Running a huge cycling blog and gaining a good reputation on Google I guess it was inevitable to attract some attention from spammers who want to benefit from my hard work without putting in any effort themselves.
I recently noticed a sharp drop in my Google traffic. Logging in to my webmaster panel I noticed the site was now popular with terms such as poker and viagra. Definitely not what I want to be linking to. An investigation at the blog revealed no visible links. However, looking into the source code they were there but hidden by a css trick of placing them outside of the viewable screen area.
By disabling wp_footer by simply commenting it out in the theme files the problem went away. However, it wasn’t a permanent solution. An upgrade of the theme I was using (WooThemes) didn’t fix issues.
Further investigation into the MySQL table revealed an MySQL insertion had occurred:
The option_value was huge with a base64_decode where the hack was hidden. I deleted this entry from WordPress and low and behold the hack disappeared. Re-enabling wp_footer the links were still not showing in the source code. Wp Footer hack removed!
I believe the hackers got in through the TimThumb vulnerability present in many WooThemes files. Therefore, I upgraded it to the new version to be sure no similar attacks can be made. As a precaution I also changed all of my passwords (admin, FTP, cpanel etc).
I hope this write up helps others deal with these issues. I’m happy to take questions in the comments but do be aware this isn’t my main area of strength. I’m a writer not a WordPress programmer.
I’ll update this post if any further WordPress hacks appear and let you know how I dealt with them.
Pretty easy to do but as no one had a video online demonstrating how I thought I should add it. You can also export directly from Google Maps onto a connected Garmin.
During my French language learning – “Je etudy le langue des Francais”, I get caught up in certain words that don’t sink in. That word today is Presque. Which means almost.
The first thing I did was crazy images. So presque – sounds like press queue for me. So I imagined someone pressing against a queue trying to get to the front. I also remembered queuing for an Arctic Monkeys gig and tried to install that image of pressing up the front of the queue to get a ticket.
Loving this over-use of the same image by different publications.. all of which you would think would have their own huge collection of stock photography anyway..
As a blogger with over 50,000 visitors every month I need to find ways of monetizing my site. After all having a huge visitor count is great on paper and when approaching advertisers but it falls short of paying the rent every month and buying expensive toys that I can’t resist! I’ve still got my eye on you £600 camera..
One way of monetizing my cycling site is through the use of Affiliate Links. My audience is interested in cycling products so whenever I mention a product that I genuinely like, trust and would use myself (remembering trust is everything) I add a link. Often these links look very unsightly. Take for example this typical affiliate window link:
People are more likely to click on the second link as it looks more trust worthy. For a start it has your brand name behind it and secondly there is not a ton of scary looking characters that they don’t recognise.
It is links like the first one that I first discovered affiliate marketing because I typed in awin1.com to see what it referred to. It is how I came across affiliate window and the sites such as Wiggle and Evans Cycles that you can promote with it.
How you link cloak in wordpress
To do this all you need is a plugin called the Link Cloaking Plugin. It works wonders with WordPress and I’ve never had any issues with it. The founders behind the Link Cloaking Plugin have also recently released a premium version which adds some great new features in particular the ability to look at detailed statistics of how many clicks the link has received.
Once the link cloaking plugin is added to WordPress you can click on Tools > Cloaked links and add new links. You can also change the /go/ part of the link from the Settings > Link Cloaking page.
Give the plugin a download today and remove all the ugly links from your site.
Soon I’ll discuss in detail how to use the plugin. I’ll also take a look at some competing link cloaking plugins and go into the features of the advanced version.
I finally finished a great big eBook I had been writing for my cycling blog – London Cyclist. The eBook has 25 amazing cycling routes in London. Each route took me absolutely ages to put together but in the end I was pleased with the result. What I will be doing in future is adding more routes and offering that for free for anyone who downloads.
Overall it’s been a hectic month. From before February I realised I was going to be putting together the whole eBook myself so I set about doing a route per day. Sometimes that worked and other times I found myself getting too tired. My fitness levels are definitely way up on what they were before.
I’ve released the eBook yesterday and I’m busy contacting as many people as possible to let them know it has been released. So far quite a few people have downloaded and the feedback has been very positive. I’m still looking for some people to be critical so I know which areas I need to improve on.
I want to put up some guest posts with what I learned from releasing my first eBook because there is definitely not enough information on the internet about it. I will be contacting some of the top blogs to see if they will let me write for them.
The favourite London cycle route I did is hard to decide. The nightride was very liberating because so many hours had gone into it and it was my final route knowing I could relax afterwards. The most eventful was probably Rickmansworth to Denham ending up falling down in the mud. The longer was the London to Chichester. The best one though… “From a suit to a fluorescent jacket”
If you want to take a look at it, it is available at:
I wanted to split test my post footer in WordPress so I could try out two different Aweber forms. However the forms didn’t display in the way I wanted.
The code I ended up using:
$chosen = mt_rand(1,3);
switch($chosen){
case 1:
include ‘first.php’;
break;
case 2:
include ‘second.php’;
break;
case 3:
include ‘third.php’;
break;
default:
echo ‘something went horribly wrong’;
}
This worked very well for me. I simply removed case 3 and changed mt_rand(1,3); to mt_rand(1,2);
This then randomly chose between my first block of text and my second block of text. This meant I could split test their effectiveness by embedding two different aweber forms. When the first form is randomly loaded it counts it in Aweber and then when the second form randomly loads again the results are counted. This meant I could customise the text in a way I wanted and not have to use Awebers built in e-mail forms which were not effective and looked ugly.
Hope this helps someone looking to randomise the way content appears on a page.
Right, I’ve decided to redesign my blog about cycling in London. My designer has already finished a PSD drawing for an expensive fee and now after seeking out someone to convert my PSD to HTML I have gone with http://mypsdtohtml.com/ and a guy called Andres. So far the service seems good and the replies have been prompt. I couldn’t argue with the price as it is extremely competitive and they seem to understand my additional requirements. I’ll post up a full review when the project is done. In the mean time check out one of my articles from that blog on bicycle insurance. Wish me luck with the design!
So I moved over my hosting plan from Dreamhost to Doreo and moved over the databases, files etc etc and began to notice various errors. In the admin panel I could not minimise the sidebar, or click the dropdown button, or add new tags or choose from the most used tags. Basically everything that revolved around javascript was not working.
