Gremlins are eating my website
Published April 10th, 2008 in Metacommentary.If you can even read this, please pardon the mess. That is of course if indeed there is a mess on your screen.
If everything is fine, and not a mess, please ignore this post. If everything is not fine, please ignore this blog for a while (how long? who knows!) until I can get someone to help me figure out what in the Sam Hill is happening.
Munch munch munch.
Lesbian Dad is written by a parent who answers to the name "Baba" and works toward a world in which amor does indeed vincit omnia. 
Looks fine over here.
Without wishing to add to injury what’s a spam attack like? A dull thud body blow as one hits you between the shoulder blades; columns of the things, everywhere you look squooshing menacingly in their tins advancing slowly towards you (oh Doctor Who- once exposed to image of the Daleks doing this never forgotten)??
But seriously, what happens? Is it a random thing? Where does it come from?
Whoa, what did I miss?
No problemo here either. You sure there s something wrong with your website??? ;-))
Ah, well. Sister Chumpy, more like columns of things, everywhere you look, squooshing menacingly in their tins advancing slowly towards you. Not that I ever saw Doctor Who, but your depiction serves quite well. Only those columns are also disintegrating and collapsing on you. And the columns are your various best-laid pages or features or words or what have you.
I heard that there was a rather concerted & energetic spammie campaign midweek, on the good authority the helpful 19 year-olds on the all-night techie help desk at my gracious host (Acorn Host, green-powered, woman-run, and bless ‘em, up all night willing to help with a live person in real time!). Then again, there is a constant stream of spam comments, and “spambots” of various kinds trying to pry into the code of various websites, either to insert code that leaves links to their sites, or (maybe?) to simply make general mischief.
I don’t quite understand enough of it at the moment, and can’t separate spam-related havoc from other stuff like my disk storage reaching its limit (due to size of site? due to spambots having inserted ghost pages, which evidently can also happen? lord knows).
I’m like someone who knows how to drive their vehicle, and any other vehicle as simple (I’m thinking a ‘62 VW bug, which I had once, and loved: metal dashboard, three — count ‘em, 3 — dashboard guages, heat turned on via a knob at the base of the driver’s seat which let in engine heat). I like to shine it up from time to time on a sunny weekend with a bucket of suds and a good garden hose. But I am a deer in the headlights of the instrumentation on an F-16 fighter plane, and I couldn’t fix a broken engine to save my life. And this week my engine spouted steam from every orifice.
Studying Stones, I’m glad you missed the carnivalesque, rotating banner/ header fun, wherein random code inserted itself above the header; the header photo disappeared and the whole site loaded as if it wasn’t contained in the gracious “skin” of the fancy K2 theme I use; all was back except now no title on the header; then an “Asides” section in the column (I still don’t even know what an “Aside” is! And I should! I’m the Digression King!); and finally — and still — no access to sub-pages.
I was plotting a fancy upgrade when resources (time & monetary) ever made themselves sufficient enough, and thanks to a friend, they seem to be forthcoming (both). This recent derailment will speed up the timeline I think. You know, from six months from now to three months from now.
Hola, c.ars! There’s a whole lot that you-alls over in the UK/EU have going on that works a lot better than over here in the US (oh, expenditures on the arts, on human beings, social services, we could start there). So mebbe that overall enlightenment includes some kind of immunity to gremlin mayhem.
Or, could be that the gremlins are eating my brain, which is entirely possible, since the net effect would likely be the same as I’m seeing on the site. I still see the sub-pages, but that could be because of a fix earlier in the week having to do with a switch from PHP 4 and PHP 5 resolution at the server’s end.
What’s the difference between PHP 4 & PHP 5? How in the hell should I know?! I’m only using the stuff on a daily basis, that’s all! Sadly, I waylaid the fortitude to even finish my PhD, so everything from PhE to PhZ, including PhP, will remain shrouded in mystery for me. As so much does. Sigh.