Writers Block Live » Site News

Site Hacked

Mike Evangelist — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 14:38:04 +0000

Thanks to a few readers who alerted me to the fact that the site was hacked a while back. Someone installed thousands of links on the home page and uploaded tens of thousands of webpages to my server, apparently in an attempt to leech my bandwidth and take advantage of my high pagerank.

I’m still trying to sort it out, but it looks like I’ll have to do major updates to get things back to a relatively safe/normal state.

Site changes

Mike Evangelist — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 20:12:49 +0000

I updated the site to WordPress 2 today. There should be very little visible difference, but if you find something funky, please speak up. I’ve also added the ability to print or e-mail individual articles. Let me know what you think.

No More Anonymous Cowards Allowed

Mike Evangelist — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 17:28:53 +0000

Due to the ever-increasing flow of inappropriate comments and spam, only registered users will be able to post comments; starting now. It is a simple process; just click here if you aren’t already registered.

I’m sorry to have to do it, but life is too short to waste my time culling through all that garbage.

Making Myself Scarce

Mike Evangelist — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 18:06:55 +0000

I’m about to leave for China (Shanghai) on business, and I’m behind on several other projects, so I’ll be pretty scarce around here for two or three weeks. Keep those cards and letters coming though.

P.S.
This will be my second trip to China; I visited Shenzhen last year as part of a trade delegation from Silicon Valley. A remarkable place, with astounding contrasts everywhere. For example, these two photos were taken only a few miles from each other.

The view from my hotel window

Shenzhen’s City Hall Building

Next Stop One Billion :-)

Mike Evangelist — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 19:17:14 +0000

Today the number of visits to the site rolled over to one million! (and 4,500,000 page-views!) So hard for me to believe. Thanks to everyone for stopping by.

I Need Your Opinions

Mike Evangelist — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 16:18:11 +0000

Due to the large number of comments on some topics, I’ve added a feature that divides the comments into pages. It should speed up loading times considerably on those posts with many comments.

My first question is this: would you prefer to see the newest comments first (at the top of the list), or the oldest?

Second, how many comments should be on each page? (It’s currently set to 15) Mike

We’re Back!

Mike Evangelist — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 18:18:25 +0000

I am still figuring out how I can re-submit all the missing comments, and one article is lost, but it could have been worse. Please me know if you notice any problems.

P.S.
Thanks to the Google cache, I’ve now got the text of all the articles back, and I’m working on manually replacing the comments.

P.P.S.
All the comments are back, and looks like everything is working again.

She Can’t Take Much More Captain!

Mike Evangelist — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 16:00:39 +0000

Obviously I’m not the only one concerned about the HD DRM issue. My boycott editorial has gotten some significant attention and the server’s straining under the load. I hope it doesn’t melt down.

Update – Feb 25, 9:00 AM
The past two days were the highest traffic ever for the site. The server seems to have held up OK.

Comment Spammers Suck – We Pay the Price

Mike Evangelist — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 14:40:34 +0000

The comment spam is getting out of hand recently; it makes me want to scream.

Searching for a solution I came across Spam Karma 2, which I installed this morning. It is supposed to be relatively painless for legitimate users, and if it works I won’t have to resort to requiring registration (which I really don’t want to do). Time will tell. Please let me know if you encounter any problems while posting.

Drum Roll Please…the Winners Are…

Mike Evangelist — Sun, 19 Feb 2006 15:08:06 +0000

Today, I used the full power* of my dual-1.8 GHz Power Mac G5 to generate five random numbers to select the winners in the Link Exchange Contest.

We received about three hundred entries (not counting the spam), and in the process I learned about a number of interesting sites I never would have discovered otherwise. I’ve added the most popular suggested links to the Linkage page, and put all the Exchanged Links on their own page. I’m sure you’ll find something interesting there.

Thanks to everyone who entered, and congratulations to the five lucky winners.

The Winners

Prize	Name	Link Entered
1 – 30GB iPod	Josue Salazar – Costa Rica	Made In Costa Rica
2 – Apple Shirt	Christian Ritter – Switzerland	MacGeneration
3 – WBL Goodies	Matt Hoult – England	Matt Hoult’s Blog
4 – WBL Goodies	Brett Payne – USA	The Burn Students
5 – WBL Goodies	Simon Webbon – England	Simon Webbon Photo

*At least I used to think it was powerful, until Aperture brought it to its knees.