Internet Business Blog

Yesterday, whilst browsing one of my regular blog reads on my PDA, I saw something that wasn’t quite right. Above all of the actual blog content were dozens of links with various financial terms. I was out for the day and didn’t have access to my computer until the evening, but when I returned I went to the blog in question using Firefox and saw that all appeared okay even though my PDA was still showing the spammy-looking links.

There were two possibilities, I thought. Either there’s a problem with my viewing i.e. my PDA or Internet connection had been compromised or there’s something not-so-obvious going awry with the blog. Since I couldn’t see any other sites affected in the same way, I decided the latter was actually the case. Looking at the underlying web page source code in Firefox confirmed this. Near the bottom of all of the legitimate source code was this:

The reason why nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary when viewed using a standard web browser was because CSS was being used to prevent the injected links from being displayed. That doesn’t mean that they’re not there or that search engines can see and index them. Using the Firefox Web Developer plugin to disable CSS for the current page showed what was underneath the CSS cloak:

Why you should upgrade to WordPress 2.5

If you’ve been wrangling about whether to upgrade or not, then consider the consequences of leaving your blog unpatched such as Technorati refusing to index compromised blogs. Even big names have been affected by the hacking of insecure blogs.

Also, if you’re using a freely distributed blog theme then you might want to check that too in case it’s been laced with code that will allow unscrupulous others to take over your website.

I’m off to upgrade all of my pre-2.5 WordPress blogs!

In my previous post, I mentioned that disabling the Bad Behaviour plugin (the latest version, 2.0.14) solved my problem with uploading images into a WordPress gallery.  As many others appear to be experiencing similar problems, I thought I’d try to confirm whether or not Bad Behaviour was the cause by reactivating the plugin and trying to upload a new gallery.  Well, I reactivated the plugin, started a new post, went to create a new gallery, choose a number of images to upload, and they were uploaded successfully!

Ah well, that’s my theory out of the window unless the act of disabling the plugin does resolve the issue whether you go on to reactivate it or not.

Long time no post! I’ve actually been on holiday in Hong Kong for the past few weeks, taking a break from everything including computers (well almost, but more on that later). Fortunately, whilst I was away all of the automated stuff did what it was supposed to so sales of products continued and consumers continued to click through my affiliate links. It’s always nice to know that the whole passive income thing works.

Hong Kong was fantastic. I’ve got some family and friends out there and I’ve been before so it wasn’t the usual sunbathing by the pool type of holiday. Quite a large group of us went including my wife’s parents (for the first time) so we visited many of the tourist hot spots as well as heading off the beaten track.

It was with this holiday that I decided it was time to reignite my interest in photography and purchased a Canon EOS 40D along with a trio of lenses (Canon EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM, Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM, and Canon EF 70-200mm f/4.0 L IS USM lenses for the buffs reading). I’ll test out the new WordPress 2.5 gallery feature and post a few pics.

As well as being a great place to visit, HK is also a great place to be a photographer as there are photo opportunities everywhere and you don’t necessarily have to stop once the sun goes down especially when you’ve got something as amazing as the Symphony of Lights - a daily light and music performance by some of the some of the buildings on the Hong Kong island (and Kowloon to some degree) waterfront.

I actually shot over 2,000 photos during our time in HK! Fortunately, I had a laptop computer with me and a portable external hard drive so a single storage card was sufficient. It also meant that I could look over my shots and keep an eye on things relating to my online businesses, but I promise I didn’t do any real work although I was inspired to contemplate starting a photography website.

Whilst HK was great, landing back at Heathrow’s Terminal 5 was nothing short of a farce. As well as our Heathrow to Manchester connecting flight being cancelled, our limited options for getting home resulted in us catching a coach to Birmingham and then getting picked up from there all the way back to Liverpool. It’s difficult to understand how such a massive project was so poorly planned and tested with little in the way of real contingency. Very unimpressed.

Now, back home, it’s time to get on with some work, start planning some photography trips and fleshing out my new photography website.

P.S. I tried to upload some photos into a WordPress gallery, but kept getting an error during ‘crunching’ so I’ll post them once it’s sorted.