Extreme blog makeover
I think the realization that something was terribly wrong kicked in about the third time I went to log into my own blog and had a virus thrown at me. Yet another WordPress theme had been compromised (a good indication that it’s the theme: if you change themes and the same URL is suddenly harmless, it’s the theme).
This happened earlier in the year with another part of my site, and as with that incident, I tried to find a new theme quickly, customize it quickly, and tried very hard – and, might I add, quickly – to get it up and running so the two or three people who do visit the blog (as opposed to reading the entries that are shuttled to Facebook or Livejournal via RSS) wouldn’t be infected (and infected quickly).
This is the result – the whole thing suddenly looks impossibly slick, and there’s a very cool persistent nav bar that stays at the bottom of the screen at all times. I had to do some work on it to get certain things to format the way they did in the previous theme, but overall, I’m beyond pleased.
It’s worth noting that there’s a difference between minor customization and wholesale rewriting of code. The previous WordPress theme I was using as called “Nine”, and I loved the look of it – but it arrived in a hobbled state (with no indication that there was a working version that one needed to pay for), so I had to do some considerable recoding on it. Whether that left it in a vulnerable state, or whether “Nine” was defenseless to begin with, I don’t know. In the meantime, it’s back to business as normal. Cruise by and give it a look-see; I’ve also put the new theme on my TV work archive blog, which also used “Nine” (but showed no signs of having been hacked).
The new theme’s got some really cool crap in it – check out the little pencil icon in the lower left corner. You can change the background image (and, accordingly, the entire color scheme) to suit your tastes. That feature doesn’t really add anything mission-critical, but damned if it isn’t cool.
Sorry for the interruption, you two or three folks out there. I also hereby extend a defiant middle finger – no, make that two – at the script kiddies out there who really need a life. Enjoy!… Read more
Okay, so they’re both based on turtles. But somehow I think it’s gonna be a while before Evan’s toy collection and mine are anywhere near a point where integration of our collections is possible.