I am probably an innocent abroad, but it never occurred to me that my blogs were worthy of anyone's notice to bother hacking them.
However, hackers seem to view even the tiniest of blogs and users as fair game.
A few weeks ago, several of my blogs were hacked and as I use some of them as landing pages for my articles, this was a huge set-back to my article marketing career! Now I love WordPress, but I have to confess that when "they" told me how easy it was for a beginner to get started with WordPress, for anyone who is completely new to "all this complicated ftp stuff", it's a very steep learning curve.
(I'm glad I persevered.
) However, I was just beginning to feel I'd learned the fundamental principles, and had set up about ten blogs with a little income coming in online, when catastrophe struck and I managed to get several hacked within a single week.
Don't ask how or why it happened - I'm not even sure if I know myself what went wrong, but one after one I started receiving warning messages from Google, and then I realized..
..
Help - my blog has been hacked To start with I was pretty unconcerned because I had, of course, backups of all my blogs.
I did this using a popular plugin, so I imagined it would be relatively easy to restore the damaged sites from the backup.
How completely wrong could I be? I clicked at the "restore blog" help page, and my spirits sank as I read the instructions.
I couldn't help but feel I would need a master's degree in Information Technology it was so perplexing (to me, as a newbie).
I asked on WordPress forums and although everyone there was very sympathetic, their suggestions were largely beyond me.
A few clicks to them could be an hour for me to figure out.
In my horror that I couldn't work out how to recover from the backups I wondered whatever next.
My son, who works in IT but knows nothing about WordPress, suggested that I speak to the three different hosting companies where my blogs were hosted and ask if they knew how to re-install my backups and clean up the hacking.
It was here that an interesting disparity came about.
The first company, Hostgator, had me back online again in just a few days, all hacks removed, without even resorting to my backups.
I don't know how they did it, but top marks to them.
Hostica, my second hosting company, were also extremely helpful and patient with my problems and misunderstandings, and re-installed the sites from my blog backups.
Unfortunately, although my content was unharmed I had lost all my blog customizations and plug-in settings - which I gather is something "everyone" knows happens when you restore or move WordPress sites.
(Well, everyone but me!) So I still had quite a few hours work to do to get back to the pre-hack condition.
I suspect I have lost many of the "tweaks" I made without noting them down, because having taken backups I never expected I would lose all my settings.
A third company, which I will not name, has still (a full month later) not managed to recover my site despite having access to (a) a backup from the plugin and (b) files I had ftp-ed onto my own PC as another means of backup.
To put this in context, Hostica had my site content (but not settings) recovered within 15 minutes of me sending them the backup from the plugin.
So after 6 very useless weeks, all but one of my sites are online again, and trying to recover whatever credibility they had with Google and co! Preventing and Recovering from Hacked WordPress blogs But what advice can I pass on to fellow newbies from this disaster? 1) Support from your hosting company is vital.
Hostgator and Hostica gave me excellent support and I shall continue hosting with them.
Company three has been a catastrophe, yet when I check online, other people give them good reviews.
Draw your own inferences from that.
2) Ideally your hosting company will be making regular backups of your site in case you need them to recover a site for you.
But it's still wise to have a backup of your own, in case the hosting company fails.
(Unlikely if you choose a reputable company in the first place.
) 3) Other tips to prevent such hacking before it happens, are to change your WordPress admin user from "admin" to something more obscure, use an incredibly complicated password that includes special characters, and change your profile so that your first name is displayed, not your user name.
4) It is also important to keep all your plug-ins, plus your version of WordPress up-to-date, and make certain that you do not display which version of WordPress you are using.
These and other tips I learned from the free plug-in WP-Security Admin Tools, which I suggest you implement immediately, as it will highlight security weaknesses you can fix.
Best of all, I came across a tool that lets me take a complete clone of my blog in minutes, and recover it all (content, plug-ins, themes and images), even to an empty domain, such as when relocating my blog to a new host.
If I had used this inexpensive program before my sites were hacked, I would have been able to restore them within minutes from clean, compressed backups, such as those I now have on my PC.
In the future, if I were dissatisfied with my webhost, these copies are a breeze to move to a completely new company.
Or should I just want to duplicate an empty customised blog to start a new one with the very same setup, this is also the tool for the job.
In fact that is its main purpose - the backup function is advertised as a second function.
Setting up the tool was a breeze with Hostgator.
Setting it up with Hostica didn't work first time, but the publishers worked with me to identify and resolve the difficulties, which were in database settings, so all is well now.
Yet another example of excellent support came from the their staff.
In conclusion, my recommendation to any-one, newcomer or experienced user alike, who is concerned about how to backup and safeguard your WordPress blog is to save yourself hours of grief and heart-ache, by using this tool.
