Hackers, Blogs and PC's.... Oh My!!!

What a week!
My ‘problem’ antennas have been twitching this week. It started off with my blog and user access. ‘Hedosnorrenny’ had decided to become a contributor to my blog. Without me asking.  There he (or she?) was, proudly displayed in my WordPress ‘users’.

So, methinks, time to perform some extra security. With all this Gumblar about, you can’t be too careful..  I download some malware software and start scanning. Problem number 2 pops up. Every time my scan runs, it freezes on one particular dll. Uh Oh, virus?

No No my friends…it’s bigger than that…

It’s hardware failure!!! Hooray, at least I know it’s not my antivirus sofware! My Dell laptop M1530 which is only just over  one year old (and so out of warranty) decided to pack in its hard disk. I can understand this. After all, with a 320 GB capacity, that’s a lot of hard yakka.  So, I grin and bear it in true Testing Time’s fashion and replace the  hardware. Fortunately, I’m good citizen material and have recently backed up my data. So, new hard drive and away I go….until….

Problem number 3…

Of course, when Wordpress announce a new upgrade for security reasons, I immediately think, fab, this might fix my user registration issue, so upgrade I go.  Then I discover that all my blog links don’t work, neither do my catalogues.

Is there no end to this mess?

Fortunately, because of my good citizen material(see above), I have a backup and roll back an old version and presto…back in business.

I look back on my week of failure and reflect, what could I have done better? I don’t think I could have prevented the hardware failure, and the hacker?  I think I am pretty secure about my access, but I’m willing to admit I still have a lot too learn.

WordPress upgrade failure?  Completely my fault.

I’m a software tester! What did I think I was  doing, upgrading before testing? I really ought to have known better.

So, yes I’ve learnt a lot this week. Keep your access 100% secure and test before you upgrade. I’ve now got a test site for my wordpress, and any upgrades will be well tested before it has to perform in public.

Basic stuff right? I can’t believe I keep falling into these traps….

Any advice to wordpress users, backup often and have a test site that replicates your real site.

Hmm, I think I’ve heard that advice before somewhere….