Liss on LJ wants to know, as do we: What is the best place to host a guild website? She's had good experiences with Guildomatic, while apparently lots of people like using Guild Launch instead. Most of the guilds I've been a part of have almost all used GuildPortal, but there are tons of sites out there, and even many more not linked here. What kind of experiences have you had at various guild hosting sites?

And what exactly do you expect from them? It seems that pretty standard features on most guild sites have to include a blog of some kind (to track your guild's kills), a message board for both talking to the public and planning private raids, some time of roster software (powered by the Armory or otherwise), and a DKP tracker of some kind. Of course, even if you don't go with a hosting service, there are also lots of different apps that will let you do all of this on your own, as long as you're HTML and maybe even PHP ready.

I'll tell you one thing I'd like to see in guild hosting sites that I haven't yet: a design that's actually easy on the eyes. I'm really proud you downed Vashj, guys, but next time, try raiding some web design fundamentals.

In an ongoing series of articles we'll show you how to put WoW Insider on your own blog, guild website, personal website, or even on your computer's desktop. For a complete list of the software that's covered, check out our guide's index.

About GuildPortal

GuildPortal is a very popular WoW guild website, and has been around for a long time. Because of that, it's a very mature piece of software, and has lots of ins and outs. It's not the easiest thing to use, and has some notoriety as being difficult at times. It also costs money to use anything but the most basic free features. In fact, RSS syndication, and thus the ability to get WoW Insider syndicated on a GuildPortal site, is part of the pay only package. Because of this, we can only take you half way – right up to where I get an error saying I need to pay.

How to syndicate WoW Insider on your GuildPortal website


1. Login as an administrator.
2. Click on the Control Panel link located at the top of the webpage.


3. Click on the "Site Pages" link located on the left hand side of the webpage.


4. Click on a page, such a "Home".


5. Click on the link named "Add Content" which is located near the top of the webpage, just above all your pages content items.


6. A window will open, asking you to choose what type of content you want to add. Fill it in as pictured above.
7. Click the "Save" button.
8. This is where you'll need to pay for the site for things to work. What you'll want to do next is click the "Edit Content" link of the content you just added. Another window will open up. There, you want to type in the RSS feed URL for WoW Insider, which is http://www.wowinsider.com/rss.xml . After that, you'll be done, and see a WoW Insider feed on your guild's website!

In the past week, you may have noticed an increase in complaints about hacked accounts on the forums. Why? Well, the popular guild-hosting website Guildportal was hacked -- hackers added a bit of code exploiting an old Internet Explorer vulnerability (Microsoft had a patch available six months ago) to install a keylogger on visitors' systems. It was a brilliant move by the hackers, who managed to tap into a site visited by a massive number of WoW players -- the perfect place to steal account information. But I can't say it was very good for some of Guildportal's users, who logged on to World of Warcraft to find their characters completely naked next to an unfamiliar mailbox.

However, this entire affair was very preventable. First off, Guildportal itself had a vulnerability that allowed hackers to insert the exploit that installed the keylogger. And then in order for the keylogger to be installed, individuals visiting Guildportal had to be running a version of Internet Explorer that was 6 months out of date.

Guildportal has taken steps to prevent this from happening again, by patching their systems and banning traffic from China, where the hack attack originated from. (According to Guildportal's response as reported on the forums and a commenter on Madness and Games identifying himself as Aaron Lewis of Guildportal.) But have you taken steps? In Blizzard's post on the subject, they point out Microsoft Security Bulletin MS06-055, released by Microsoft on September 26th, 2006. You can stop many potential keylogger threats by simply visiting Windows Update to download patches regularly -- or, even easier, enabling Windows' Automatic Update feature. Either option would have resulted in your computer being protected from this vulnerability well before now.

Think your account has been compromised? GM Kaone offers some good instructions on how to rid your computer of keyloggers (it's a lengthy post but very informative) and then points you to their billing support department for account recovery. (Yes, it is important to get rid of the keylogger before having your account restored -- otherwise you'll end up right back where you started!) But be prepared for a wait -- the account recovery process isn't always fast.

See Guildportal's full response to its users after the jump.

Other recent security advisories:
Beware the cursor hack
Keep keyloggers away: New Microsoft hotfix available
More security warnings from Blizzard
Blizzard reminds us to be careful of keyloggers

[Via PlayNoEvil, with thanks to robodex for the forums link]