It seems a while since I was saying how pleased I am with the theme you see before you, and that was why I was only going to change the banner when I changed the name of the website. In fact, it was actually only twelve days ago. How quickly time flies! And how quickly a person can change their mind!

Anyway, at the time I had spent some time doing the rounds and couldn’t find anything that I felt was better that what I’m already using. Then, a few days ago, I stumbled across a theme that jumped out at me. I really liked it. It’s completely different to what I’ve used before. To me, it looks a bit “out there” but I couldn’t stop looking at it … and wanting to use it! It is a theme that is not free though, and that kept me hovering on the threshold for some time…several days. The cost was minimal – only $20 – which I think is a fair price, but I’m not trusting when it comes to the internet. What if I paid and got nothing in return? What if I paid and the theme didn’t work properly? Eventually, I decided to take a risk.

I’ve purchased a new theme for this website. I don’t know if it will work, that will be discovered over the weekend (actually I probably won’t be able to wait that long and will, no doubt, install it on Friday night), but I feel excited about the coming new look (assuming all goes to plan, of course). So…put a “post it” note on your screen reminding yourself that The Desk of Karen Lee Field is about to be modernised.

Approximately thirty-six hours ago this website was attacked by hackers. I was soundly asleep in bed and missed the whole thing, however, several friends sent me emailed in the attempt to notify me. By the time I read the emails the next morning, my provider had already fixed the problem and restored their latest backup of my site and everything was sweet. I lost nothing!

But, I did the research anyway, because that’s just the type of person I am. I wanted to know what it would mean to me (if my provider wasn’t quick to react) and what I would have had to do to fix the problem. I want to share the results with you, as many of my readers also have blogs and I believe being forewarned may prevent you losing a lot of information.

Firstly, the best policy for WordPress bloggers is to keep your installation up to date, this includes your plugins. However, this is no guarantee that you won’t get caught out. If you do find yourself compromised, then you should think about doing a complete, fresh install on a newly created database.

“Fresh” means that you must download a new copy of WordPress, your plugins, your theme and, to be absolutely safe, find the original images of everything you have uploaded to the website (this includes book covers, DVD covers, photos, everything). It sounds like a lot of hard work, but it shouldn’t be, especially if you save copies of your files to your computer regularly.

With that lovely new database sitting empty and waiting to be used, and the old database dumped, you should install the “fresh” copy of Wordpress and then upload all your “fresh” files. Then, when all is up and running, you can restore a backup of your blog…you do backup your website regularly, don’t you? There’s a WordPress Databse Backup plugin that makes this so easy, you’d be silly not to grab it right now if you are not using it already. The plugin will backup your site weekly and send the backup to your email address (don’t backup to your database, because then your backups could also be compromised).

You should be back to where you started – fresh and clean.

Go to How to Completely Clean Your Hacked WordPress Installation for step by step instructions.

My site didn’t suffer any ill affects from the hacking from what I can see. I don’t feel the need to do a complete new install, but if I notice anything strange in coming days or months, I will immediately do the above.

I did, however, check to see if any users had been added to the list (even invisible ones – see the link below to find out more about that). I also immediately changed the password, checked all the files to see if I could see strange coding and will do a more in-depth check over the weekend when I have access to ftp.

Follow these links to find out more:

WordPress Attack Catches Bloggers Off-Guard but it Shouldn’t Have

WordPress Hacker Strikes: How to fix the hack that causes permalinks, url, structure error

It is with pleasure that I announce a change of name for this website. The Desk of Karen Lee Field is a simple name, which isn’t much different to the old name, but it clearly states what will be found within the pages of this blog.

The Desk of Karen Lee Field will see posts about, but not limited to, writing, reading, genealogy, craft and Playstation gaming. It is also the home of previous history topics relating to Ancient Egypt and the medieval era.

I really like the images in the new banner as they represent the topics I’ve just mentioned. All three images are old paintings, which add character to the theme (in my opinion). Find out more about the paintings on the new Credit page.

Details of a competition will be announced tomorrow, so please be sure to visit me again soon.

This website needs a new name. I’ve been pondering this conundrum for a while and I think I’ve made a decision. Obviously, nothing is set in stone, but I’m leaning towards a simple change that will describe the content of the website a lot clearer than the current name – Scribe’s Writing Desk.

I still see this website as my desk, however, now a variety of things happen at that work space. With this in mind, I am thinking of changing the name to “The Desk of Karen Lee Field”. It feels more appropriate to use my pen name rather than my online name, being The Scribe.

When time permits, I will work on a new banner and when I upload that, the new name will be official. At that time, I will also announce an opportunity to win a gift. But more details on that at the official opening of the renamed site…and when I’ve thought about how the contest is going to work!

Recently, I announced that I am shutting down Scribe’s Message Board. That closure will occur on Monday, 31 August 2009. The reason for the closure is mainly because I’m “all posted out”. Over the last eight years, I have talked about every aspect of writing. I doubt I wrote about every aspect of the publishing industry too, but I can’t write about something I haven’t experienced. It seems wrong somehow.

