As regular readers are aware, I discovered last month that I had been hacked in February. As best I can determine, the method was simple and affected area limited. Before the hack I had been running an outdated version of the software WordPress (very bad me). Taking an advantage of a vulnerability in the older version of software, this hacker managed to gain access to the uploading feature of the WordPress software I had installed. He then promptly filled up all of my server disk space with his files so that I was hosting his stuff for him.
Once I noticed all the strange incoming traffic on my stats I realized I had been hacked and quickly moved to resolve the issue. I deleted all the offending content and upgraded my WordPress software so that it wouldn’t be repeated. However, my hosting company said that to be completely certain everything was resolved I really ought to scrub my entire account and re-upload from scratch.
While I really don’t think anything the hacker did to my account escaped deletion in my cleanup, I realize the advice to do a complete wipe is considered standard. Since it had come to this I figured, (as the saying goes,) if life gives you lemons make lemonade. It was time to do something I had considered doing for some time. If I was going to wipe my account and re-upload all my stuff, I might as well go all the way and move to greener pastures.
There were several reasons for doing so, that had been piling up over time:
–I wanted more freedom than my present hosting account offered.
–I wanted more space than my current hosting account offered.
–I had a routing problem with my current account that made it often difficult to access my website or upload content.
If I was going to be re-uploading my content, now was the perfect time to solve these problems as well. So I looked around for a hosting company that would satisfy my needs. I settled on Dreamhost as being a company that fit my particular needs at a reasonable price.
A while back I decided I wanted to expand the scope of my Silverware Thief website to give me freedom to deversify what I shared. After I get the new design ironed out I will roll the content of this sub-domain over into the larger structure. More on that when the time comes. For the present, in the coming week I am going to roll over this site, as is, onto my new host. If all goes well this website should be down for only a short while and when it comes back up it shouldn’t look any different.
Later, whenever I manage to finish it, I’ll be unveiling the new design. I’ll call it Silverware Thief 3.0. You’re allowed to wait with baited breath.
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