How to Fix a C4Parana Hack. Believe it or not, this site was hacked twice last year. The first one was simply a matter of deleting my administrative login and hence I was not able to login. If this happened to you, you can recover your hacked wordpress login by following the steps I outlined in another blog post. That was last November 2010. But after a month (December), it got hacked again by a Turkish hacker it seems which I am going to call a C4Parana hack.

I don’t know what a C4Parana is but what the hack did was 1) redirect my homepage to “http://maresanat.nl/media/C4Parana/$1″, 2) messed up my WP permalinks settings and 3) hacked my WP login like in the previous hack.

As I said, this happened in December and it has been 2 months since then so I’ll try my best to remember the exact steps to fix this hack. There might be some extra details I did back then but rest assured the steps below would suffice for you to fix the C4Parana hack. Another note though, there might be variations of this hack so please check against the description of the hack above if we were hacked the same way. If not, then follow the instructions with a grain of salt.

Step by step instructions on how to fix a C4Parana hack:

1. Fix your .htaccess file. The redirect of the homepage is done by hacking the .htaccess file. Fix the file if you know how or simply delete it. We’ll create one (or WordPress will…) later. This fixes issue #1.
2. Recover your WP login. I already have a blog post on this. Please check => recover your hacked wordpress login. This fixes issue #3.
3. Fix your permalinks settings. Once you are able to login back into the WP dashboard, you should fix your permalinks settings. Just restore it to what you had before.

It’s really not that hard! Just follow the instructions above and you should be fine. You would do well if you keep in mind the following things as well:

• Always upgrade to the latest stable WP version. Doing so will reduce the security vulnerabilities that WP have.
• Make sure that your .htaccess file and wp-config.php file is not writable and accessible to the outside world. Only you (or any admin) should have access to these files.
• Backup your files and database regularly. If all else fails, you can simply restore your backup if you get hacked.

That’s it. If you have any more questions or suggestions, please comment below.

How to Migrate a WP Installation from One Server to Another via Cpanel. This post would serve as an announcement as well as a “How To”. I recently moved from one hosting service to another to consolidate a part of my domains in 1 of my hosting servers and to reduce costs. It’s never bad to save a bit even if it is just a few dollars .

For this tutorial, I am assuming you a know a thing or two about making backups(database and file) via CPanel and about FTP. If not, then I suggest you go learn them first, they are not that hard. If you are all set, then here is the step by step instructions to migrate a WordPress site from one server to another via CPanel:

1. Backup the database. Now, there are a number of ways to do this but I prefer to do it via PHPMyAdmin. Backup your database by logging into PHPMyAdmin and exporting the database into a .gz file. If you are unsure how to do this, follow the official WP how to backup your database instructions.
2. Backup your WP files. This can be done via the file manager. Select the root folder containing your site and click ‘compress’ from the clickable options above.
3. Create a new database on your destination server. To make things just a bit easier, you may opt to name the database the same as the database you just backed-up. This way, you don’t have to update much later in the wp-config.php file.
4. Import your backed-up database into the new database. Remember step #1? Well, just import the file(database backup) into the new database via PHPMyAdmin.
5. Add domain to Add-on domain list. Make sure to fix the folder structure as well.
6. Restore backed-up WP files. Restore the files via the file manager into the new folder just created in step #5.
7. Update wp-config.php in new server. Update the database name, username and password.
8. Update DNS of domain via registrar. Get the new DNS of your new destination server and update them via your current domain registrar.
9. Wait. Nameserver propagation usually takes a few days so just sit back and relax.

The steps outlined above involves some downtime since we would have to wait for the nameserver propagation to finish which usually takes several days. If downtime is an issue, you can modify the steps above by adding these steps after step 6:

1. Allow your old server to access the new database in the new server. You can allow this by going to Remote MySQL on the new server and adding the domain or IP address of your old server.
2. Change your wp-config.php in the old site to point to the database on the new site. So, instead of accessing stale data, your site can access update information while waiting for the nameserver propagation to finish. The only downside is this could be a bit slow sometimes.

So the these are the steps to migrate a WP installation from one server to another. If you have any questions, feel free to comment/ask below.

How to Recover Hacked WordPress Login. Believe it or not this site was hacked and was fixed just a few moments ago. I am not sure how long it was hacked but I was able to fix it after a few minutes. Here is what happened.

I logged in to the WP-ADMIN page to login but was not able to do so. My admin account was gone and when I tried to use the password recovery function, it says that there was no such username or email address! So how did I fix this? Easy.

Given that I have some technical background on WordPress installations and MySQL, I used this to my advantage by checking out the WP database to check if my user account still exists. Unsurprisingly, my user account/admin account no longer existed but was replaced by some mysterious login. Hence, what I did was just edit this mysterious account and replaced the information with my own details. After that, I used the WP password recovery to reset my password and then I took this opportunity to upgrade to the latest WP version with the hopes of better security.