Anyway, that “all posted out” feeling extends to this website too. Sometimes I feel as if I’ve said everything there is for me to say, leaving little else to prattle on about. Yet I don’t feel ready to throw this site away (meaning I don’t want to delete it). So I’ve been thinking about the direction this website will take from here and I’ve decided to go back on something I said once before regarding personal posts.

There was a time when I was experiencing “attacks” through this website. Mostly the attacks were from people who disagreed with what I had written about and, in their (lack of) wisdom, they decided being nasty would force me to change my mind. Well, what can I say, being nasty never forces anyone to do anything, in fact, it will make them dig in their heels even more…it certainly doesn’t encourage the other person to listen to what is being said – those attacks were promptly deleted. However, some attacks were much worse…! I’ll say no more about those ones.

Yet, this is my web space and I think it’s up to me what appears here. If a visitor doesn’t like what they see or read, then they are free to leave and never return. With this in mind, I think I’ll expand into different topics – things that interest me, things I can write about. I will still give writing updates, but I think regular visitors will see an improvement in their quality as, at the moment, I feel I have a habit of droning on and on due to not having anything else to say.

I might even change the title of the site. It seems only fitting because it won’t technically be a writing desk anymore. I’ll give this a bit more thought, but feel free to offer suggestions if anything instantly comes to mind when you read this.

I’ve spent some time over the last 24 hours doing some house cleaning (ie website maintenance). I thought about updating the theme, but couldn’t find a template that I liked better than the one I’m using so I’ll stick with this one for now.

Anyway, if you look closely, you’ll see that I have:

1. Moved Recent Comments and My Bookshelf to the left hand sidebar.
2. Inserted a new plugin called Popular Posts (ie Today’s Top Posts) in the left hand sidebar.
3. Removed some links from the blogrolls to sites I never visit any more.
4. Inserted another new plugin called Subscribe to Comments so that visitors can be notified when someone replies to the same post they have commented on.
5. Removed and renewed numerous broken links (and I’ve still got over 50 broken links to wade through; I’m using a Link Checker plugin for that).
6. Tidied up my folders behind the scenes.
7. Removed the Amazon widget from the left hand sidebar (for now).
8. Started adding a comprehensive links page to the History section of the website, which will be an on going job over coming weeks/months. I’ll probably do the same thing for the Writing section too.
9. Added the Gravatar plugin, which allows a personalised avatar to show when anyone comments (if you have registered your email address, of course).
10. I’ll probably find more to do, but it hasn’t happened yet…so the list is “to be continued”.

Now, in an effort to keep up with the times, are there plugins that you know of that I might be interested in? Feel free to tell me about them.

Edit: Today, 9 August 2009, I have deleted the webring page altogether, I’ve done some more fiddling with the left hand sidebar and I’m still working on those broken links. Also added a new pages to the History section called Links: All Things Medieval.

Edit: Today, 10 August 2009, all broken links have been fixed or removed and a minor problem in the right hand sidebar (only in IE8) has also been fixed.

Well, what do you know? I’m back! No, I didn’t close down the site or move. I didn’t do something stupid behind the scenes, which played havoc with the website. My domain name expired and I wasn’t give warning. I believe I was offline for two days before I realised and then my provider was having server problems so I wrongly thought I had been caught up in that…and then I discovered, way too late, about the expiry.

I was not happy!

I don’t have a credit card so had to send a personal cheque, which meant I was offline for another week!

No, I was not happy!

But, thinking enough was enough, I contacted my provider today asking about the delay and what do you know…the site is back up. However, I can see issues with the right hand sidebar which were not there beforehand, but I guess I should thank my lucky stars that the domain name wasn’t snapped up by a third party.

Normal posting will now resume.

During the past week I’ve been messing with the internal works of this website. Wordpress has been upgraded to the latest version (2.8), all the plugins have been upgraded and new plugins have been added – including Not Another Related Posts Plugin and Link Checker Plugin.

After seeing CommentLuv on Benjamin Solah’s Website, I thought I’d install it here too. If you leave a comment and enable the plugin, a link to the last post on your own blog will be included at the end of your comment. I think, however, that you have to register your blog with CommentLuv for this to work.

Last night, I spent an hour or so changing another aspect of the blog. I got rid of the html front page found at “Home” and used Wordpress to create a static front page. It was quite easy to do, despite my worry that I might crash the whole site permanently. The result was that I had exactly the same home page that I’ve always had, but it meant that I could edit it with ease (without having to wait until I had access to a text editor and ftp uploader). However…it also meant that I no longer had access to what I consider to be the main part of the website – the blog. This page, as you see it now, was no longer available. To reach the posts it would have been essential to have the categories listed in the sidebar and I believe I would have had to include another new plugin to show the latest posts as well. I didn’t like it. Not in the slightest. And…everything has been put back to how it was originally.

