Tag: theme

Some Blog Changes Coming

You may have noticed that DarkerView got hacked back in late March. Somehow malicious files were inserted that sent search traffic to various less than reputable websites, of course that means mostly sex sites. Sorry about that.

GyPSy in the Night
The 11″ NexStar GPS telescope, GyPSy set up at Ka’Ohe
Only search traffic was affected, those who went directly to the site saw the correct webpage, thus I did not notice right away as I use direct links. As a side note, getting hacked does result in a huge spike in traffic volume, that was the first sign. This sort of hack is apparently called conditional redirect hack, essentially borrowing a reputable website’s reputation with the search engines to send traffic towards certain websites.

As a result I have been tightening up security around here. Removing some old plugins, changing things around and checking for known vulnerabilities. One thing you will soon see is that the old theme will be replaced for an entirely new look for DarkerView.

The old theme is just that… old. Also probably insecure as there has been no maintenance on it in years. As I really do not know how the attacker got in I need to look to everything that could have been the weakness. Time to update the look and update the code to something that is modern and supported.

Style.css and Templates

I have spent much of the day, between doing yard work, working on the style sheet for Darker View. I have solved a few little issues, put a header image in place, and learned a great deal about the intricacies of CSS and WordPress. I still have some problems with tables and the favicon, I will just attack the issues one-by-one.

I have also learned a bit about WordPress templates, making a few modifications here and there. Good progress, the whole thing is looking much better.The major bug of the Blogum theme seems to be putting a ‘Read More’ at the bottom of every post, even if it has nothing else to read. This one will be a challenge. Otherwise I have figured out date formats and many of the other WordPress function calls.

If you have any comments or suggestions, please comment!

Update… The Read More bug is fixed!

Mucking About in Themes

Yes, I have changed the theme. Sorry.

The theme currently displayed is Blogum. I think this is the way I want to go. The original appearance was back on white. Not really appropriate for a blog called Darker View. I have edited the CSS for a gray on black appearance closer to the original DV. A few things do not work quite right, particularly the tables I had so neatly laid out for the earlier theme. Just more work ahead, bear with me.