Salvage

Today, my website exploded...

Too dramatic? Okay, let's dial it back a bit. It started last night when, out of curiosity, I search for my own website on Google. Actually, I searched for myself, but I knew my website should pop up in the results.

It did. With a warning. And I immediately knew why.

At some point, a bit of code attached itself to my website. I don't think it's especially malicious, except that it draws spam to the site, and tries to attach itself to links in the description on social media. On a couple of occasions I've had to actively removed the description to prevent the code displaying.

I searched through my site, but I could never find it.

Today, I decided to search everything. Everything. Unfortunately, beginning at my hosting site was probably the worst decision I could have made. It said I didn't have Wordpress installed. That made me worry, that maybe the code had done something. I clicked 'Install' through the host...and lost everything.

So, that sucked.

I panicked, I clicked 'Uninstall', it fixed nothing. In fact, I was left with literally nothing. Not even a Wordpress site without anything on it.

Damn.

I went to FileZilla. I tried fixing the site manually. Over an hour passed, no progress made. I panicked even more. I Googled everything I could think of to try fix it. Eventually, I decided to try add Wordpress to the site again. I downloaded the most up to date version, because my older files didn't seem to be doing anything.

And boom: the site was back. I still had my posts. I calmed down.

Except... well, I couldn't actually access any pages. And that damned code was still there. I could see popping up as my website got back on its feet, pages not loading quite so quickly as they should. I snarled. In my head, I snarled. I would get it yet, just as soon as the website was functioning.

Google, again. Getting annoyed. Permalinks, that was the answer. And dammit, I made it work. I made the damned thing work.

There was only one thing left to do: wipe that damn code off my site, once and for all.

I went to the Editor in Wordpress, reserved for editing the Theme. I didn't care: I knew what I was looking for. I had seen a word of the code pop up over and over again. I searched for it on every page in the Editor, and finally, there in the Header file, I found it: a massive block of text and HTML links, a beacon for spam bots, a paragraph to paste itself onto social media descriptions of posts from my website.

I killed the bugger, claimed back my site.

It's all calm now. The site isn't dangerous - never was - but that code was there. It was more of a bother for me than for anyone else. Want proof? Google have a diagnostic check: http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=paulcarrollwriter.com

It's all fine. Even back in  February it was fine, with the code on it. It wasn't malware, which was a relief to discover. It was just an annoying beacon.

I can stop being all dramatic about it, now, right?

Guest Post, by Shen Hart: Bringing Your Characters to Life

A good friend of mine from Google+, Shen Hart, is here today with a post about bringing your characters to life! I'm extremely grateful to Shen for putting the time into writing this, in the midst of a day job and running a new writing group, Literary+. You can find out more about both Shen and Literary+ beneath her post.

***

Bringing Your Characters to Life

Your story is nothing without your characters. It cannot happen without them. Therefore, it's rather important that you write characters with depth, feeling. You need to bring them to life. Of course it's entirely up to you how you view this, some people may prefer to think of themselves as a puppet master, others as a director. Whatever works for you.

The key part, in my mind, is knowing your characters inside out. You need to look past their rough physical appearance and favourite fruit. What is their history? What's that one thing which keeps them up at night? To really bring them to life, they need to be real on some plane or level of existence. You're probably thinking 'but the reader doesn't give a damn what happened on Bob's fourth birthday'. Yes, you're probably right. However! You need to know that his fourth birthday party was the time when his relationship with his father started to twist and falter. It was in that moment, that things changed. That, is the reason that Bob is about to start the zombie apocalypse.

What is my actual point and methodology here? Stop thinking of your characters as just words on a page. See them as people which you need to know inside out. They can be your best friends, your arch nemesis, whatever role they need to fill in your life. Treat them like a psychology project. Personally, I do it like this: I'm a very visual person. So I choose a character, form the scene in my mind then press play. I watch it like a movie. I see every little detail, the slight shift in weight, the glance over at the faded photograph. I hear that rise at the end of the last word, the change in breath and skipped heartbeat. Then I poke. I square up to them and demand to know why. Sometimes I prefer more... torturous methods but that's for a different post.

The summary here? Get to know your characters on every possible level. Understand what makes them tick, why they're like that. That will bring them to life and make them leap off the page and grab your readers

***

About Shen:

Shen Hart is a passionate, hot-headed English writer. When she isn't torturing her characters in deviously dark manners she spends time with her horses. She has a penchant for twists and has been called 'cheek incarnate' on many occasions...

Shen founded Literary+ as a combination of her desire to help fellow self-published authors and her love of marketing and challenges. 

Shen blogs here:  http://tiaden.wordpress.com/

About Literary+:

Literary+ is a writer based project brought together and lead by Shen Hart. It brings together passionate, quality self-published writers to help each other promote their work, bringing more readers to every member. It was sparked by the simple fact that there are many top quality self-published authors being over-looked because they do not have the time and resources to efficiently and effectively market and promote themselves. With ambition and passion, Literary+ will take its members to the heights they deserve through a tight-knit community of like-minded writers.

You can access the Literary+ website here: https://sites.google.com/site/plusliteraryplus/home

Knighthood

Well, it's official: I am Paul Carroll, Knight of the Word Nerd Army by the Power and Grace of Rebecca Woodhead.

Knight of the Word Nerd Army

It's a nice little piece I think. If I can figure out how to make it a permanent feature of the blog, I will do that. For now, we can all just admire it where it stands, in this post. I'd like to thank Rebecca publicly for this, and for all the work she's done to start the Word Nerd Army. I'd also like to suggest Googling "Word Nerd Army." Go on, do it now and I'll wait until you're back.

See that? My video was there! Amazing isn't it? Me! On Google. I'm chuffed.

And with that, I bid you farewell. There are books to be read (and a particular publisher that needs to get back to the public and say who won a selection of books!). Toodle pip!