To all readers, MacIssues has had some problems in the past few weeks that have been rather difficult to address. These have included incredibly slow loading times, and errors about inability to establish database connections that have cropped up when people load the pages. Today the site went completely down, and I had to do a full reset and restore. I am looking into what has caused the problems, including potential malicious activity. As things stand, a few of the more recent articles are missing, and some visual tweaks need to be done, but overall the site and its content should be running properly now. Posting should also continue on a regular basis. Thank you for everyone who has attempted to reach me regarding this.
MacIssues
How to use, troubleshoot, and repair your Mac
Thanks for the update. Just what you DON’T need to be working on! Hope you find and correct any damages done by “others” or by comic rays! We need your expertise and wisdom! [thumbsup]
I’m glad to hear from you at last. I’m not exactly an expert, but it does seem like some sort of malware was messing with your site. A code injection exploit, perhaps. Standard server issues would be easier to track down because, well, they’re more or less routine. On the other hand, examining all your code for malicious intrusions would be far more challenging. Unfortunately, those, too, have become far too common. Good luck.
Thanks for the update and this great site. Perhaps you could do a full restore from scratch with a recent backup to get rid of possible malware (besides changing passwords, etc).
Thank you Topher!
Thank goodness you are still there! I was beginning to worry. Hope you can find the problem soon and get back to doing real articles. Even though most do not apply to me directly, I am glad that they are available. Thanks again.
˙i †opher – Just what you didn’t need – well at least we know you are OK. Great to have you back with us, “on the air”.
On Sunday (or Monday?) when my browser was displaying the site only as a top-level directory, I noticed the favicon had disappeared from sight — and that the favicon.ico file had been replaced by a single-pixel file.
Perhaps that was part of an ongoing effort to address the slow loading and other site issues — but it also could be symptomatic.
In any case, I hope to learn more about what happened, and maybe why: just the sort of thing we’d expect to see from an “issues” venue.
Topher, I’m so relieved to get your statement. Like others, I was beginning to worry. You and MacIssues are two resources that I and the Mac community don’t want to lose!
Thank you being there Topher. We all missed you. You’re an huge helper to the Mac community.