WTN v 2.0, now with less breakage.


So there is news on the personal front that I’ll get to eventually. But at the moment, I’m up to my eyeballs in geek. The simple explanation why is actually to Google’s credit. The site fell victim to an apparent run-in with a significantly tricky spot of malware. It came in courtesy an exploit in a plugin I no longer use on this site, about a day or two before that exploit was supposedly patched against. It resulted in fun times with google, as they got twitchy about the site any time someone dared come within five miles of it. I took my time with removal, but the thing with a problem like that is once it’s in, it’s in. So every time I’d find something to clean, it would come back somewhere else.

I eventually ended up scrapping the platform entirely, backing up the data (here we go with me being paranoid about backups again), and starting over from the ground up. And now, 8 years of blog posts, comments, and random mockery lives in version 2.0 of this significantly less busted platform. I’ll go into more detail on exactly what plugin is to blame and why you should run far, far away from using it if you’re a WordPress user later. But for now, suffice it to say all things have been cleaned.

Things you’re likely to find in version 2.0:

  • Hopefully slight increase in loading speed. I’m told the site was slower to load than it should be previously. I think I’ve found and killed the cause, but I’ll be keeping an eye.
  • An online calendar, for things I’ll be up to in the near to way far off future. Because sometimes things happen that don’t get posted about. And sometimes I just need a reminder to stop freaking being lazy.
  • Several fewer plugins attached to the site. There was a bunch of extra, useless code kicking around the old version that I haven’t touched in probably a couple years. It was taking up space, and I hate things that take up space. It no longer exists.
  • Probably not noticeable to you, but I’m sure appreciating: a much smaller database. The old database was 120 MB when it was retired. The new one? Try 21 MB all told. That probably won’t last for too long, but it’s nice while it does.
  • And lastly, the option of receiving each individual post by email, rather than just the daily updates. Because on the rare occasion when I post something, it almost doesn’t seem worthwhile to wait for the single midnight update to send it to the folks what read this thing. You’ll still have that option if you want as well, but now, it doesn’t have to be the only one.

I’m still finding the occasional kink, like duplicated content that shouldn’t be duplicated. But, everyone’s here, and no one was lost in the kerfuffle, so I’ll take the duplicated content. And if it breaks too horribly, I do still have the old site on an out of the way strip of hard drive where it can’t be easily located, and it’s healthy enough to survive long enough for me to pull off whatever’s missing. All told, this has been a mighty fine way for me to flex skills I’ll need in the near future. And that leads me into my spot of personal news–which will be an entry later. For now, I’m off to sleep so’s I can finish unbreaking WordPress. But we’re up, we’re online, we’re malware free, and as soon as Google catches on I won’t have to stare at the reminder in Webmaster Tools. Now, where’d I put that other piece of code…

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