, I thought I was telling the truth. However, I’ve since discovered that my blog was, in fact, hosting malware. See, I was still running WordPress 2.2.2 (the current version is 2.5.1) because I knew that I had plugins that would break if I switched to a newer version of WordPress. (WordPress is the back-end software that runs my blog.)

It turns out that when WordPress developers said there were security fixes in newer versions, they weren’t kidding. Somehow somebody has been able to gain access to my blog to insert hidden frames that download malicious content to people’s computers.

At the database level, I’ve removed every instance to the iframes that cause the problem, I’ve removed every reference to <noscript>, which is another way hidden content is injected into pages, and I’ve checked for any outgoing links to the server that was the target of the injection.

At the software level, I’ve upgraded to the latest version of WordPress, which caused some plugins to fail. I haven’t had time to diagnose all of the plugins yet, but I know for sure that my image-based headlines no longer work with WordPress, so I disabled that plugin. If you find other ones that aren’t working like you expect, please contact me.

At the admin level, I’ve changed my login credentials for WordPress, plus I’ve changed my database credentials; hopefully this will ensure my content remains secure from future injections.

I’ve notified Google of the changes I’ve made, and I’ve requested that they review my site to see if it is safe to browse again. (I’ve cleaned everything, so I know that it is.) Hopefully I’ll be off their black list soon!

In the next few weeks, I will be upgrading all the plugins to the latest versions, and I’ll probably be changing my theme (to a widget- and tag-friendly version), so you’ll be seeing some changes. In the mean time, I’ll keep working on ensuring my server is safe for all my visitors!

Thanks for your patience!

Google has banned my site. They are raising a false alarm about my blog being an attack site, and are blocking it for users of Google Desktop (as far as I can tell).

I’ve checked my site code, and the only way I can imagine that I’m passing on “attack” content is if it is served from the Google ads. Now isn’t that ironic? Google placed the ads on my site then blocked it because they say the ads are “badware.” it turns out my blog got attacked. (Read more about this in a later post.)

And how is this my fault? And what does Google want me to do about it? If this isn’t resolved in a day or so, I’ll have no choice but to remove the Google advertising.

This is rediculous!

UPDATE (later the same day): So, it turns out I was wrong about what I wrote here. Google found some legitimate badware linked from the site. It turns out my WordPress blog got hacked. But I’ve now fixed the problem, so there is no need to worry any more! Deletions to the original post are crossed out and additions are in italics. 

Today I’m pleased to announce a parting of the ways. The blog you’ve known as “Technically Speaking” is splitting its two personalities into two separate blogs.

When I first started this blog in June 2004, I was a college student majoring in technical communication. Most of my traffic came from my parents, my in-laws, my siblings, and a few cousins. I blogged about my family, and about technical communication. It was for fun, and I felt I could say whatever I wanted, because the only people listening were people who I trusted and liked.

Fast forward three and a half years. Yesterday I had 242 visitors on this here blog. In the last month, I’ve had almost 5,000 visitors. In 2007, I had more than 65,000 unique visitors make over 141,000 visits (with a total of 1.2 million hits). Most of these hits come from Google search results; the readers find an old post, and then they leave. I’ve become something of a repository of knowledge for various topics, which is nice. But this is no longer a quiet conversation between family members.

As my visitor count increased, my desire to keep certain information off my blog increased. I don’t think this is a good location to discuss the birth of our second child (which occurred last month). This doesn’t seem to be the correct venue anymore to discuss my “better living by doing it yourself” experiences. It certainly isn’t a place where I feel like I can post pictures of my family or talk about parenting kinds of things. However, I like doing these things, and I wanted a venue where I felt like I could do that. Thus the parting of the ways.

This blog, Technically Speaking, will continue to be where I blog about technology, technical communication trends and tools, grammar, and other related topics. If you are interested in my thoughts on software, Web 2.0 trends, or MadCap Flare, this is the place to read.

I’ve also created a new blog, pehrsonfamily.net, a personal blog that meets the needs discussed above. This blog is password protected; you won’t be able to see the blog unless you log in. This keeps Google and other search engines out, and maintains a certain level of privacy. (I know my images won’t be indexed on any image indexing service. I know people won’t find my content by searching through a search engine. They will only be reading if they’ve gone through the trouble of creating a user account; i.e: they are real people.)

When you get to the main page, click on the Register link. You will need to provide a username and an e-mail address. Your password will be e-mailed to you. The first time you visit the site, you will be see your profile page. Change your profile and set your preferences. On subsequent logins, you’ll be directed to the new posts page, rather than your profile page.

If you have any questions about this change, feel free to contact me. Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoy whichever version you choose. (Feel free to read both!)

So it has been quite a while since I checked in here at TS; a little over a month actually. After my last post, I was in quite a hurry to finish a project at work so I could leave on vacation. Then I took a two week vacation back east, which was wonderful. When we got back, I was swamped with a new project at work and other personal responsibilities. There seemed to be so much going on, that any attempt to blog would require recounting everything so it was easier to say nothing. Well, now I’ve just decided to move on and move forward without trying to catch up on the stories I missed. Oh well.

On the personal front, our little boy has started pulling himself up on things. Its quite adorable, but we found out how un-baby-proof our house actually is. We’re rushing like mad to try to organize things around the house to make it so we don’t have to worry every ten seconds that he is getting himself into something that is hazardous or dangerous. I’m trying to figure out how to attach bookcases and such to walls to they won’t tip forward if a little body tries to climb on them, and we’re getting all the safety devices to keep little fingers out of plug sockets and curious eyes and hands out of dangerous cupboards.

On the professional front, things are going well with work, but I haven’t had a lot of time to work with the new Flare 3.0. I had to work on an older branch of my documentation that is still being done in FrameMaker, so I set Flare aside for a while to keep the older branch moving. I expect to be using Flare again in the next couple of weeks as I make updates to my project that is already in Flare. By fourth quarter I should be doing full Flare documentation, which will be nice. It’s kind of frustrating to bounce back and forth between authoring tools. I get so used to the way Flare does things, and I feel so limited by the way Frame does them (especially since I’m using Frame 7.0; and no, I don’t plan to upgrade to Frame 8 because I’m migrating away from Frame as my primary authoring tool).

I still need to get back to my series on structured authoring. It is coming soon. I think it is a valuable topic, and a discussion of tools will be useful for other technical writers who are trying to understand the concepts.

Anyway, I’m back, and I’ll be posting again soon. Thanks for waiting.

Adobe Labs has released a new RSS feed aggregator called myFeedz. Adobe brands it as a “social newspaper”; basically you include topics in your myFeedz profile that you are interested in. Then when you log in, myFeedz checks for RSS feeds that match your profile topics. Matching topics published in the last 24 hours are displayed. Thus, the content is always fresh — in the last 24 hours — and you don’t have to find the feeds yourself; they are “pushed” to you.

Once you are reading the feeds selected for you, you can give feeds a thumbs-up or thumbs-down (Stumble-Upon style) so myFeedz gradually learns the kinds of feeds that are interesting to you.

I only started using it recently, but so far, it’s given me some interesting blogs with posts I’ve found interesting. My only complaint is that they need an editor (even a spell-checker would do). When you are creating or modifying your profile, you can specify feed languages you are interested in. Look at the selection option for Portuguese:

Of course, what do you expect from a company that can’t spell “Feeds” properly! <grin>

(For those of you who don’t know, one of my pet peeves is the intentional misspelling of words, especially in company names.)