I just realized that my site being hacked was probably the best thing that happened to it. I can clearly see that the positives outweight the negatives:

Positives:

• The entire site is moved to a new, more robust WordPress platform. By having my old database destroyed, the hacker(s) helped me to make the change without procrastinating.
• I am learning new things. In my opinion, you’re always a winner if you pick up some free education. I got my learn-on in PHP, a language used to write WordPress and a million other dynamic websites.

Negatives:

• Adapting the MS Access database (*.mdb) from the old site is practically impossible. I’ll just have to pick and choose the best posts from my backup, and republish them here.
• I’ve lost some of my readers. That’s not a problem. Nobody can resist staring at crappy cars. Nobody. Mu-ha-ha-ha … !

For those trying to go from a homebrew blog to something more presentable, here’s what I think you should know:

• Basic concepts in database setup and management, types of databases, etc.
• Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) if you want to modify stock templates.
• Some basic scripting and (X)HTML.

Basically, I went to my GoDaddy hosting account, switched it from Active Server Pages (ASP) to PHP/Linux. Then I downloaded WordPress and dumped it on my hosting account via FTP. Then I went into database management console on my hosting account and created a new MySQL database. After that, I modified the WordPress config file by pointing it to the newly created database. The rest is a piece of cake – done through WordPress prompts.

By the way, for those of you needing your crappy cars fix, wait no more.

It’s a sad one. It especially troubled me – it’s a crappy 1979 Mercedes-Benz 300D. I was deeply saddened by the damage inflicted on that wonderful car. I felt like I’ve witnessed the destruction of something beautiful …