When I try to access my blog I get a message from "Host Gator" saying that the site is experiencing some problem. Is anyone else having problems today? I can access the message board...after several tries...but still no blog!

Here's what it says:

quote:

Webmaster please contact support@hostgator.com

The website you are trying to view is currently experiencing difficulties, please try again later.

and this is the web address of that page:

quote:

http://suspended.hostgator.com/?domain=www.expatsinitaly.com

Not to worry Barb...it's happening to all of the blogs hosted by expats from what I can tell. I think Cristina is trying to fix some problems with my personal blog that was hacked into. I can't access my e-mail through expats either. Sorry if this is resulting from my blog issues. Please forgive!!!

Oh, so that's why... I haven't been able to access my email either for the last couple of hours.

Thanks for the head's up. Will contact support.

The forum and the main site are hosted on different serbvers so what happens on one does not have anything to do with the other.

Support believes we have been hacked and they are looking into it. Will let all know as soon as they let me know.

With the explorer, I was not able to access the page or the forum, but on firefox I am having to problems.

Update: it's 8 a.m. here in KY, early afternoon in Italy, and I just checked to see if I could read my blog, but I still get the same message. Hopefully everything will be back to normal soon!

Yes, it is still down. I am working on this. It seems we were hacked and the entry point was the blogs. Looks like someone installed something ontheir blog which messed up the whole site.

Our host has suspended the account so that more problems did not arise. This helps to keep everything intact. As soon as I work out all of the little things we will be back up.

These things happen and I just ask that everyone can be patient.

Happy to know it's not my fault after all. But what is with these sites being hacked into. How and why does this happen.

Oh and Barb...I'm in Florida right now.

Okay, I am working on this but of course it takes time.

As I wrote, it seems that someone with a blog has added a new widget something (site meter, etc.) that was a spyware program. It looks like basically the same thing that happened about a year plus ago. We of course cannot risk this again. Once we are up and running, anything added in the past month MUST BE removed fromt he blogs (the host will remove them but that means that if you have copies of it you cannot re add them back in). No add ons will be allowed unless approved by us (me and Annika).

Hm.... I haven't changed a thing on my blog for quite a while now, the only thing I know I've done was to upload a countdown timer to Tina's blog... but that was the very same script I've had on my blog for over a year so I don't think that should have caused any problems?

Well now I am sure it wasn't me because I haven't even added a post to my blog for months...and yes, I am ashamed to say that.

So if this isn't related to e-mail, what's the problem there?

The blogs, the main site and the emails are on the same server, whereas the message board is not.

The countdown plugin was added to Tina's blog a month ago, on April 1st. I still don't think that's what caused the problem but that's all I can think of.

The email's back!

Thanks to "support departments"...I didn't ever realize how much mail can accumulate in a couple of days.

Now maybe if we picture our blogs in the white light they'll be running again soon.

Yeah it's working -

Yes, my blog's back up, and no, I haven't added anything new, so I'm pretty sure that this time the problem wasn't me! Thanks for getting everything up and running!

I still can't log onto my blog to make changes or update posts...

Some things are back up and running, others I am still workimng on. I will make an announcement when all is back to normal.

Until I get everything fixed and make an announcement to that fact, please do not post new blog entries or go into the blog admin as I am updating all files.

quote:

Originally posted by Cristina:
Until I get everything fixed and make an announcement to that fact, please do not post new blog entries or go into the blog admin as I am updating all files.

oops!

Oops from me too! Sorry!

Okay, all is working now.

If anyone needs to add a plug in, please run it by me first. All of this could have been avoided as it was because of a plug in called Bad Behavior that had not been updated and was a security risk.