Just over a week ago I’d published an article, went to bed and enjoyed the peace that only comes when everything seems to be good. The next morning I awoke to discover that two things had happened in a perfect storm.

The first was that my personal server had been hacked and with laser precision all of my websites, backups, configuration files and system had been eradicated. Trust me when I say that I had a LOT of protections in place but seriously, this was like a guided missile.

The second thing that happened was that the primary hard drive in my server began to fail. I say began to because sometimes it was there and sometimes it wasn’t. I have a second physical hard disk in my server that I keep all my backups on and that was working just fine except this was hit by the hackers.

Some people have asked me about offsite backups and I answer this in two ways. It’s a personal server….and have you ever had to restore a 500 Gig backup over the wire from your home? It will take about 3 weeks just to transmit the data. Needless to say, I’m exploring “other options”.

So what was the end result of all of this? I lost everything on my blog from about February onwards. I would like to apologise to all of you that have signed up and have to do so again…..sorry about that. I would like to appeal to anyone that has any of the articles on either the “Domain Association” OR “Selling high value domains” as I would love to get them back up as I think that they were really ground breaking.

So what else have I done? I’ve reworked the site, updated the look and feel and I’m in the process of adding a lot more features. Despite the amount of work involved I’ve had a lot of fun rebuilding Whizzbang’s blog from scratch. I’ve also enjoyed learning about security, setting mail servers, database integrity, apache and PHP configurations. There’s nothing like getting your hands back on the tools. :-)

So thank-you to everyone that has been patient with me over the past ten days. If you notice anything not working then please let me know. In particular I would like to thank all of the sponsors. Each of you have been outstanding in your support.

Right now, I think that I’m going to take a rest and get back to finishing my science fiction novel…..it’s up to the fifth rewrite!

This weeks video discusses what's been happening on Whizzbangsblog and the explosive growth that it's received!

A number of people have asked me about what platform and plugins that I'm using on Whizzbangsblog so I thought that I'd let everyone know.

I have my own personal server running Debian with Apache web server, MySQL database and PHP all running. Let me say that running your own server can be a pain with working out the security etc. I so this so that I keep my technical skills up to date so that I can contribute in a much more informed manner to the ParkLogic development discussions and any issues that clients have.

I'm running Joomla 3.2 for the content management side of the site with the following plugins:

1. Admin Tools - VERY important as it has a built-in firewall.

2. Akeeba Backup - for regularly doing any backups. I also do both hot database backups and file backups every day via a script in CRON (time system for doing stuff in Linux). You can NEVER have too many backs. All the backups go to a completely separate physical drive.....so fingers crossed if anything breaks then there's always a fallback option.

3. EasyBlog - Stackideas have created a great multi-user blogging platform that I'm actually typing this into right now.

4. JBolo! - really simple to use real-time chat system.

5. Komento - for managing comments on blogs and articles.

6. Jomsocial - this is the heart of whizzbangsblog.com and has all of the social aspects of the websites wrapped up into a single package.

7. jNews - I use this program for sending out emails. I must admit that setting up an email template is a PAIN (not because of this program) because all the different email clients interpret the coding in a completely different and sometimes stupid manner. So stick to something REALLY simple.

That's about it. I've done quite a bit of customisation but that's the core application in the site. I would recommend that if you haven't done development before that you get your hands on Joomla (it's free) and have a play. There are a number of hosting companies that have specialised in Joomla hosting (siteground.com) and they will be able to help you out. I should mention that the total cost of all of the plugins etc. is about $250.....so hopefully that won't break the budget.

Cheers!

I’ve always been a believer that the domain community is one of the most unique and precious features of our great industry. What other industry can you swap, sell and move assets around the world on the basis of a skype call? With this in mind I decided to do something that would hopefully support the community and encourage real human interactions where we not only can learn from each other but also about each other.

So this past week I set myself the task of building the social interface to whizzbangsblog. I must say that I’ve been pretty busy and working into the wee hours of the morning to get the site sorted out. I’ve received a LOT of feedback which has been fantastic and some of the ideas I’ve already implemented while others may take some time. I want to thank everyone for this assistance, thoughts and most especially for letting their friends know about whizzbangsblog.com

So what’s next? In a lot of ways that’s up to the community. There are a lot of tools now in place, some of which include:

Event management system

Groups

Photos and Videos

Blogging platform

What I hope happens is that each of us thinks of ways that we can contribute so that we can built a great knowledge base and strong relationships with other community members. So why not start a group, invite a friend or post a question to the community. Remember, there is no such thing as a stupid question……

I should also ask that you please excuse any bugs that crop up from time to time…..I will do my best to stamp them out.

Cheers!