26 Oct I’ve been hacked

That’s right.  My website was hacked three—no four times in August and September.  And in the last attempt at cleanup, I lost my ability to upload content.  Which is why you haven’t heard from me in a while.

If you knew where to look you could buy MP3 videos, pharmaceuticals and discount designer copies of pocketbooks and shoes from my website. The bags and shoes were the September blog.   I suppose if I had thought about it more closely, I could have developed an additional income stream.  But all I did was want to make it better.  Fast.  And every time I did, it just got hacked again.

The hosting company said the developer left security holes.  The developer blamed it on the hosting company.  I do wish someone would have taken some responsibility for this.   But not my luck.

And then I found a terrific guy who would rebuild my site, with a different CMS on a different server for a really good price.  He said 1.5 weeks.  I said “Do it!”  And four weeks later here we are.

That also happened to me my first time around.  I know a zillion stories of sites taking way longer to develop then was planned. So why don’t web designers and developers just build an extra three weeks into the schedule to begin with?  It would make everyone so much more relaxed about the whole thing.

I know there is a lesson in this.  Perhaps it is about the power of acceptance. Those folks or bots or whatever is out there doing this….they didn’t target me personally.  I might have been able to prevent the site from being hacked…but I didn’t know how.  The rebuilding was out of my hands as well.  The moment I relaxed about it…well, it all got done eventually.  Being aggravated didn’t change a thing.  But not being aggravated did.  It changed me. It took one big concern out of my brain.  And gave me a sense of peace and space to focus on all the other zillion things I need to do.

I remember something a great teacher of mine once said when I was about to face a very difficult task. She said “You can make this as easy or as hard as you choose”.  Once I chose easy, it really was.

This is my first post on my new site.  Boy, am I happy to be back.  And thank you, Ryan at 125mg Design for making it happen.  Check his site.  He rocks.  http://125mgdesign.com/