If you are not able to follow the vague summary above, here is the step by step walk through for recovering your hacked WP account:

1. Enter your host CPANEL and click on phpMyAdmin.
2. Once inside phpMyAdmin, select your blog’s database on the left.
3. Browse the wp_users table.
4. Find the hacked row and edit it.
5. Modify the user_pass column by a) selecting MD5 from the Function drop-down box and b) entering a new password in the Value text box.
6. Click/Press Go/Save to save your changes.
7. Create a new tab in your browser and go to your blog’s WP-ADMIN page.
8. Use the password recovery functionality to reset your password.
9. OPTIONAL BUT RECOMMENDED. Once your password has been reset and you are able to login once again, upgrade your WP installation into the latest version.

That’s it! If you have the same problem as I did a few moments ago, then just follow the steps above to fix the problem. If you are a programmer or a web developer, you should not have any problems following the instructions. Otherwise, just leave a comment below and I will try to help you the best I can.

It has been a while since I last posted in this blog for various reasons. I have also thought of shutting it down but have decided against it for various reasons too. What is sure right now is that this domain is here to stay for as long as possible as this has a sort of a sentimental value to me being my first blog! So what updates do I have?

First, is that this blog is back. I might not be able to post as frequently as before but I will post on it every now and then. I laid low for a couple of months because something happened to this blog’s search engine rankings. I believe this blog was penalized by the Big G and my SERP fell down considerably. As a result, traffic was down (everything was down). But after a few weeks, the penalty was lifted and this blog is back online! I am not sure of the nature of the penalty but I tried my best to clean this blog of possible offenses Big G might frown upon. Fortunately, it worked.

One reason I wanted to shut this blog down was because it was formerly still using WP 2.5 while the latest version is 2.9.2! Yes it has been a long way and the auto-upgrade feature was absent from version 2.5. So the lazy guy inside me said that I should just shut down this blog. Fortunately I did not do so and stuck with the manual upgrade so that this blog now runs on a WP 2.9.2 . I’ll probably create a blog post on upgrading from a very old version of WP to the latest one since there are not a lot of posts on that around.

I am also planning to update this blog’s WP theme because it simply sucks. Yes, it is better than the first one but hey it still is ugly. I am no great designer so please bear with me. Creating WP themes is actually a way for me to exercise my web programming skills and not my design skills so the next theme will probably more minimalistic.

Okay so that’s it for now. See you soon.

And yes, I did no spell check or grammar check so please forgive me ;p

Most of us addicted to social websites most likely have a facebook account, a myspace account and a twitter account. Of these 3, twitter goes down the most. Someone has taken advantage of this and created a site that would tell us whether twitter is down or not (not sure how helpful this is…but definitely cool)! The site shows you either a “Yes” or a “No” depending on the site’s status.

Check out the site here => istwitterdown.com

Before going to the cash for clunkers car list, let us review what the cash for clunker is all about. This program is officially called CARS or the “Car Allowance Rebate System”. This cash for clunkers bill is a program of the United States that helps consumers lease or buy a more environmentally-friendly vehicles from a participating dealer when they trade in a less fuel-efficient car or truck. This program is designed as a means to boost the economy during the recession and help the environment by having cleaner and more fuel efficient vehicles on the road thus killing two birds with one stone.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Consumers will be able to take advantage of this program and receive a $3,500 or $4,500 discount from the car dealer when they trade in their old vehicle and purchase or lease a new one.

Consumers are eligible to receive a $3500 or $4500 discount from the dealer during the trade in of their old vehicle to buy or lease a new one. The question left is, does your car qualify? Here are the qualifications as outlined in cars.gov:

• Your vehicle must be less than 25 years old on the trade-in date
• Generally, trade-in vehicles must get 18 or less MPG (some very large pick-up trucks and cargo vans have different requirements)
• Trade-in vehicles must be registered and insured continuously for the full year preceding the trade-in
• One-year Proof of Insurance. If your insurance card does not cover the entire year preceding the trade in, you will need other proof of insurance. Contact your insurance company to get evidence of one-year worth of insurance. The form must include, at a minimum, the insurance company, policy number, VIN, start and end date of insurance (showing at least 1 year).
• Proof of Registration going back at least one-year.
• “Clear” title. This means the title must be free of any liens or other encumbrances. If you have liens, you need to get these cleared before going to the dealer. This may include evidence on the face of the title showing no lien; that the title has been cleared (signed and stamped accordingly), or with an attached lien release from the lien holder.
• The vehicle manufacturer date found on the driver’s door or door jamb is less than 25 years old when you trade it in.

Now here is the cash for clankers car list that shows which vehicles are eligible. The list can be found here.