How Time Flu

I’ve mentioned elsewhere on this site that one of the things I wanted to do was write about how this project impacts on me and my family life, and that’s what I want to touch on today.

I’ve also stated that I don’t want this project to impinge on family life. Time being a stay at home parent is time spent with the children and running the household – sitting at the computer while my kids play with electrical sockets isn’t an option.

Mainly this project has been built and operated in whatever time is left after all the homely duties have been carried out. Yes I’ve snatched a few minutes here or there to reply to a comment, an email or to upload an image.

When my wife is home and she takes the kids out I get the chance to work on the site but by and large I’ve kept home life separate from project life.

Consequently I’ve sacrificed sleep to fit it all in and this last week or so I’ve paid the price.

I’ve had a cold for about a month which isn’t that unusual, it’s been the way of things for the last 8 years ever since our first child arrived. This time the cold transmogrified into flu and I’ve been knocked sideways since last weekend.

I was getting by. Just. So the last thing I needed was for the site to pick up a virus too. This happened on Tuesday last.

My Avast Antivirus software picked it up and sounded the blood curdling klaxon, and honestly I could have cried.

It told me what the problem was but didn’t tell me how to find it or how to fix it. It’s only interested in protecting my PC and doesn’t really care about my website. Fair enough I suppose.

I knew I had to remedy it immediately so on this occasion I had to let my children play with naked flames and broken glass to distract them from the electrical sockets.

I really could have done without this. I felt as rough as a badgers behind and ended up spending hours fighting flu, juggling kids and solving a potentially very damaging problem – not just for me but for people coming to the site.

As soon as I found out, I took the site offline, tweeted the status, and set about solving the problem.

It turns out to be an iFrame (inline frame) attack where malicious code is hidden on the front page in a frame 1pixel x 1pixel. There’s no way to see it. The code somehow redirects all the links to another site.

I didn’t go to the other site so I can’t tell you what was there and no one else has reported being redirected so I’m hoping no harm came to anyone else.

Do let me know if you’ve been affected though.

The drama is over now and I’ve shored up the site password and file transfer protocol password.

Clearly at the moment I don’t have enough resilience in my personal immunity or with the site. I’ll have to work on both.

Fortunately the time away has helped me see that I’ve departed slightly from my original plan and I’m going to put that right.

It was my plan from the start to put most of the work in at the front end and have the majority of the content supplied by others in the form of 150 word texts and guest posts. I designed it this way to fit in around changeable family life but I was also aware that offering guest posts would benefit others.

It was supposed to be simple and efficient but instead I’m trying to do too much and instead what I need to do is concentrate on getting the Mona Lisa Million seen and publicised.

I feel that getting back to the original (simple) plan will help restore the balance with the project and family life – although I know there’ll always be some crossover.

I’m grateful for the support I’ve been given so far and I’m working on a way to make sure that those of you who came aboard right at the start, get another outing once subscriber numbers pick up. It might be just repeating the existing texts, but it could easily be offering the opportunity to submit another text with another SEO optimised link. We shall see.

Thanks to all of you who have enquired after my health and wished me well. I’m feeling much better but not quite the full shilling. I’m still playing catch up with the administration and updating lists etc. Please bear with me and I’ll get it all done this week.

Thanks for reading,

Dave

Picture: I Don’t Know, Maybe.