Author: Kathleen Toler

We have improved our server monitoring technology so that we are aware of not only CPU load, but also high disk input/output, memory usage, and capacity limitations on every server we operate more quickly so that we are able to be more efficient with our precautionary tactics and more diligent in our maintenance strategies, resulting in improved uptime percentages since we will be more able to resolve issues prior to the resulting outages or performance impacts.

Our hosting company is one of the only providers that is aware of – and works toward resolving – problems before they are reported by clients. We are also one of the few to provide immediate response and public updates and to take a genuine and personal interest in ensuring that our customers are happy. After five years, our hosting division is larger than ever but our dedication to stability and focus on client satisfaction remains solid. Thank you all for your feedback and for your continued business.

Have a great Tuesday!

There is an apparently ongoing and highly-distributed, global attack on WordPress installations across virtually every web host in existence. Because there are over 40,000 IP addresses associated with this attack, it is difficult to block access on an IP-basis.

From what we can tell, the source of these types of attacks began several months ago — our clients and servers have been lucky up to this point to have not been hit with these attacks. The symptoms of this attack are a very slow backend on your WordPress site, or an inability to log in. In many instances, such as what we are seeing today, the entire server can be affected by overload and database inaccessibility which prevents the sites from loading at all.

Since we do specialize in WordPress hosting and design, our servers are especially vulnerable to these attacks and as such, we are taking every action possible to resolve and prevent these issues.

We are looking into the possibility of password-protecting all wp-login.php files .htaccess on the server, but will need each client’s approval in order to utilize this method of protection.

Again, please recognize that this is a global issue affecting all web hosts and we are doing all that we can to rectify the issues being caused by this influx of attack attempts on our servers, particularly EDP2.

WordPress Login – Brute Force Attack

Measures You Can Take to Prevent Similar Attacks

• Secure (by password protection) wp-login.php for all WordPress sites in your cPanel account. This will help deter this type of attack.
• Generate a SECURE password: http://strongpasswordgenerator.com
• Log into your WordPress powered websites and change your passwords, ensuring that they are at least 8 characters in length and seemingly randomized, including both upper and lowercase letters as well as numbers and special characters.

If you would like help in accomplishing either of these tasks, please contact support via email or create a support ticket in the client billing portal. We will update this blog post when we have further information.

I’ve noticed in processing the last few Blogger to WordPress migrations for clients that their draft articles are being processed into WordPress as “published” which makes them accessible by readers rather than saved privately in the back end of the site for completion.

After doing some research, I have found that the problem is within the plugin that performs the import itself — the function isDraft was returning a perpetual “false” statement because of an incorrect schema used for parsing the Blogger XML. In order to fix this glitch, you’ll need to open the file blogger-importer-blogitem.php within the Blogger Importer plugin and change the following:

from:

define('SIMPLEPIE_NAMESPACE_ATOMPUB', 'http://www.w3.org/2007/app');

to:

define('SIMPLEPIE_NAMESPACE_ATOMPUB', 'http://purl.org/atom/app#');

Make sure you replace the entire string and that you keep the second string completely intact, including the hash symbol at the end of “app” in order for this to work properly. Importing using the plugin after making this modification should return published, scheduled, and draft articles appropriately.

As always, if you are not comfortable making these changes or would like assistance, contact us for assistance!