FerretArmy: A Web Developer's Paradise » WordPress

Ech, WordPress Hackery!

Jon — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 21:21:58 +0000

WordPress is a great platform – it’s easy to use, fast, reliable, and very popular. Unfortunately, that also makes it a big target for hackers.
A few weeks ago, FerretArmy.com got hacked – essentially, it was serving malicious content from an injected iFrame. In addition, the administrative panel was intentionally broken in an effort to make it harder to fix. The hack directly targeted the WordPress platform – there are millions of WordPress users, so it was likely an automated attack looking for a known vulnerability. I’m still unsure of the attack vector, though I believe it was most likely either through a plugin, or through a (hopefully patched) security hole in the framework itself.

In order to get the site back up and running, I had to physically comb through all the files in my site and remove all the bad code. It’s very apparent that the hack was scripted – it effectively added a single malicious line to every PHP file in the site. It was all reversible damage (with no data loss, thank goodness), but it still left me pretty upset.

In the end, I changed my passwords and made sure that everything was up to date (site and plugins), and the site has not suffered any similar misfortune since. Being hacked really sucks, and I have absolutely no respect for someone that would do such a thing. FerretArmy is a small fish in a big pond, but I try my hardest to deliver worthwhile content to my visitors. Having someone exploit this (for no real gain, let’s be serious here) is inexcusable.

WordPress 2.9

Jon — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:26:52 +0000

WordPress 2.9 is out! It’s got some cool new features – a trash bin, better support for video embedding (which has been a major pain in the past), and a bunch of new features. One of the best things I’ve seen in the update documentation is this:

When you’re editing files in the theme and plugin editors it remembers your location and takes you back to that line after you save. (Thank goodness!!!)

The ‘Thank goodness!!!’ was their comment, not mine, which goes to show how annoying that bug was. Other than that, the built-in image editor is a pretty cool feature for on-the-go cropping and rotation, but time will tell whether I end up using it much. Either way, the upgrade process is a cinch, so it’s a no-brainer to get on the latest version of the greatest platform.

WordPress is an Excellent _____ Platform

Jon — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 22:40:04 +0000

I’m continuously amazed at the versatility of WordPress. As a blogging platform, it’s incredible. However, it’s also incredibly useful as just a general website engine – it creates the shell, and the internals can be done up however you please. At most, you only need to know a modest amount of PHP to create a stunning website, and even if you don’t, you can still get by most of the time by choosing a good theme and widget set. I have to say, if there was only one platform the web ran on, I’d seriously hope it was WordPress.

New Theme, Digging Into WordPress

Jon — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 23:44:34 +0000

I just recently changed to a new theme for my site. Since then, I’ve been doing my first real digging into the internals of how theming works and how to talk to the back end of WordPress. It’s been a suprisingly pleasant venture – all your content is easily accessible and the interface is clean. I’m just starting to learn PHP (from a .NET background), and it’s been nice to find that I can hack around and usually get the code right on the first or second try.

I’ve also been making some progressive enhancements to the site at the same time. If you came in via a webkit-based browser, you’ll hopefully notice the webkit-only light blue gradient behind post titles, as opposed to a solid color. I also animated the RSS button in the upper right hand corner to grow 10% larger on hover. These are examples of ways to embrace progressive flourishes on your site without breaking the experience for anyone. Next up, I’m going to incorporate rgba into the footer somehow. Hope you enjoy the new layout!

iPhone Updates for WordPress

Jon — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 03:32:39 +0000

There’s a handy new WordPress iPhone/iPod Touch app that enables connectivity to your WordPress blog for easy management – writing articles, managing comments, etc. The best part is that it works with both WordPress.com and any self-installed blogs (like my own).

I recently converted from an iPod Touch to an iPhone, so this is hopefully going to be a great productivity gainer for me – instead of having downtime while waiting for someone or whatnot, I can manage my blog from just about anywhere. The unfortunate part is that I’m in need of upgrading my blog before I can take advantage of it – it requires 2.5.1 or greater of WordPress. Either way, that’s not a big deal. I’ve upgraded WordPress a few times, and they all seem to go very smoothly.