Watch a video via the link below to learn more about its other features.
Backup your blog with WPTwin
However, hackers seem to view even the tiniest of blogs and users as fair game.
A few weeks ago, several of my blogs were hacked and as I use some of them as landing pages for my articles, this was a huge set-back to my article marketing career! Now I love WordPress, but I have to confess that when "they" told me how easy it was for a beginner to get started with WordPress, for anyone who is completely new to "all this complicated ftp stuff", it's a very steep learning curve.
(I'm glad I persevered.
) However, I was just beginning to feel I'd learned the fundamental principles, and had set up about ten blogs with a little income coming in online, when catastrophe struck and I managed to get several hacked within a single week.
Don't ask how or why it happened - I'm not even sure if I know myself what went wrong, but one after one I started receiving warning messages from Google, and then I realized..
..
Help - my blog has been hacked To start with I was pretty unconcerned because I had, of course, backups of all my blogs.
I did this using a popular plugin, so I imagined it would be relatively easy to restore the damaged sites from the backup.
How completely wrong could I be? I clicked at the "restore blog" help page, and my spirits sank as I read the instructions.
I couldn't help but feel I would need a master's degree in Information Technology it was so perplexing (to me, as a newbie).
I asked on WordPress forums and although everyone there was very sympathetic, their suggestions were largely beyond me.
A few clicks to them could be an hour for me to figure out.
In my horror that I couldn't work out how to recover from the backups I wondered whatever next.
My son, who works in IT but knows nothing about WordPress, suggested that I speak to the three different hosting companies where my blogs were hosted and ask if they knew how to re-install my backups and clean up the hacking.
It was here that an interesting disparity came about.
The first company, Hostgator, had me back online again in just a few days, all hacks removed, without even resorting to my backups.
I don't know how they did it, but top marks to them.
Hostica, my second hosting company, were also extremely helpful and patient with my problems and misunderstandings, and re-installed the sites from my blog backups.
Unfortunately, although my content was unharmed I had lost all my blog customizations and plug-in settings - which I gather is something "everyone" knows happens when you restore or move WordPress sites.
(Well, everyone but me!) So I still had quite a few hours work to do to get back to the pre-hack condition.
I suspect I have lost many of the "tweaks" I made without noting them down, because having taken backups I never expected I would lose all my settings.
A third company, which I will not name, has still (a full month later) not managed to recover my site despite having access to (a) a backup from the plugin and (b) files I had ftp-ed onto my own PC as another means of backup.
To put this in context, Hostica had my site content (but not settings) recovered within 15 minutes of me sending them the backup from the plugin.
So after 6 very useless weeks, all but one of my sites are online again, and trying to recover whatever credibility they had with Google and co! Preventing and Recovering from Hacked WordPress blogs But what advice can I pass on to fellow newbies from this disaster? 1) Support from your hosting company is vital.
Hostgator and Hostica gave me excellent support and I shall continue hosting with them.
Company three has been a catastrophe, yet when I check online, other people give them good reviews.
Draw your own inferences from that.
2) Ideally your hosting company will be making regular backups of your site in case you need them to recover a site for you.
But it's still wise to have a backup of your own, in case the hosting company fails.
(Unlikely if you choose a reputable company in the first place.
) 3) Other tips to prevent such hacking before it happens, are to change your WordPress admin user from "admin" to something more obscure, use an incredibly complicated password that includes special characters, and change your profile so that your first name is displayed, not your user name.
4) It is also important to keep all your plug-ins, plus your version of WordPress up-to-date, and make certain that you do not display which version of WordPress you are using.
These and other tips I learned from the free plug-in WP-Security Admin Tools, which I suggest you implement immediately, as it will highlight security weaknesses you can fix.
Best of all, I came across a tool that lets me take a complete clone of my blog in minutes, and recover it all (content, plug-ins, themes and images), even to an empty domain, such as when relocating my blog to a new host.
If I had used this inexpensive program before my sites were hacked, I would have been able to restore them within minutes from clean, compressed backups, such as those I now have on my PC.
In the future, if I were dissatisfied with my webhost, these copies are a breeze to move to a completely new company.
Or should I just want to duplicate an empty customised blog to start a new one with the very same setup, this is also the tool for the job.
In fact that is its main purpose - the backup function is advertised as a second function.
Setting up the tool was a breeze with Hostgator.
Setting it up with Hostica didn't work first time, but the publishers worked with me to identify and resolve the difficulties, which were in database settings, so all is well now.
Yet another example of excellent support came from the their staff.
In conclusion, my recommendation to any-one, newcomer or experienced user alike, who is concerned about how to backup and safeguard your WordPress blog is to save yourself hours of grief and heart-ache, by using this tool.
Watch a video via the link below to learn more about its other features.
Backup your blog with WPTwin
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