Guess I needed the above shot over this last weekend. As most of you know the site was down over the weekend and I figured an explanation was in order.
It was the results of two events. The first one was an denial of service attack. That brought us down for many hours, as an attack on Lucianne.com that same day did also. The IT guys were able to stop the attack but a plugin I had installed recently reacted badly to another plugin, making calls to the database at a huge rate which brought the server to a standstill. Once all that was worked out we were back up. There does seem to be some kind of backdoor into the site via a plugin, which Michael Barrett at Aria Interactive is working on fixing. Michael….the designer of our site….is also working on a new interface, with the same cowboy feel and images, but sleeker so the load times are faster and it plays nice with all the different browsers.
See author page
If it is left to me, I will start the open posts with for the weekend with this bit of You tube that can kick off the weekend with genuine sentiment that was sent to me by a young trooper that is serving with the State Department in the Green Zone. He decided that the Army was not his best choice but served well and serves now regretfully under folks that never wore boots. I could not work for Hillary Clinton because I could not watch my back close enough and would tell the truth too often to suit her.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvOx4avw8WY&feature=player_embedded
I am low tech here. I saddle broke a horse this morning instead of buying another SUV.
Old habits never go away in Montana. I have plenty of grass but no oil wells or a refinery.
Take Care and never forget that the Freedoms You take for granted came from something more than tea parties. It takes the force of arms and the sacrifice of a few souls to depose those that oppress. My ass is in Montana but my heart is with the oppressed in Iran that the Half Kenyan Pretender in Chief did not stand up for.
MJ got a moment of Silence in Congress. Miss Zeda got a bullet and Our Congress could care less.
L’CHAIM
Curt have your tech guy update wordpress from 2.7.1 to 2.8. That might help. Also WP is working on a newer edition but it’s not out yet. Although I think it’s in beta format. My site is updated automatically when ever the newer versions come out. Not the beta though.
http://miketrani.com/blog/
http://mike630.vox.com/
Actually, they are having a few problems with 2.8 on a couple other sites on the same server. I always wait a bit to see how many bugs are found.
Okay, is it just me, or does it seem there are other right leaning sites that are going down. Over at Gateway Pundit, they noted that Founding Bloggers was down. Now Michelle Malkin and HotAir is down. What is going on?
Thomas, it’s some of that left wing tolerance in action most likely.
I was worried when I couldn’t find you this weekend…looking for refuge from the chest pounding and hysteria over at NQ over Jackson. Unbelievable spin over this turkey.
Glad you’re back up and running.
So glad you are up and running. We discovered ours wasn’t a hack but an overloaded server. May I suggest that our sites are experiencing heavy traffic of late and it’s going to get heavier.
I’m so happy you guys (persons?!) are back! Always look forward to the Sunday cartoons. They are so funny and creative – Had given up even looking at cartoons in the newspaper about 20 years ago because they were so boring. Thank you so much Flopping Aces for all the great work you do.
P.S. Do you guys ever sleep?
Just as funny late, as when it’s on time, Joanne!
@ThomasB. & Hard Right:
It wouldn’t surprise me to be honest. My previous job was working with network/server security applications and it would not surprise me one bit if some left leaning tech-criminal(sorry, but I refuse the often mis-used term ‘hacker’) may have done his home work and done just that.
Unless companies are looking for “recon” hits they may not even see it. It just depends on the talent of the person involved.
I once had a co-worker of a room-mate of mine who was behind a denial of service(DoS) attack against our home broadband (it was still new at the time). I was successful in getting some accounts closed and he and I had a man-to-geek talk. I explained what the next DoS attack would be and he got the picture. The final ones stopped.
Curt,
hopefully your hosting company keeps good logs. Depending on what access you have and the type of account, you may be able to review the logs yourself to identify the responsible IP addresses. If this was the case, they could go after the people responsible.
If the same IP addresses are responsible for other right leaning sites, then perhaps something more can be done.
Just a thought.
Thnak you, Wordsmith! Last weekend’s cartoons were especially funny. Thank goodness, not everyone has to be politically correct.
I don’t know how I miss them. Thanks for bringing them to my attention!
If I may make a suggestion, how about moving the “Log in” links to the top of the page? Most of the time, I don’t log in simply because (on a busy day) I don’t feel like scrolling up and down looking for that little box…how about a login link on the masthead with “Home,” “Register,” and the rest?
Good idea Wes….gonna put one up there now.
Replaced the Register link up there to Log In…..