The two previous posts announcing some of the things I’ve mentioned in this post have been deleted. I think I’ve finished messing around with things now, except I’ve discovered (through the Link Checker Plugin) that I have a lot of images that are “broken”, as well as some external links that need checking. I’ll get on to that shortly.

I saw this over at Benjamin Solah’s Website and decided to participate. If you would like to give it a go, then go ahead.

Hardback, trade paperback or mass market paperback?

I’m not keen on hardback only because they are harder (and heavier) to lug around with me, but I don’t care if I’m reading either of the other two options.

Barnes & Noble or Borders?

We don’t have Barnes & Noble here and Borders is too far away for me to visit.

Bookmarks or dog-ear?

Anyone who dog-ears a book should be shot! On the spot! No exceptions! I absolutely hate seeing a dog-eared book. Bookmarks are so clean and tidy…use them.

Amazon or brick-and-mortar?

I prefer to pick books up and look at them before buying. It’s so difficult to buy online…and risky, in my opinion. When you buy anything in a shop you walk out with it in your possession. That’s how shopping should be.

Alphabetize by author, by title or randomize?

Considering I’m an organised person, who likes clean and tidy a lot, I’m going to shock you and say “randomise”. I will put sets together but that’s as far as it goes.

Keep, throw away or sell?

In the past I’ve always kept books, but since my recent move I’ve discovered that my library of books is too big and from now on I’ll be getting rid of them. I might sell them on ebay in groups or give them away. I would never throw books away. What a waste.

Keep dust jacket or remove it?

Why would anyone remove it? That makes no sense to me. Keep it.

Read with dust jacket or remove it?

Ditto, see answer to previous question.

Short story or novel?

I’ve never been keen on short stories and never buy anthologies. For me, it’s novels all the way.

Harry Potter or Lemony Snicket?

I’ve never read Lemony Snicket so I have to say Harry Potter, but I’ve heard some good things about Lemony Snicket and intend to read them at some stage.

Stop reading when tired or at chapter breaks?

I prefer to stop at the end of a chapter or at a scene break. I’ll only stop reading in the middle of a scene if I have no other choice, such as, the phone rings or I’ve arrived at my station.

“It was a dark and stormy night” or “Once upon a time”?

Can’t I read both? If I really have to choose one, I suppose I’d go with “It was a dark and stormy night”. It’s what happens in the next few sentences that will make me continue reading or throw the book in a corner.

Buy or borrow?

I buy a lot of books, but they are expensive and in hard times I’ll borrow as many as I can. Besides, borrowing isn’t as risky and it’s the one way I’ve managed to find new, exciting authors to read. That’s always a good thing.

Buying choice: book reviews, recommendations or browse?

A bit of everything.

Tidy ending or cliff hanger?

I like a book to end. Books that leave me hanging are cruel and in some ways…a rip off!

Morning, afternoon or night time reading?

Anytime. Anywhere. I love reading.

Stand alone or series?

Once, in my younger days, I would have said “series”, but as I get older I prefer stand alone. Having said that, until recently I didn’t really have time to read much so maybe that will change now.

Favourite series?

It used to be the Thomas Covenant series, but now…I don’t think I have one.

Favourite children’s book?

I honestly can’t name one. I like lots of books for all different reasons.

Favorite YA book?

Again ditto. See the answer to the last question.

Favorite book of which no one else has heard of?

If no one else has heard of it, I probably haven’t either.

Favorite books read last year?

Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff
Blood Ties by Pamela Freeman

Favorite books of all time?

There are a lot of books that I really like, but only three that I would consider favourites:

Illusion by Paula Volsky
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
Scarlett by Alexandra Ripley

What are you reading right now?

Dragonfly by John Farris

What are you reading next?

Don’t know, haven’t decided yet.

Favorite book to recommend to an 11-year-old?

Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C Wrede

Favorite book to re-read?

Illusion by Paula Volsky, the only book I’ve read three times.

Do you ever smell books?

Doesn’t everyone?! I love the smell of books. That’s the reason I buy more in a bookshop than online.

Do you ever read primary source documents, like letters or diaries?

No.

With the quick approach of Christmas Day, I find myself stretched to the limit and too exhausted to write…or even read! I’ll be taking a short break from the internet while I get myself organised for a busy Christmas and New Year period.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish you a very merry Christmas and I hope 2009 is a good year for all of us. May you stay healthy, happy and safe. And I would also like to say thank you for showing your support during the past year. It has been appreciated more than you know.

2009 will bring one change to this website. It will be a year when I interview published authors and will post their responses here. The first interview is scheduled for New Year’s Day, so please be sure to drop by and find out what happens there. I’m sure you’ll find it informative. There will be 12 interviews – yes, one per month – throughout the year. I’m looking forward to seeing how that pans out.

Merry Christmas, everyone!