For the next little while I’ll be running with a default theme (*shudder*) and minimal plugins, in an attempt to eliminate possible vectors for the problem, so if you’re visiting rather than reading via RSS and the blog looks, uh, barebones? That’s why.

Edit @ 1835h: In addition, unfortunately I’ve had to totally disable comments as a temporary measure, as it seems the malicious code is being inserted via WP’s comments feature. Obviously, this sucks, and it’ll be fixed as soon as possible. Old comments are still viewable, though.

Edit @ 0506h July 5th: Comments are back on again, hooray. (Although comments that were lost remain lost.)

This is also why I haven’t been posting for the last week; no point making posts that I’d only have to repost anyway. Hopefully that will no longer be an issue!

This post was written by Siha at Banana Shoulders.

This is starting to get annoying…

Those of you who’ve tried to hit the site today would have noticed it was unavailable, and those of you who’ve subscribed by RSS recently would have noticed some rather unsightly (and thoroughly unauthorised) ads.

Sorry for the break in transmission – I was in the middle of writing a post when a reader email (thankyou, Shasmo!) alerted me to the problem, and I realised that somehow the site had been compromised. I’ve spent all day with the help of a good friend (whom I now owe several strong drinks) trying to chase down the source; I’m still not sure where it came from, but I think all the issues have been patched up, and hopefully it’ll be clear sailing from here.

If you notice anything hinky like that, please let me know so I can try and jump on it much quicker next time!

(And now I don’t have time to finish my post because I’ve got a raid coming up in an hour. Gah!)

This post was written by Siha at Banana Shoulders.

Apologies for the downtime!

Anyway: I have a lot of catching up to do, so meaty posts might be a little thin on the ground until I’m up to date again, but hello, and I’m back, and I shall attempt to be relevant if there’s anyone out there still reading.

Incidentally, I shall be attempting to catch up with my RSS feeds, but if there’s anything important I missed or should know about, drop me a line in the comments!

(And thankyou to those people who pinged me via email; I’m sorry if I worried anyone!)

This post was written by Siha at Banana Shoulders.

…Is This Thing On?

Two reasons; first, I’ve had some RL health issues to sort out, which are still bugging me. Second, and more engagingly:

I’ve been playing in the Arena Tournament with Stop of The Stoppable Force and Llanion aka Bob of Mad Cow Chronicles aka Bobbing For Cows. We’re terrible – but it’s the most fun I’ve had in ages.

This post was written by Siha at Banana Shoulders.

Normal Service May Resume Shortly!

This post was written by Siha at Banana Shoulders.

All Done!

This post was written by Siha at Banana Shoulders.

Upcoming Downtime

As with so many other WoW blogs, 2008 was the first full year of Banana Shoulders’ existence. I took a long hiatus across May – I posted only six times between mid-April and mid-June – but despite that, traffic numbers returned to their previous levels and grew well beyond them thanks to what I hope, at least, was some useful and relevant content.

A lot of my traffic comes from search engine referrals, and as a result my most popular posts tend to be those laden with crunchy data. Still, nothing compares to the sense of achievement when I see someone recommend my blog as a good source of information. On that note – if there’s something you want me to discuss, and I’m not covering it, please ask!

So, on to the most popular posts of 2008:

10. Brewfest – Preparing for Achievements (September) 2,600+ views.
The timing on Brewfest this year was funny; it was just before we were expecting patch 3.0 to hit, so people knew what the Achievement system involved and were starting to prepare to get as many Achievements as possible.

9. Sunwell Dailies: the Guide (February)
This was basically a complete guide to all the new dailies in patch 2.4, helping people navigate all the confusing daily chains. I really enjoyed the SSO world event, and I hope Blizz does more stuff like this in future.

8. Breaking News: New Facial Models (September)
At one point in the WotLK beta, all the skins and facial models for a number of races were changed, and I was one of the first people to present visual examples. (I got bombed with hits from WoWInsider.) Not long after the community started freaking out, Blizz reversed the changes and said they were just testing something (which I still don’t credit). I actually quite liked Sailan 2.0, and I wouldn’t be sad to see those changes introduced for good.

7. Jewelcrafting Quick Reference Sheet for WotLK (November)
The original TBC version of this quick reference sheet was something I put together for my guild to see exactly what I could do (as I was, and still am, our most active jewelcrafter). On impulse I threw it up here on the blog and people loved it, so I felt a WotLK version would be just as useful. Given the plethora of cuts in WotLK, I couldn’t get by without it.

6. Wrath Jewelcrafting Dailies and Epic Gems (August)
This was where I broke the news about the new mechanism for learning Jewelcrafting patterns in WotLK, and it still gets a heck of a lot of google traffic. Now we know how things work it’s not terribly helpful, which is why I wrote yesterday’s guide to the JC dailies.

5. WotLK Wallpapers (July)
Back when everyone was hungry for glimpses of Northrend, I provided these wallpapers from the beta. Interesting to note how some of the scenery (especially Dalaran) has changed.

4. Professional Advantages (October)
This is a post I still refer to now; it grew out of me trying to work out which professions gave what benefits in WotLK. I’m glad other people found it useful too.

3. Pre-Raid Holy Paladin Gear List, v.1 (December)
Only posted in December and already it’s in the top ten posts – ah, the mighty Googlepower of gear lists. Not that I wrote it as Google-bait; it was mostly a case of me poring over WoWhead and putting together some gear lists for myself, and then thinking “hang on, I bet other people would find these useful”. Of course, since I hate writing gear lists, it took about three weeks longer than I intended.

2. Spellpower and You: Gearing in WotLK (August)
This is another of those posts that grew out of me working something out for myself. I’d read up on the gearing and mechanical changes fairly early in the piece, but a lot of other people seemed to be confused or misinformed, so I felt a summary and guide to the changes wouldn’t go astray.

1. The Inscription Levelling Guide (September) 14,000+ views.
(and in fact the companion posts scored thousands of visits themselves, but I didn’t list them here as that’d make the list rather boring). New content on this kind of scale is tremendously popular, and I’d already seen that with the Jewelcrafting guide I wrote during the TBC beta. At least this time around I knew how best to tackle it! Dropping and relearning Inscription five times got tedious, though.

And there you have it; the high points of 2008. I hope I’ve stlll got things left to say in 2009!

This post was written by Siha at Banana Shoulders.

Banana Shoulders in 2008

Yeah, I thought so.

I’m sorry, guys, I really am! I have all kinds of posts lined up mentally – gear lists, jewelcrafting guides, rep guides, wallpaper posts, paladin mechanics discussions, et cetera… and I can’t tear myself away from the game long enough to write any of them.

So, yeah. New content within 24 hours, I promise!

(This post was written while waiting for the rez timer in Wintergrasp. ‘Scuse me, time to go get my face smashed in by Horde some more. Damn that Tenacity buff!)

This post was written by Siha at Banana Shoulders.

But I’m Having So Much Fun!

It was one year ago today that I posted a welcome and an introduction. Since then I’ve written thousands of words across 206 posts, I’ve received 1289 comments, and had over 200,000 pageviews. I hope the next year’s worth of content will prove as useful!

Happy blog day to me!

This post was written by Siha at Banana Shoulders.

Happy Blog Day to Me!

This post was written by Siha at Banana Shoulders.

Inscription Guide Revision Coming Soon