What’s going on? Short answer – your Wordpress account has been hacked.

More than likely you have been running an old version (ie not the current one) and you have succumbed to an exploit.

The two telling signs is that you have two administrator users (one that ou cannot see), and that your permalink structure has changed. There are other things as well but they are the two main ones.

More detailed discussion can be read about it here.

First and foremost, you should be making sure you have a backup of all your files and SQL database (it should be a regular thing anyway!) before making any changes.

Note: All care but no responsibility is taken with the accuracy of this post.

To find the hidden user, go to the /wp-admin/users.php page and click the link near the top of the page to view only Administrators. The page will not show the hidden administrator, but you can “view source” of this page, and you’ll find the additional username somewhere in the HTML. The key thing to find is the user id, which then can be used with the following URL (substituting the hacker’s user id for xx):

http:///wp-admin/user-edit.php?user_id=xx

Once you’re in the page to edit the user, you can change its role back to ‘Subscriber’ and delete the bogus ‘first name’ field. (Also you’ll have to insert an email address so that you can save your changes – just enter any old email address) After saving the changes, return to the normal user list, and select this user and delete it.

Upgrade your Wordpress to the latest version, and don’t forget to change your permalink structure. I would also suggest changing your admin password, and having a read of this page to consider other actions to secure your wordpress install.

Finally, thanks to the guys at NachoTech. The post there helped me sort out and fix my WP issues without any loss of data.

The has been a lot of hype about Windows 7 over the last few months, and with the availability of the RC release (that expires next year), more people have had the chance to trial the latest OS from Microsoft.

And might I say justified hype. I personally have found it a good step up from XP, but without the pain of Vista.

A few weeks ago, Microsoft released the RTM version to MSDN and technet subscribers, and I have been using it without any problems at all. They’ve done a good job this time.

Windows 7 is officially released until mid October but what I saw on the net today is a 90 day trial of Windows 7 Enterprise available to try. This trial is mainly aimed at IT pros so they can get familiar with the inner workings and differences to previious Windows operating systems.

Check it out here.

Couple of key notes from MS:

* You have 10 days to activate it.
* After 90 days, the PC will shut down every hour.
* If you wish to use Windows 7 after the 90 days, you need to purchase it and reinstall it from scratch. Bit of a pain, but rememeber it is only a (free) trial

So, if you want to give it a go before deploying it in your business, you have a great opportunity.