WordPress.org

1. mziemann
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago #

   Well, it appears that I have screwed the pooch here - I have managed to break our HealthBeatNews.com blog.

   Here is the history:

   My boss has found a program called Windows Live Writer which looks to be something that will make it easy (even for incompetents like me) to create and maintain blogs.

   I downloaded and installed it.

   I told it I wanted it to work on the HealthBeat News WordPress blog.

   I gave it our login info. It tried, then returned and error code of the usual incomprehensible Microsoft variety - to whit: "Blog server error - server error - 32700 occurred".

   I googled this, and found that it relates to a delightfully evil little bit of malware known only as "a spam injection hijack by wordpress.net.in." More info can be found here: http://gordon.dewis.ca/2008/01/06/expunging-the-wordpressnetin-spam-injection-hijack/

   I thought I followed this fellows instructions, and I did in fact find the line of malicious code in the index file where he said it would be - so I removed it. I didn't find any of the other nasty stuff that he said to look for in any of the files he describes.

   Unfortunately, Windows Live Writer is still giving me the same error message.

   Further, and more alarmingly, while the index page of the HealthBeatNews.com blog shows up fine, clicking on any blog posting returns a page with the following errors: (It seems that HealthBeatNews.com works fine - but HealthBeatNews.com/news/ doesn't - there is an index file in both places, and they are identical... that confuses me, but it has been working.)

   Warning: require(./news/wp-blog-header.php) [function.require]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/drmyatts/public_html/healthbeatnews/news/index.php on line 4

   Warning: require(./news/wp-blog-header.php) [function.require]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/drmyatts/public_html/healthbeatnews/news/index.php on line 4

   Fatal error: require() [function.require]: Failed opening required './news/wp-blog-header.php' (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/drmyatts/public_html/healthbeatnews/news/index.php on line 4

   How I wish I had some clue what I am doing with all this!!!

   Can you offer me any clues as to what I have screwed up, or any suggestions as to how I might fix this without losing all the articles from our blog? I am afraid to touch anything further!

   Once I realized I was in over my head I made a home directory website backup - I hope this got all the blog stuff too...

   Suggestions? Comments? Rude remarks? All are welcome!

   In distress,
   Mark

2. mziemann
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago #

   Doing further research led me to this post http://wordpress.org/support/topic/167033?replies=3 which gave me the clues to the path error that I needed to fix.

   After making myself crazy going through wordpress support forums, I have fixed the problem - it turns out that somehow I got a path wrong in the /news/index.php file - once I changed line 4 from ' require('./news/wp-blog-header.php'); ' to ' require('./wp-blog-header.php'); ' everything is fine...

   So... emergency over, all is well... or, in the immortal words of Chip Diller from the movie Animal House "Remain Calm, All Is Well!"

   Now, the burning question is, should I upgrade this thing? The most recent version is 2.5.1, ours is 2.3.1 - and apparently some exploit holes have been fixed in the interim between the two. It looks like for a simple WP install the upgrades are relatively straightforward - but for a customized install like ours, all bets are off... heck, I'm not even sure if I'm actually getting everything when I try to do a backup...

   Again, advice is appreciated...

   Cheers,
   a relieved (but still concerned) Mark

Topic Closed

This topic has been closed to new replies.