Posted on

Parliamentary computers infected by Conficker worm

The House of Commons internal computer network has been infected by the “Conficker” worm and has had to ban its users from attaching outside storage, such as USB memory sticks, in case it gets reinfected. An estimated 10 million PCs worldwide have also been infected and experts fear next week will see problems worsen. For more on this story, see the article House of Commons network hit by Conficker computer worm from guardian.co.uk

If your computer is infected with this worm, you may not experience any symptoms, or you may experience any of the following symptoms:

  • Account lockout policies are being tripped.
  • Automatic Updates, Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS), Windows Defender, and Error Reporting Services are disabled.
  • Domain controllers respond slowly to client requests.
  • The network is congested.
  • Various security-related Web sites cannot be accessed.

For more information about Win32/Conficker.b, visit the following Microsoft Malware Protection Center Web page http://www.microsoft.com/security/portal/Entry.aspx?Name=Win32/Conficker

Network managers can also stop Conficker from spreading by using Group Policy, and creating a policy that applies to all computers in a specific organizational unit (OU), site, or domain in your environment. For more details on this process see Microsoft Help and Support Article ID 962007

Posted on

Customising WordPress Using Templates

In order to customize a WordPress theme, you may need to decide which template file needs editing in order to provide a conditional display. Say you want to have a link to you favorite book retailers which only appears on your books page http://techcosupport.com/press/category/books/, then you may need to build a custom template for that page.

WordPress uses the Query String, the information contained within each link on your web site, to decide which template or set of templates will be used to display the page. If your visitor clicks on a link to a category page like http://techcosupport.com/press/category/books/, then WordPress looks for a template file that matches the category’s ID in the directory for the current theme. If it is missing, WordPress next looks for a generic category template file, category.php. Failing that archive.php and if that is missing the main theme template file, index.php.

In order to find out the category ID number go to Manage Categories and hover your mouse over your target category and the ID will show up in the link. Alternatively if you are editing a category, the ID will be displayed at the end of the url.

You then create your custom page with the name category-2.php in the case of http://techcosupport.com/press/category/books/. After that, when you display Books the custom page will display. Easy!

For more detail on the use of templates see Codex WordPress Template Hierarchy