The minor overhaul to this blog began with an Eastern European bot hammering my server. Neville was the first to point out that my blog was returning that damned SQL error, which means so many connections were being opened and kept open that the blog was essentially offline, along with any other sites that linked to SQL databases.

My tech savior, Mike Vincenty, found the assault by checking my referrer logs, which were replete with repeated references to URLs so disgusting I can’t bring myself to repeat them here. We blocked the IP addresses of the offenders and Mike cleaned out bloated log files. I added an additional barrier to such attacks that I can update easily and quickly.

Once we were through this phase of repairs and the blog was back online, Mike noticed that the blog ran too slow, so he started nosing around and found that links in the blog were constantly calling URLs within the blog itself. Weird. A little more snooping revealed it was a plugin I was using to render OPML files, the source of my blogroll. I had to disable the plugin, which meant temporarily recreating the blogroll the old-fashioned way. As long as I had to do that, I decided to move all but a few key links off the home page to a “links” page. (The clean look of Neville’s new blog was an inspiration.)

As long as I was mucking about in the templates, I took care of a few other things I had been meaning to do. Since I have an “archives” link in the navigation bar, I got rid of the archives listing in the left-hand column. I added “about” and “contact” pages (the previous contact link was must an email link). I restricted my subscription link to Feedburner (although I now have a page dedicated to other subscription method for those who just have to have the basic RSS 2.0 link). And I cleaned up a few other things.

With the new banner I created last week, I think I can leave well enough alone for a while and focus on content. But if you find anything not working, please let me know.