In a never-ending quest to actually love my own website’s design, I’ve done some tweaks and relaunched Shiny Spot Web Services this fine Memorial Day.
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Let me qualify this title by saying I’m late to the iPhone app development party. You see, I’ve been slowly making my way in the website design and development business. I’m doing ok. Could be better, mind you.
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For no reason other than love, Jennifer came home from a shopping trip bearing an unexpected yet very welcome gift: an iPad.
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After the slight refresh of this site, I was left feeling a tad disappointed because I couldn’t think of a “wow factor” header.
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More botox than the full nip and tuck, though.

Now that I have being playing with WordPress for some time, I am getting more familiar with the hands-on customization of templates, the loop and all the other great funky functions that allow developers to get it ‘just so’.
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Another website by the Englishman goes live. A small one, but with potential for growth when needed. This is for Sullivan Management Group, a family run property management company.
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This post is a bit of self-praise because I have completed a website for my first real Orange County website client – a lovely chap called Glenn Ritchie who is a realtor in Orange County.
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So, on my travels back to the Old Country, I have the services of a pay as you go USB mobile modem to keep me connected with the world. This post is coming via it, as it happens.

Am I happy with it? Nope. Why not?

1. It keeps crashing my MacBook. This happens, it first seemed, randomly. However, I think I have managed to work out that it happens when the machine has been asleep, or if the dongle was plugged in AFTER start up. Fingers crossed that if I plug in the dongle and then turn on the machine, then ensure it does NOT go to sleep I can use it safely-ish. That’s a bit of a nuisance to say the least.

2. Three or “3″ mobile network sucks. When I am busy surfing away it stops working and disconnects me at random. Also, often while I am connected web pages won’t load. Then it may disconnect me again for a laugh.

My main mistake is that I went with 3 who are a solely 3G network (clue’s in the name, see). This means that if there is not a 3 signal, they don’t have a 2G network to fall back on to at least provide some connectivity, even if it is somewhat slow.

Looks like on my next trip out I will be investing in a short-term contract Orange USB dongle.

Well this is the first blog post about something techie. Thought I would mention this issue because it’s the first time something like this has happened to me.

For those that don’t know, I do websites and am fortunate to get paid for it!

I had a site go down – falconhealthcare.co.uk. When visited, it was just a blank page and I couldn’t FTP in. I checked the hosting company for any issues and they reported a performance issue on the servers. I gave it some time, but still nothing happened.

To see if it would help, I re-uploaded the index.php file of the site, which was running on Drupal CMS. Huzzah! The site was working again. I was about to go back to playing on Facebook, when I thought I’d just check some of the site’s links were working ok. Suddenly I was being redirected to allvideo.org.uk – a very nasty site that has lots of malware and other evils. Needless to say I gave a huge WTF?! and was very, very confused.

As if you didn’t already know: Google is your friend. It was mine too as a search produced this post by Tony Geer that explained everything. Reading it I discovered that sure enough, my .htaccess file had been altered and I’m guessing so had my index.php. Fortunately the addition to the index.php file had knackered the site good and proper, preventing any innocent users from being hijacked.

I sorted out the site, upgraded the Drupal core and changed the password for ftp. Was this all linked to the ‘server issues’ Heart Internet were having? Who knows. I have reported it to them, so we’ll see what, if anything, they have to say on the matter.

And thanks Tony, you da man.

Update: Heart Internet have suggested that it’s a PC virus that intercepts usernames and passwords and uploads the dodgy content. They helpfully pointed out it was the Gumblar virus. Hmmm, I smell a cover up. Why? Because I use a Mac and I’m the only one with FTP access! Perhaps this issue is a bit closer to home than Heart Internet realise or want to admit.