Problem Fixed, but Site Inactive
Update (01/04/2009): I've started a new blog, Teach Them Well, that is more directly related to my own teaching and thoughts on education. Most of the old articles on this site will be ported to the archives there, but the lesson plans/web quests will remain active on this domain.
Original: If you've been using the site recently (since May), you may have noticed it was taking an extremely long time to finish loading. Back in May, this site (as well as two others that I host on the server) were the victim of a hack that injected some malicious code into the site.
It shouldn't effect the viewer's computer it all, but it wreaks havoc on the website. It injects a tiny bit of Javascript so that each time someone loads a page, the page gets hundreds of hundreds of links added to it. These links are invisible, so neither you nor your students would see them (unless you look in the generated source code). They're simply a means to manipulate search engine rankings.
I was able to fix the problem on the other two sites (Wordpress blogs) fairly quickly, but I had trouble isolating the problem on this site (built with CMSMS). The code had been injected into hundreds of files, and no matter how many I cleaned it never seemed to go away.
This morning, I finally managed to fix the problem! Woohoo!
Site Inactive
If you take a look at the articles posted throughout this site, you may notice that most of them are dated January 2008 or earlier. After months spent developing the engine to run the webquests and lesson plan databases, I simply ran out of steam to write for and maintain the site.
For a while I spent time on other web projects, and for a while I did fairly little in the world of web development. However, within the next few months I do plan on resurrecting the informative side of this site - articles on teaching methods and blogging about education in general.
In order to minimize my time investment, I'm going to consolidate it with a couple other projects I'd like to continue pursuing. The projects will be collected into a single Wordpress blog, but each of the topics will have its own individual landing page, index, feed, etc. If you'd like to follow my writings on education, you can read only that - but there will be other sections devoted to web development, gaming, and sundry other topics.
I'll post a link to the new site when it's up. Should be within the next few weeks. Too bad teaching takes up so much time...
What Does This Mean For My Web Quest?
Good question.
For the time being, this site will remain publicly available. The domain (teachbabel.com) was free as part of my hosting package, so it will continue to be renewed as long as I use this web host. [Update 01/04/2009: The domain registration was just recently renewed for another year.]
I believe things are working fairly well. If you've been able to successfully use the Web Quest engine in your classroom, then by all means continue to do so. It will not randomly disappear one day. If I ever intend to dismantle this site entirely, I will post something on the Web Quest page several weeks in advance to alert you to that possibility.
However, I can offer no support for the site. I simply don't have enough time to dive into the source code and tweak this project anymore.
Eventually, I plan on rebuilding the web quest engine. I've learned a lot about web design, and a new incarnation of it should be more user friendly and more efficient. In the meantime, the old site will continue to be available for your continued use.
Add A Comment
^ Top
Previous page: Learn Vocabulary and End World Hunger with Free Rice
Next page: My Account