Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Better than a horrible strip of advertising logo

Yesterday, I turned on my computer to find a surprise visitor at my screen. A shopwiki.com logo had moved onto my blog, with a strip of advertising that ran down the entire length of my page, covering posts and everything. Sort of like when my cousin comes to visit and settles into my sofa with his beer in one hand and my remote control stuck in the waistband of his sweatpants. Unexpected, rather rude, and too fat to roll him off the couch by myself. I'm kind of stuck with him in the middle of my living room.

I spent far too much time yesterday researching this intrusive ad that wouldn't go away. Was it a bug in Blogger? a hack into my template coding? a manifestation of Malware Monday? I really couldn't get an answer from anyone. And worse? No one else seemed to be experiencing the same Shopwiki.com advertising smack down.

The best advice I could glean was to customize my template and maybe the obnoxious ad would be deleted in the process. Well, I customized my blog a year ago, when I transitioned from The Mommy Machine to Alaskim. I created a new header and widened my posting area so I could display extra large photos of moose eating pumpkins on my deck. I improved fonts and colors and styles. I added tabs and pages and gadgets. I don't remember exactly how I did it all, but it took many attempts and lots of messing around with the dreaded HTML code. After stumbling through that design adventure, I swore never again to mess with the technological underbelly of formatting and tweaking templates.

BUT THAT STRIP OF AD HAD TO GO.

I crawled under my blog into the "advanced" area of custom formatting and knocked out a quick and dirty re-design. And by re-design, I mean I just needed needed to clear the template. Bye-bye pretty little labels and unique wallpaper and fancy little dividers. I simplified and changed the color of the background, adjusted the width of my column, and re-set the fonts back to default. It probably looks ridiculous, but I won't care if it will get rid of that dadgum ad. I can deal with the aesthetics and flow later, after I've had some sleep and a chance for my anxiety about this snafu to subside.

And now, I shall press Publish and pray I haven't blown it all up . . .




Dinner last night: steak, sautéed mushrooms, mashed potatoes, salad

Exactly three years ago:

Exactly four years ago:


4 comments:

David Kutcher said...

Hi Alaskim,

Your blog was not hacked. Blogger was not hacked. No malware was installed on your computer or the computer of your visitors. It was not a Blogger bug.


The problem stemmed from the template you were using. That template used images that were hosted elsewhere on a 3rd party site. That 3rd party site seems to have been hacked, and the images that your template was referencing were replaced.

To avoid this in the future you want to copy all of the resources that your template requires (javascript files, css files, images) and host them yourself using Picasa or a file service such as Google Drive or Dropbox. That way, should that 3rd party service no longer be available, your template will still work.

-David

janzi said...

WEll done, I would never have been able to get it off... love the blog too..

Kim said...

Thanks, Janzi! I'm getting ready to head out-of-town for a week, so I'm not going to worry about design issues until I get back. I guess my blog will just have to stay goofy-looking until then . . . at least that obnoxious ad is gone!

Debby@Just Breathe said...

I'm impressed. I would have been so angry and most likely would not have a clue how to get it off!!!