This has been rated as critical all all WordPress 3 users should update immediatley to verion 3.0.4 through the update page in the WordPress dashboard or  for full details and download visit WordPress 3.0.4 Important Security Update

When you login to magento admin and have a aheadworks extension installed, the extension tries to connect to the aheadworks server to see if there are any notification messages,. if the server can’t be found i.e. the connection times out, the magento admin page just won’t load.

The quick solution is to stop the aheadworks extension from trying to contact the server:

app/code/local/AW/All/Helper/Config.php

Remove the reference to their server:

class AW_All_Helper_Config extends Mage_Core_Helper_Abstract{
const EXTENSIONS_FEED_URL = ”;/*’http://ecommerce.aheadworks.com/extensions.xml’*/
const UPDATES_FEED_URL = ”;/*’http://ecommerce.aheadworks.com/updates.xml’;*/
}

I also comment out the reference in the AW/All/etc/config.xml file as well, just to make sure:

<default>
<awall>
<!–<feed>
<url>ecommerce.aheadworks.com/blog/feed/?tag=feed&amp;community=1</url>
<use_https>0</use_https>
<check_frequency>86400</check_frequency>
<enabled>1</enabled>
<interests>INFO,PROMO,UPDATE_RELEASE,NEW_RELEASE,INSTALLED_UPDATE</interests>
</feed>–>
</awall>
</default>

This did the job and the client can login to magento admin again.

Why aheadworks, why!

Why prevent users from logging in to magento admin because your server is down, how stupid is that!