It would appear that in late April, May and now June 2010, GoDaddy.com has been (and continues to be) the victim of a sophisticated hack that writes malicious script to many of their shared hosting servers.

How many websites were affected?  Hmm.  Hard to say.  I can say that about 40-percent of the sites I am involved with were affected—I would hate to project such a number across the millions of sites that GoDaddy.com hosts.  They are the biggest player in the shared web hosting game.  Ouch. 

As such, I have spent hours cleaning up websites and some of my more recreational hobby sites are still down (e.g., AcrossRoss.com). Compounding my frustration, several of my sites were re-infected after they were cleaned.  What a nightmare.

Over the course of the past year I tended to oscillate between having been an ardent supporter of PC-based computing applications such as Outlook or having gone gung-ho for the “cloud computing” paradigm available through various free Google apps. Sometimes I used a combination of both models. For instance, I would have my Outlook copy to Gmail. In Gmail, I would create Google Docs directly from my email. It is all so very complicated and whether going fully hard drive-based or web-based (e.g., “in the cloud”) there are benefits and drawbacks to each system. A well engineered website might bridge the gap and in this posting I want to discuss how you might do that.

Yesterday I was out walking with my daughter when we happened across an injured rabbit. The rabbit stood there in the sidewalk and did not want to run anywhere, despite our English Setter Coco pawing at the ground around here. My daughter, 6, was concerned for the rabbit.

You are reading the blog "Scratched" - a casual discussion of writing, websites and life in general.  

I'm Matthew J. De Reno, a writer and web designer living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.   I am also a creative writer, a father, a husband, a dreamer, a stat in many categories.  I suppose I wear many hats but who wants to wear the same hat every day?

The purpose of Scratched is a "casual discussion of anything" in a nice easy to swallow blog format and I do mean anything.  An extended purpose is to hopefully teach you something about running your website, make you think about websites in a new way or make you want to get a website if you don't have one already.  I may also gravitate toward sharing bits and pieces of my creative writing.