I’m back! I had managed to permanently ban my own IP address (using the iThemes Security plugin on this here WordPress install) because I had too many *&!$^ wrong password attempts. I’d set the security nice and tight because I’ve been dealing with brute force attacks on the site, and I could only whitelist my own IP temporarily. (If you’re locked out of your own site too, iThemes has posted some useful directions for fixing lockouts.) Admittedly, however, it took me awhile to follow the trail of breadcrumbs to discover the IP perma-ban, remember to take my laptop to my local Tim Horton’s for an iced capp mocha and some wifi, get my user also blocked because clicking “log in” with the saved password never &*%# works, go back home to discover and then follow the iThemes directions to release any and all blocks on my IP or user, become mystified as to why this wasn’t working, then log in successfully through the WordPress app on my phone with the wifi off to whitelist my IP there, releasing the perma-ban, and allow me to actually. log. in.
I’d complain more, but two things are true: iThemes Security was actually performing quite well and doing the thing I installed it to do — it had no way to tell that this was really me trying to log in — and I did fix it in the end without breaking any part of my site.
And some bonus editorial content for the day: At the Chronicle, Rachel Toor says some lovely things about copy editors in The Better Angels of Our Writing:
My experience of receiving editing, both substantively and line by line, is that it’s like love. Good copy editors see me not just for who I am but for who I want to be, and they help me get there. They point out what I do well, but they also notice my tics and bad habits and try to break me of them.
Now I, too, want to be friends with Carol Saller and Mary Norris.