Still working on things for the website but mostly behind-the-scene stuff. Running into several issues when it comes to logging and overall presentation of at least the blog part. The blog part is based on WordPress which works okay in most cases but with the kind of person I am, even just the tiniest thing will bother me.
I’ve come to realize that pretty much any plugin you would want to use that is worthwhile for this software almost always has some kind of pro/premium subscription option. Even if it’s something tiny or just used as a sort of connector for another service. Prices range from $10 a year to $100 a month. I am trying to use a few plugins as possible. Modifying what is already there or attempting to create something new. I need a better way to present images via this website. While I can add images and figure out thumbnails, I would rather the images (when clicked) just expand from the thumbnail as an overlay on top of the website. Apparently his is called light room or something. Tons of plugins that do this. All of them will ask/offer a subscription version. Then you see ads to upgrade all over your admin portal. Annoying.
Other thing I have been looking into is backups, logging and security. Been focusing on logging analytics just to see what has been requested, by who, how much bandwidth is being used and if what is being requested is a sign of a security concern.
So… Yeah. Lots of bots hit up the server, which is normal. One specific bot labeled “MJ12Bot”… which kinda reminds me of an old game Deus Ex with the Majestic 12 group, had been hitting up my server and using a lot more bandwidth than others. Recently calmed down a bit though. Besides that, the request for the login page is the most requested page despite there not being a direct link to it anywhere.
So… I made changes. I put an .htaccess file in blog directory to restrict access to the login and xmlrpc functions. There is no reason for anyone other than me to access the login portal, which is also not linked to anywhere on the site and must be manually entered in. And I never use to xmlrpc… don’t think anyone does, really. So restricting to a whitelist of local IPs solved that. Tracked traffic dropped significantly as you can see from the screenshot above. 403 hit rate skyrocketed then.
In terms of looks, I am still trying to figure out how I want the website to look. I wanted to break up posts into groups. Currently, I was thinking of the top group to be all post excluding and bottom one for project or research related things… Maybe review stuff (of strange things I come across like computer hardware) too? Not sure. I do need to create links for categories though. Need more pictures added… probably. I am trying to stick to using this built-in editor for now and avoid code related stuff until I need it. Probably when (if) I decide to integrate some functions of the private FFXI server I have into it. Although that’ll have it’s own part on the website beyond WordPress/Blog part… maybe.
Maybe something like that? I don’t know. What I want changes daily so this will probably change but the place definitely needs some more color.
Well… we’ll see what happens and if I’ll stick to it or forget about it for months/years.
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