One thing I love to do is to investigate different wordpress themes. I love it! I love the ideas that people share with each other and the different layouts, colours etc. Its always an inspiration to view all the different aspects and ideas.

Recently, I downloaded this one theme, that I was considering adapting for a friends blog and lo and behold it had something evil in the footer or should I say eval.

This is the code in the footer:

<?php $_F=__FILE__;$_X='Pz4JPGQ0diA0Z...rubbish
...=';eval(base64_decode('JF9YPWJhc2U2NF9kZWNvZGUoJ etc rubbish

It worried me a little, then I laughed, because I thought of how you can’t really stop people from decoding or stealing your work (not that I advocate this!) if they really, really want to. You can however make it harder or as most people see it more challenging.

I began my quest on the internet. I found some sites that warned against using themes with base 64 code as they may contain malicious attacks, scripts etc. Then I thought, why not find out what it actually says before freaking out.

This site helped: http://danilo.ariadoss.com/decoding-_f__file___x-eval-base64_decode/

As did this: http://www.tareeinternet.com/scripts/byterun.php

So after running the evil script through the decoder (which took a second) I found that it basically was running a script and that script was to stop people from removing credits from the bottom. Which is fine. I don’t have a problem with that as nothing annoys me more than people STEALING – bad!

This is just a post to help you investigate what codes a theme is using and making sure that there is nothing malicious in an encrypted footer.php page. This in no way advocates removing of authors credits.

Phew has it been a busy start to the year!!!

A few restorations, a wedding, retouching jobs and websites to do and I don’t know where the time has gone!

I have finally added a restoration section to my portfolio which will be updated again shortly. You can check it out here.

There is a new site added to AllyKatDesign portfolio – superhealth-fitness.com.

This has been designed for personal trainer Matt D’Angelo, so that existing and new clients can benefit from his expertise. You can visit his site here.

Ausbeauties is getting a complete overhaul, with all the images being retouched by yours truly with a fresh new look that will showcase the girls and photography beautifully.

Peninsula Hapkido maybe getting a new look shortly as well, moving over to a Joomla cms, making it easier for the owners to update their site.

So all in all its been a busy start to the year, but I think it will just keep getting busier and busier as it gets along, but one of my new years resolutions is to update my website much more often!

The new look Brendan B Photography website has been rolled out!!

Not much has changed for those of you have visited the site previously, except it has become more polished and sleek. It still features the same easy to navigate menu and gallery, and the mailto link has been upgraded to a contact form, which of course thanks the user for taking the time to send an email.

The new Peninsula Hapkido website has been rolled out!!

There isn’t much content yet, just a home page and a contact page, but its slowly filling up with more content soon The form has also been updated to thank the person that submitted it, which is quickly becoming an AllyKatDesign trademark for  contact forms.

Its good to see the new layout up and running finally!

Stay tuned for more updates.