I like this. A Theme that was meant to give kickbacks to some spammer, now is being used for the good of all woodworkers. I’m burning the candle at both ends. I’ve been busy with a basement renovation job and look forward to staying up all night figuring out all the possibilities of WordPress plugins.
If you search for free wordpress themes, you’ll have so many results returned to you that your hardest task will be picking one. But wait just a second. I’ve mentioned that free is not always a good thing. I choose a free theme and downloaded it to my computer. I checked it for virus (just read my December post). There were no virus, but the files were PHP files, which contain executable code. That’s What a WordPress site uses. I’ve dabbled enough in programming to be able to “read” most code formats – writing them is another story. One file had a curious tid-bit
<?php base64_decode('Pz4gPGRpdiBpZD0iZm9vdGVyIj4NCg0KCQk8cD48P3BocCBibG9naW5mbygnbmFtZScpOyA/PiANCgkJPGJyIC8+DQoJCSA8P3BocCBpZihpc19ob21lKCkpIDogPz48YSBocmVmPSJodHRwOi8vZnIuZW1haWwtdW5saW1pdGVkLmNvbS8iIHRpdGxlPSJPdXRpbCBlbWFpbGluZyI+T3V0aWwgZW1haWxpbmc8L2E+PD9waHAgZW5kaWY7ID8+PC9wPiANCjwvZGl2Pg0KPC9kaXY+DQo8L2Rpdj4NCjw/cGhwIHdwX2Zvb3RlcigpOyA/Pg0KPC9ib2R5Pg0KPC9odG1sPiA8Pw==');?>
I thought it might be an image but this is a way of embedding files or other information without having to reference an external location. Sometimes handy but it masks what is actually going to be decoded by the casual viewer like me. I loaded it and let it run. Everything seemed OK except for the hidden link to a bulk mailing site. To see that I had to view source code of the rendered web page, which any browser can do.
So, to make a long story short, be careful of things that are free on the Internet. Free themes are available through WordPress and these you can trust. I’m currently using the theme, minus the code I showed above. I still want to lighten the images a little but I like it. I hope you like it too.
What are you reading?
Books are a big part of my education, including home improvement projects. I just added a new plug-in to this site that shows book covers. You can learn more from Openlibrary.org. For fellow WordPress users the plug-in Wiki site is here. I entered the book I’m reading and Open Library didn’t list it. The worst part is that it is a Governer Generals Literary Award winner! I guess I’m going to have to join the cause and enter Canadian published books for Openlibrary since, again, it’s an open source project.
[openbook booknumber=”ISBN:978-1-55365-308-0″ templatenumber=”2″ publisherurl=”www.greystonebooks.com”]
[openbook booknumber=”ISBN:9781430460725″ templatenumber=”2″]
[openbook booknumber=”ISBN:1553651936″ templatenumber=”2″ publisherurl=”http://www.greystonebooks.com”]