I’ve been lazy lately. No, really lazy. Well… lazy when it comes to work, at least. I’ve been doing pretty well with my attempts at learning French and guitar. But as far as working on my sites goes, it seems like I’ve been spinning my wheels.
I think a lot of my lack of interest in working at the moment comes from being super frustrated. A few of my sites have been hacked. Nothing major, just files not showing up anymore because of changes to my code and this site had some crazy viagra things going on for awhile too. Plus I’ve had a few issues with the recent WordPress upgrade which has meant that, rather than working on fun stuff, I’ve been trying to work out problems.
So the past few weeks have seen me trying to fix hacks and plug security holes. Stuff I don’t know much about and have zero interest in but I guess it’s a necessary evil. I still haven’t figured out why my two WordPress sites are screwy but I guess this problem will be next on my list.
I’ve also found finding writers for my Africa site to be a lot more difficult than I expected. I know there are plenty of people travelling on this giant continent, but can I find their blogs? Nope. Most of the blogs I find are from people who’ve already finished their trips. So that’s kind of knocked the wind out of my sails for that site. I’m still really enjoying working on my Kigali life website but it’s not really making me any money (although I think there’s a lot of potential for it to) so it sort of feels a bit like I’m not focusing on the right things.
So ya… I’m frustrated! So I took a holiday to a town called Kibuye on Lake Kivu, a popular getaway for people living in Kigali. I wrote some reviews for the Kigali site but left my other work alone. I felt pretty recharged when I got back and now I’m a little bit back into the swing of things. It also helps that my best friend here, a teacher who has two months off, has headed home for a couple of weeks. So while I’m going to miss her, it means that I don’t have anyone tempting me to hang out at the pool or go for afternoon cocktails (…it’s a tough life) and I’ll, in theory, be able to get a lot done.
So I’m back at it. I still have a bit of work to do on my security issues which is painful, and I still don’t know what’s wrong with my other WordPress sites. But it has to be done. So I’m going to stop staling by writing this post and get to it!
I think the ups and downs in this business are pretty common amongst us all. I’m just coming off a 12 month hiatus where I did very little now all is back to normal and I’m enjoying what I do and getting a fair bit done. As to the hacking thing that just sucks!
Are you using all the available advanced search functions google offers to find people currently traveling in Africa and blogging about it? you use the inurl: you can nail down recent posts on wordpress, I use multiple operators to find stuff IE “wordpress” intitle: Africa ect
Sorry to hear about your problems. Have you thought of using wordpress multisite? Many of your sites seem to have a similar model so they’re ideal candidates. It greatly simplifies the maintenance chores.
Website security is a hassle to deal with. Personally I wouldn’t bother spending much more time on it. Find a good wordpress pro on odesk or elance. Pay them $20-50 and they should be able to fix the issues and tighten the security. If something is too frustrating, maybe it’s not something you should be handling yourself. You’ll save yourself the headache and you’ll be more confident the issue is actually fixed. Sometimes with hacked websites there is remnants that get left behind somewhere buried in the code. Left unfixed, the problems can just come back again.
Finding the writers for your Africa site might be a little bit more difficult. You could try posting it as an actual job across as job posting/classifieds websites as possible. I suspect you’d get better results actually touring around Africa meeting other people to pitch the idea to, as well as posting it in any hostels or community boards.
You may want to shift your focus away from that site and consider it more of a long term project. To keep motivated try focusing on smaller tasks that will make an impact on measurable metrics such as traffic or site income. Maybe pay to get one of your best sites redesigned for a fresh start. Then set some kind of goals, such as reaching a certain amount of daily traffic or building a certain minimum amount of links each day.
I’ve had issues myself in the past with database injection with wordpress. I was able to find about it due to webmasters tools advising me on spam type keywords showing up as words for my website. Its very sneaky how they did it too as the code was being called up on the footer of the website. Its really frustrating for sure to have it happen to you, hopefully things will get better for you in that area. On a side note you look really relaxed in that photo!
-Jean
Hello Kirsty,
I also like holidays to avoid frustration, Even i went to water city on every weekends.
If you ever need writers for an Asian site, let me know
Africa is on the horizon for me, but probably not until late 2012
Just a amazing snap.Great work
Hi there Kirsty,
I have been following your blog for a couple of years and find it really fascinating what you have been able to achieve. I hope to be able to go off traveling as soon as I can get my online earnings on the up and up.
I would like to ask if you accept guest posts on your blog. The topice would be regarding the benefits of using PLR articles.
I couldn’t find your contact email so have left this request here.
Whether tis a yay or a nay, I look forward to hearing from you via email if possible.
Many thanks in advance
Tiptopcat
I don’t think too many bloggers actually like having to deal with security issues and code. Most of us just want to write and of course have fun. I can certainly understand your frustration but a least you were able to get this post up and best wishes finding some writers for your site.
@neale I don’t know a thing about advanced search functions. Any suggestions about what exactly I should type to find WordPress blogs about Africa? I’m kinda hopeless.
@nigel That sounds like a good idea. I only have three WP sites, and two use the same theme and I’ll probably update this one soon to it as well. I’ll look into it, thanks!
@laptop I’m completely happy to throw money at an issue to save myself a headache… I just don’t even know where to start with security stuff. These are all new issues to me. I might have an explore around elance to see what’s on offer…
@used The strange thing is that my WordPress sites weren’t the ones hacked… it was my HTML static sites. Ah, who knows! Haha… ya, I’m relaxed more of the time. This past Saturday I got really hacked and I had a slight meltdown but most of the time I’m pretty easy going. I wonder if not having any stress in my life makes me lass able to cope with it when it does rear its ugly head!
@tiptopcat Thanks for reading! I’m afraid I don’t let people do guest posts or sell sponsored posts on my blog. Sorry.
@bluegreen Thanks! Ya… the behind the scenes stuff is frustrating, especially for people like me who know the minimal amount of tech stuff to get by.