DianeV

Hard to tell what’s going on here. Were you upgrading?

Bear in mind that it’s dangerous to leave files and folders with 777 permissions.

Ah, glad you found a solution!

I hadn’t known about Phase5, but I’ll keep it in mind.

You can redirect old links via 301 redirects.

I’m a little confused. Are you saying that this is happening on your own blog, or on someone else’s blog, or … where?

There could be different reasons. At the top of this page (it’s kind of hard to see) is a search box. I searched for “blank page” and got this list:

https://www.ads-software.com/search/blank+page?forums=1

Hm. Looks like I spoke too soon; the spammer links are not in comments, but in your posts.

On your Green Beans are your Friend post, view the page source and you’ll see a zillion links right after the last sentence of your post, tucked into a div with this styling (so it doesn’t display in the browser):

<div style="display: none">

Then, no links on “No wait, come back!” but there are links at the bottom of your “Stuff yer onions here!” post.

The fact that they’re not on all posts leads me to think that this isn’t a matter of someone adding them to your theme (but I’d check anyway).

I would definitely back up the database, and then take a look at methods someone may have used to log into your admin panel. I’d also check the theme (single.php) — the one on your server.

-can see spam when viewing page source but have no idea how to access posts in CSS to erase spam links

Not sure what you mean here. CSS is just coding that makes stuff look the way it does (to make a too simple explanation). You’ll need to edit your posts in the admin panel to remove their coding.

That said, and to state the obvious, you need to secure your blog so that this doesn’t keep happening. I’d also remove this:

<meta name="generator" content="WordPress 2.5.1" /> <!-- leave this for stats -->

from the header, as it’s nobody’s business.

A tracert shows a timeout after:
gig3-0-0.irtnoh-10k1.natall.rr.com

Could be a router activity? At any rate, it looks like it’s a v-e-r-y slow connection to your web server. I’d check with your web host to see what’s happening.

Wow. They’ve posted a lot of comments with a mega-zillion links and CSS saying display:none (which means it’s on the page but hidden … because it won’t display). So I’m not sure that they’ve “broken into” your site … are you sure they did?

You can probably go through your comments and delete the junk. Then set your settings so that you moderate your comments, at least the first one for each commenter.

If you’d already done that and the comments appeared anyway, then it’s possible that they broke in, or got in somehow.

I wouldn’t say that programmers are dumb*sses. No sir. ??

> Is this a recurring problem as I was told

In many years of building database-driven sites, I’ve never seen “database crashing” as a recurring problem. If your host seems to think it’s a recurring problem (which I read to mean that *they* have a recurring problem with it), I’d grab the last or best version of the database, the WordPress files, and move the site ASAP.

Really, you need a reliable host. If your site is popular, you may need a “beefier” web hosting account. But reliability is a must.

Hm. If the SEO-Pack plugin has an admin panel, I’d take a look at what it says. Otherwise, I’d disable it for now, since it appears to be causing problems.

Hm. The blog cannot be reached without the “www” in front of the domain name (I get a blank screen).

First, what is best for search engines (and for people) is for the blog to be reachable both with or without the “www” … and to redirect one to the other. That is, when they use the non-www version, redirect them to the www version (or vice versa; personally, I’m not crazy about the w’s).

So, in your case, I’d guess that there’s something preventing reaching the site without the www. Whether that’s an .htaccess or in your server setup is difficult to guess. But I’ll note that the main site is accessible both with and without the www, and does not redirect to one specific version (www or non-www). Since the main site URLs technically work and the blog is in a subdirectory, I’d start looking in the blog directory … I’m guessing it’s an .htaccess file that may not have been editable on your new server when you made the change.

If you have access to phpmyadmin, you might (immediately) back up the database. From that, you can edit the backup (a copy!), and inspect it to see what’s going on. You can also edit that (carefully), and import it into your database.

Sorry I couldn’t give you a definitive answer, but hopefully this will point you in the right direction.

Sorry. Oops.

Actually, it’s illegal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMCA.

It’s not exactly cool to steal someone’s work, and then call him an idiot for exposing it.

Why not display your own cleverness by writing your own posts?

This may also be of help:
https://www.pixel2life.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=20185