VintFalken.com’s unwanted make-over
November 7, 2007 10:32 amAs some might - or might not - have noticed, VintFalken.com looked terribly unbalanced, highly confusing and a bit f*cked up last night. Noticing that did not make my yesterday’s state of being terribly unbalanced, somewhat confused and highly disappointed in society - real life one’s, don’t worry - any better.
VintFalken.com’s main page (the blog entries) were not showing at all, and as for the other pages, the center column jumped towards the left and the side bar was scattered all over below of the pages. Unreadable, to say the least.
Questions that sprung to my mind:
Does it look this terrible to everyone?
After consulting Loki, I could answer ‘yes, definitely’ to that question
What went wrong?
After consulting Loki, I still did not have the slightest clue.
Defeated, I went to bed…
Then suddenly the imaginary electrical light bulb above my head started to glow very brightly: ‘Shit! I left the chmod permissions for some of my template files to 655! Now.. somebody or something wouldn’t have..’.
Actually, I did not _really_ forget about those permissions. I just though nodoby would be interested in the template files. As I - of course - don’t have a backup of them in the state they are to be - that is, not with the changes I made to them - the easiest way to test this was to select another theme. So I took the one I initially planned to mod… and VintFalken.com is far from pretty, but at least readable again.
Now it’s either:
- More or less restoring the old vintfalken.com to it’s classical looks.
- Starting over again with a new theme to Vint’s liking and mod that.
Dunno yet. Do know whichever I choose, it’s time lost I can’t spend on the tons of other things I want to do. So shortly put: this does suck. :(
But if anybody knows a not-so-much time consuming way to find out if it was man or machine screwing me over like this, and which IP address finds itself behind that evil creature, do let me know!
Tags: vintfalken.com
19 Responses to “VintFalken.com’s unwanted make-over”
*shrugs* but it looks great now.
I hate when computer stuff
doesn’t work right. It’s crazy.
Looks fine to me.
But sometimes crashes and template corruptions are really just opportunities to start from scratch and try something cool and new.
It’s a way of shaking the foundations so you have to start over, but with a fresh and clean plot of space.
The problem is, .php code don’t corrupt themselves. So something or -body must have done this. :(
And crap, yes, but all added functionality (like in tags, recent comments, mybloglog comments, etc… are gone, as I just reinstated the ’standard’ template files. :((( )
Start from scratch: that would mean spending less time on other things. And atm I prefer the other things… :/
Oooh, I noticed the weird template yesterday and thought maybe I had actually caught you in the middle of remodeling the place and was excited to see what the finished product was going to look like.
Isn’t it kinda sad, though, that you went to bed and were still thinking about .php and template permissions? hehe
I’m rather sure 95% of the human population thinks about sex once in a while when behind a computer, so I don’t see why thinking about computer stuff in my bed is that wrong. :D
:-S I knew something was up. Vint would never choose a theme with green and green-ish-yellow-ish in it, and no graphics! ‘^_^.
Though I don’t know how someone without server access could mod the files. Chmod permissions talk mostly about local scripts changing ‘em, although Write appears under world as well :-S .
Anyway, like you said to me when I asked initially for some server space (thanks again!), no auto backups! But, wait, doesn’t your hosting company have backups? Most do :-S .
Hmm, I wonder, do emoticons work? :) :( :???:
Anyway, like you said to me when I asked initially for some server space (thanks again!), no auto backups!
Yeah.. rub it in, will you! :d It’s my stupidity, so not bothering the hosting service for it. Compared to the service I got from Efactornet, these guys are Saints, and me thinks you should not bother saints with self-created problems. My stupidity caused this mess, so I’m inclined to clean up? ;) As long as my Db’s are healthy, I will survive… really, what do you guys think of plain text? ;)
Emoticons never worked, they never will. Except for :mrgreen:, all emoticons are evil!
@Vint: Sowwy for rubbing it in… :-/ You should do a database backup every week to ensure nothing goes wrong… My stupidity erased my old blog! I placed two blogs in one database, and I forgot the TSL Wiki news blog and mine are in the same, so, I deleted the database. Ouchies. I couldn’t save my post of my trip to London! WAH!! But thanks to Google I managed to save “Meet me There”! :-D.
*points at the side bar*
Uh… Vint… Check your main page… X.X
UPDATE: What was that? WordPress for a sec couldn’t use the post.php file :-S
That meant that the post.php file isn’t fixed completely yet. But the sidebar is! ;)
What about the sidebar? :-P
It has recent comments again… and feedburner stats… and pown stuff… and see, mybloglog avatars in the comments! =d
PS. Post is fixed too now. =d
hmm 655 means “read/write myself, read/execute group and everyone else” - hmm, in case “myself” is the server process, then maybe… But you should see something “interesting” in the logs in this case…
Yeah, but why then would the machine only mess up 655 files, as ’self’ can also access 644 files? Anyway, it’s fixed, all chmod perms are set to 644 and I cross my tail this will not happen again. (And said I will do a backup when I find the time. ;))
Still, weird… I never figured out how an external file could modify internal files without an “inside man”. I get the feeling some plugin you have has an exploit in it, which was used by someone or the creator, which is what caused it… Could be…
[…] Vint… You’re not the only one with a sudden file corruption error… The only difference is that, the core files, not theme files, are damaged over here! […]
Ow that sucks, … any idea what is causing it now? :/
btw. We are physically moving, - that is take box, put box in car, unload box, install box, I think -, not data-moving, the night from 23th to 24th november. CET time that is. I think that will go together with some downtime. :p
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