robsmart.co.uk

A couple of days ago friends at work started telling me that Google was flagging my blog here at robsmart.co.uk as an infested host of nastiness brimming with malware. This was a bit of a shock and kind of an egg on your face moment as I consider myself savvy with this sort of stuff.

However it turns out the slightly old version of WordPress i was running was open to a couple of SQL injection attacks, and i had been a bit lax in updating to the current version. Googles recent policy of scanning sites for security breaches and then flagging and removing them from search results has brought this to my attention.

So as a solution I deleted my old wordpress install and installed the latest version, one of the issues i found was a line of obfuscated javascript code embedded in the WordPress theme i was using.

So now I’m all cleaned and security hitch free (promise).

But what about the problem of Google flagging and blocking my site. Well to fix that I used the Google Webmaster tools.

The first step was to add the robsmart.co.uk domain to the webmaster dashboard.

The next step was verifying it belonged to me.

For this i simply made a blank html file as instructed and uploaded it to my website.

next stage was to go to the overview tab and look at the problems listed. I’d completely replaced the wordpress install including the theme and been through each of the pages listed to check they were clean.

after that i hit the “request a review” option

The review happened within 24 hours, i’m now just waiting for the results to propagate back through the google search engine.

While we were up near Aberdeen last weekend i spotted this interesting cloud formation not too far away. By coincidence it turns out that Hanans parents got caught in the middle of this, albeit sheltering in a coffee shop. Apparently it was extremely windy and hailing big chunks of ice…

Computer Business Review magazine did a special edition for IBM Hursleys 50th anniversary, they interviewed me for the ‘future’ section. I’m still finding the ‘Smart says’ bit amusing…

You can have a quick peek here

A group sketch i did using the wacom tablet for Roo’s leaving day. It still needs some more work as i kindda erm rushed it out