My blog got hacked again. Only discovered it last night when I tried to post the entry about my first day (which is Sun) in Bangkok and got the damn "parse error" again. Logged into Yahoo webhost and true enough, my index.php and xmlprc.php file got edited on 4 Oct 2008. Sky happened to be online so I told him about it. Even he was surprised that my blog seemed to be getting hacked so often given that my password is really quite secure (consists of special characters, capital letters, numbers and with no proper word). The only reason he could think of is there may be some weakness in my Yahoo and/or SQL database setup and I really can’t be sure ‘cos I have no idea how the technical aspects of it work. Anyway, Sky happens to offer webhosting services too so I decided (on the spot) to switch to his.
The price he charges is very reasonable and he helped me shift my entire blog to his server. Will have to work out with him how to upload files via FTP, as well as figure out a way to shift my email adds to his server. He helped me sort out the entire migration till 4am last night. (THANK YOU!!). I sure hope he wasn’t working today. Haha.
Once everything is sorted out, I’m going to dump Yahoo for good. Though convenient (and I loved the Snapshots Backup feature), it’s getting very costly to host it with them. I got an email just 2 weeks ago saying that the price is going up by USD1 from USD11.95 to USD12.95 per month. It’s ridiculous. The biggest benefit I see about hosting with Sky is that I know him and I know I’ll be able to approach him for help. At least with a friend as a webmaster, I don’t mind telling him my password if need be, for him to help troubleshoot and then changing it to a new password thereafter so I can’t hold him liable for any subsequent security lapses either.
As it is, I already noticed a few improvements to my blog/Wordpress interface. For e.g., the "index.php" has been removed from my my pretty permalinks. (This is probably ‘cos this is now a clean installation of the latest WordPress compared to the upgrade I did on my own). Also, there’re more theme options in my WordPress admin panel. Better still, the plugins that I deleted when fixing the damn 4 Oct hack have also been added back for me. Whoopee!!
Anyway, I really hope this puts a stop to the hacking of my blog once and for all. Damn you chao hackers!
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