Some of you may have noticed something wonky going on with bekahcubed over the past several days. That’s because bekahcubed was hacked – and I’ve been in the process of fixing it.
This week I’m thankful…
…for a fortuitous discovery
I was trying to figure out how to adjust blog posts to turn off search engine indexing (so I could make photo albums of Tirzah Mae unsearchable) – and one of the suggestions I found involved adjusting something in the blog header. I went off to my custom php header and found…code that I didn’t recognize. And since I coded my blog templates by hand, that’s a very bad thing. Finding it, though, is a very good thing. Because every day a hack goes unrecognized is another day a hacker can be wreaking havoc on your website.
…for tutorials for fixes
Fixing a hacked website can be an arduous process. Fixing a hacked website if it isn’t what you do for a living can be exhausting and confusing. Thankfully, some of the people who fix hacked websites for a living also write about how to do it – and make it plain so hobbyists like myself can fix their sites with relative ease. This post from Smackdown came in handy as I worked on closing any backdoors the hacker might have installed.
…for my dad taking time on his birthday to help me
It took me a while to realize that one massive portion of the fix would have to be done on the web hosting control panel. Which would mean my dad would have to finish the fix since he owns and manages menterz.com. Unfortunately, by the time I realized he would need to help, it was late at night the night before his birthday. So my birthday text included a request – could I call him about fixing my site? He obliged and spent part of the afternoon of his birthday adjusting passwords and making sure the database was clean.
…for a husband who reads my blog
I thought I had bekahcubed completely working again, having checked out the main page and seeing that everything was present. But my husband was reading and tried to look at the comments on my latest post – and discovered that all the pages other than the main page were giving 404 errors. He kindly let me know, I googled the problem and got it fixed. Yay!
It’s always eye-opening when my blog goes down. I find myself getting surprisingly anxious, feeling like I need to drop everything until it’s fixed. I come to realize just how bound up I am with these pages, how I feel like a part of my identity is missing if my blog isn’t intact.
A wise woman once said “My circumstances are not my life; Christ Jesus is my life.” And having my blog go down provides me with another reminder that “My blog is not my life; Christ Jesus is my life.”
Thank You, Lord, for the reminder – and for the reality.
“[Insert quote or Scripture]”
~[Insert source or Scripture reference]
That’s one reason I don’t host my own site – I would have absolutely no idea what to do in such a situation. I’m glad you found it and were able to deal with it.