I’ve been thinking covers and fonts lately, so when I went over to Alan Baxter’s website this morning and found the video below, I had to watch it…and it gave me a much needed laugh. Strangely, it fed my desire to kill some fonts off too, which is a bit worrying. Watch the video, it’s fun!

This website is a personal diary where I record the things I’m interested in — namely writing, reading, genealogy, knitting and a few other minor activities such as computer programs and operating systems, and game playing such as Playstation.

At times, the website will be dominated by one of these topics more than the others. At other times, I’ll go relatively quiet because I haven’t got much to say at the time. Lately there’s been a run on computer and knitting topics because I’ve been using both of these things to help me relax as my blood specialist tells me I must not get stressed. Easier said than done.

You may have also noticed the new writing progress bar I’ve added to the sidebar. In fact, it’s not new, I’ve used it before but for some reason that I can’t remember I moved away from it. Now that I’m writing again — yes, I am writing amongst all the other stuff — I thought the bar would be a good indicator how I’m going even though I may not be talking about writing much. It’s also a good motivator for me, as I like seeing the numbers climb higher and will strive to make it keep happening.

I will give a proper writing update tomorrow.

Benjamin Solah responded to another blogger’s post about getting personal online with his post called Blogging: Getting Personal and the 365 Challenge. I read Benjamin’s post with interest and thought I’d climb aboard and share my own views on the topic.

Online privacy has always been very important to me. I’ve always been aware of what I’m sharing on this blog, which means this is a controlled place – I tell you only what I want you to know. Admittedly, I do share more than I intend to at times – which I usually regret later and sometimes I’ll go back and delete the post in question – yet most of the time I will only share things that I feel comfortable with and that will not lead a stranger to my door step. I’m very careful never to mention where I live. Sydney, Australia is all I’ll say and, believe me, the boundaries of Sydney stretch over many square kilometres.

Yet, during a time in my life when everything was at its worse, I shared the most intimate details on a public blog (not this one). Even then, I knew what I was doing and I was careful not to lead unknown readers back to this website. I guess I tried, in my own way, to separate what had happened in my life with what was happening in my writing life (which wasn’t much at the time due to the situation I was in). I can’t accurately say how successful that was. All I know is that people who know my family in real life found that other site with ease (and still are finding it), yet none of them have found their way here – that I know of, anyway.

And then there’s the other issue, the one concerning work colleagues. Mine know that I write, one even has a copy of the anthology so she knows my pen name too, but I definitely don’t want them invading my writing world. If any of them read this, I’m sorry, but I don’t want to share everything about myself with everyone. I need privacy of one sort or another. Online, I want my personal life to be private. Offline, I want my writing life to be private. Even I know how strange that last sentence comes across.

What I’m saying is that I don’t share everything about myself here, I don’t share everything about myself at work and I don’t share everything about myself to my family and friends. I’m a person who likes to keep parts of herself sheltered. I’m not sure why this is, but I’m guessing it’s a way of protecting myself from harm and unwanted attention.

Privacy is a personal thing. Some people will tell all, others will tell only what they want you to know. When we are talking about the internet, I think everyone should be cautious because we never know who is reading our words, or where those people are located, or what their intentions are.

That’s it. All postings made at the other website have been transferred over to here. The only thing missing are the comments, but I don’t have the time to do those as well.

From now on, this will be my main place of residence. I apologise for constantly changing my mind and for any inconvenience I’ve caused, but as the saying goes “you don’t know what you have until it’s gone”. Luckily, I realised that before it was too late and the website ceased to exist completely.

The other site will remain in place. I will post writing related posts there too, but nothing else.

Today, I have manually transferred two months worth of posts. I don’t have time, or maybe I’m just too lazy, to transfer the comments that went with the posts and I apologise to the people who contributed, there’s just so many and it would increase the workload to “it’s too much work” mode.

Tomorrow, I hope to finish the job by transferring another two months worth of posts, which will bring this website up to date.

Yes, I’m moving back in. After much thought, I’ve decided that I don’t want to give up my domain name. When the time comes to renew my hosting account, I’ll move to another, cheaper host instead. I have no problem with my current host, except for the cost, which is four times dearer than the same sort of setup I can get elsewhere (which I can get for less than a $1 a week). It’s a shame because having a host in the same city as me has been ideal when I need something fixed in a hurry, but it’s not worth the extra money I’m spending out.

Also, I’ve been checking the stats for both sites and this one remains well in front – with three times the visitors on a daily basis. I don’t think it’s a good idea to let that go without serious consideration.

Over the next few days/weeks, I’ll be moving individual posts here from the other site. After that, all new posts will be placed on both sites as I’m not going to let the other site waste away to nothing…and who knows what will happen in the future. Maybe, I’ll make the other site a mirror of the writing side only of this site. I’m not sure yet.

So, yeah, I’m back and you can expect an influx of posts…starting today.

It’s the festive season and everyone is busy…or they should be. This will be my last opportunity to post anything this side of Christmas Day, so I’d like to take the opportunity to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. May your day be filled with happiness, joy and love and may you be wreathed in smiles.

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.