Derek Semmler dot com - money, motorcycles and cars (with a little bit of everything else)

Just days after sharing my rant about how page rank is irrelevant, I discovered one serious cause to the decrease in traffic that one of my sites had been experiencing.

As I caught up on reading my RSS feeds, I came across a post detailing a recent WordPress exploit that redirects the search traffic away from your site. The exploit is rather sneaky in that if you have a cookie on your machine, you will not be redirected but any first-time visitor will be swept away.

So after reading about this exploit and realizing my site was impacted, I spent a fair amount of time purging my entire account, installing a clean version of WordPress, and scouring the database for any altered data. Once that was all complete, I felt it was only right to use this edition of Speedlinking to say thank you to a few people.

1. Nickel from fivecentnickel.com deserves a sincere thanks as this is where I first read about the widespread WordPress hack that was impacting numerous blogs, including one of mine. While my stomach sank when I realized I was impacted, I was also reassured knowing someone like nickel had already gone through the process of recovery and had information to share.

2. After reading about the existence of this WordPress exploit, I was fortunate to find that JD from Get Rich Slowly had already gone through the process of patching the WordPress hack on his blogs as well. Working into the wee hours of the night, JD was kind enough to share this guide of what he had done and it certainly helped me in going through my site and getting things cleaned up.

3. Changing gears, I owe Nick from romandock dot com a thank you for being an understanding community member. Nick recently wrote about what you should do when you are called by the wrong name, which I once did to Nick. After using the wrong last name for Nick, he politely sent me an email to say that wasn’t his last name. I felt terrible, quickly corrected my mistake, and was thankful that Nick was so understanding.

4. I’d like to say thanks to Andrea from According to Andrea not only for being a recent reader in the BlogCatalog widget but for also sharing a few nice IM conversations. Andrea was recently discussing family traditions and I am thankful for a few that we have, such as our annual 4th of July BBQ and reading the kids bedtime stories.

5. Last but not least, I want to say thanks to Leo from Leo Chiang dot com for remembering how to write a blog post and sharing the most recent UFC fight recap. Leo and I like to give each other crap - all in good fun - so be sure to check out my comment and don’t be afraid to add your own.

Of course this Speedlinking edition would not be complete if I did not take a moment to say thank you to each and every one of you. The last few days have been interesting and the support from the community has been unbelievable.

Thank you!