This place went from being one of the least reliable websites I frequent on low speeds to being easily the fastest and least likely to stop loading. Yay!
Recently Spotted:
*crickets*
Login @ The VG Press
Is it a non-shared (or lesser-shared) server Yoda?
Lesser-shared would be a more apt description.
Just do it and see what happens.
No.
What would qualify as "sites like these"? That part I can't address.
There are two parts to the question of malware in terms of a website. One is how it can get itself installed, and two is how it finds you in the first place.
In terms of how it gets itself installed, the foremost method is people just running an .exe. Stupid, I know, but that's the easy one. For example, a fake video site that says you need to run flash and gives you a download that is supposedly the latest version, but is actually a trojan. Trickier, but still real, are browser and plugin vulnerabilities. That is, some sort of JavaScript vulnerability in a browser (most often, but not exclusively, Internet Explorer), or a plugin (such as Flash or Adobe Reader). Not using Internet Explorer and making sure you keep yourself updated and patched help here.
Knowing that, the second part is what's relevant to your question. In order for a site to be a malware threat, there has to be JavaScript or a plugin running from somewhere to give you a download or use an exploit to install itself. Comments are filtered to prevent posting scripts and such (though someone could link to a malicious site, so if you follow a link somewhere, that could potentially be dangerous). Favicons aren't really a threat (though being overly cautious of a recent Windows issue, I removed them temporarily).
There are two more prevalent issues for serving up malware, which are sites that are hacked, and malicious or hacked ad services. A site could be compromised in two general ways -- in the site software itself, or on the server where it's hosted. For example, if you run an old version of Wordpress, there are scripts that run and search for old versions to exploit known vulnerabilities; this is very common, but not much an issue here as I've written this site from scratch aside from a few minor components.
The server, however, could also be compromised. If there's an unpatched exploit in a web service, potentially a script could be run that adds something to all web files. This has also happened many times, and is what happened to WhiteHouse.gov several months back.
Then there are ad services which often run using JavaScript, which have had issues. The New York Times website was famously hit by this, but that's not at all the only case. There are ads on the site, but they're run through PHP and are text-only. And you know what, you just gave me the thought that I should apply the comments filter to the incoming ad stream as a backup measure
So in short, given the relative obscurity of this site and active maintenance thereof, you're likely safer here than most other sites you'll be visiting. There can never be guarantees, but I think we're good.
I learned a lot from that one post than all the things I read on the internet.
I do get paranoid from these things which is why I wanted to ask. I edited my original post thinking it was inappropriate to ask about that because I know this site has been great.
But thanks for taking the time to explain all that.
Wanna stay safe? Stop searching for furry porn.