This past Thursday, early afternoon, after much tweaking and adjusting and adding obscure personal touches to the style sheet, I switched HostScope over to a new theme. If you are looking around the page and thinking “hmmm… it doesn’t look different”, you would be right. I have since switched back, despite preferring the new look in a lot of ways.

Let me explain.

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[Update: WordPress 2.8.4, which fixes this, has been released.]

We have a problem, folks. It turns out there is a way for anyone to reset your admin password without your permission. This exploit will not give them the new admin password. Nor will it permanently lock you out, as the new password will be mailed to your email address. Even so, it is still annoying to find yourself locked out of your own blog.

How do you do it? No, I’m not going to tell you. If you really want to know, I’m sure you can find out. Unlike some fishy programmers (read: jerks), I don’t really feel the need to propagate instructions for causing problems for other webmasters.

That said, I will happily provide the solution. I might even hack it into quick plugin tonight if I get the time, for people who don’t feel like either modifying their source code or waiting for a 2.8.4 security release.

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All too often, web designs can seem a bit sterile and clinical, but a bit of texture can go a long way towards alleviating this problem. You aren’t cold; your blog needn’t be either.

Artistic

Mixing crop circles and letterpress styling give Artistic a warm but comfortable look.

release | demo | download

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Web host 1&1 released the results of a new study and it shines light on a great opportunity for web developers, designers, and hosts. Here are a few of the more interesting points:

• Only 60% of US small and midsize businesses are online.

  The other 40% is just waiting to be tapped. 1&1 defined their size as businesses with fewer then 50 employees. The best census data I can find is from 2004, but it shows a bit over 5 million business in that range at the time. Even with the economy in the tank, the number must still be at least half that. So, call it 2.5 million businesses. 40% of them are still not online, leaving a cool million potential clients out there. Get selling, folks.

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