GoWEHO.com Interviews Allie Grant & Alexander Gould from "Weeds"
Melissa interviews Allie Grant & Alexander Gould from the hit show "Weeds" at the Showtime "Weeds" & "Californication Premiere
Goweho.com Wilson Cruz with Melissa Chataigne and Plunket.
Nick Verreos interviewed by GoWEHO.com, with Shawn Pelofsky.
On February 15th, the beginning of a long series of attacks on the GoWEHO.com website began. A hacker by the name of "SCORPION" gained access to the FTP of the server using a little-known back-door in the PHPizabi open source code, the software architecture used to create the GoWEHO website. SCORPION inserted viral code in both webpages and the database, causing massive infrastructure failure. When backups were used to correct the problem, the attacks continued, even after blocking all known IP addresses (which were based in Turkey and the Middle East).
To mitigate the situation, our hosting provider suggested transferring to a new, updated server. This also did not solve the problem. The problem continued to be the PHPizabi code. Over the last few years, it has become apparent that open source code is highly susceptible to hacker attacks, and the costs to fight them are prohibitive. While there is ease of tweaking and changing the code to add new features and design, the fact remains that GoWEHO made a mistake in using the code.
As Publisher and the former Editor-in-Chief, I've had to make some big decisions. GoWEHO.com's original content is in indefinite hiatus due to financial considerations, but the site itself still had many features which were free for us to operate: the Industry Profiles, media archives, Calendar of events and so forth. Unfortunately, all of these things were lost in deciding to pull the plug on the site containing PHPizabi code.
When approaching GoWEHO.com from square one, GoWEHO.com needs to consider 2 things to be both safe and profitable: one is to use an architecture which is not open source code, an architecture that is almost hack-proof; and the second is to change the nature of the site from that of a newsmagazine to that of a newswire.
For the first consideration, GoWEHO.com will employ the architecture of Typepad.com, the world's leading provider of blogs and publishing software. For its price, Typepad's scalability, security and interactiveness are awesome.
For the second consideration, the change from original-content to news-dissemination will have to occur. The focus since 2003 has always been posting new, unique and little-known gems of West Hollywood, and I believe that newsmagazines tend to pick and choose. As a newswire, GoWEHO.com will sacrifice providing original content to its users in order to post a larger amount of press releases, so that readers will be able to check out more of what's new, what's hot and what's not in WeHo.
In making this move, GoWEHO.com will no longer provide original video content or featured articles. Instead, as a newswire for the West Hollywood community, GoWEHO.com will begin accepting press releases of events, products and services from local independent agencies and outlets for wider dissemination to the West Hollywood public, with no explicit endorsement. Additionally, features such as personal profiles and user-uploaded content, for now, will not be available.
In scaling down GoWEHO.com, and changing from a newsmagazine to a newswire, I will strive to ensure that GoWEHO maintains its continuity and relevancy in West Hollywood. While making this transition, GoWEHO.com will upload all of the "Off the Sunset Strip" interviews and previously featured articles that had been so popular to members of the West Hollywood community and fashion scene. A future date will be announced later in the year for when press release categories will begin appearing. Thanks to everyone who showed their concern in the last few months and who still come to the site to find out what's happening in West Hollywood.
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