Posts Tagged ‘plugins’
Web 101: Fixed a hacked site and prevent it from happening again – Part 2
September 16, 2008 by Emily
Web 101
In my previous post I talked about what to do to fix a hacked site. This post is about things you can do to make WordPress more secure so that something like that doesn’t happen again (or ever). The basic things were mentioned in the last post: change your passwords regularly, use strong passwords and always have the most current version of WP. But here are some other things you can do:
2 commentsWeb 101: Fixed a hacked site and prevent it from happening again – Part 1
September 9, 2008 by Emily
Web 101
A client and Swank hostee emailed me a few days ago because her browser had notified her that her blog had been marked as suspicious by Google and she didn’t know how or why that had happened. Further checking revealed that google had found malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. Her site had been hacked and the hacker had added malicious code to her blog template.
Unfortunately, this can happen to anyone and there are a myriad of ways that a hacker can get into your site. I believe in this instance that the hacker was able to guess her password, which was a very simple name. So what is one to do if your site is hacked? My client had no clue and I know that not everyone has a trusted designer or tech support that they can email with problems such as these (plus speed is key, so waiting around for help can be frustrating), so I thought I’d write up a checklist of things you should do to remove malicious code from your hacked site and prevent it from happening again (or ever if it hasn’t happened yet). I’m specifically going to be using WordPress blogs as an example since almost my entire clientele uses WordPress, but most of these things can be applied to all content management systems.
WordPress 2.6.1
August 15, 2008 by Emily
Around the Web, Downloads
WordPress 2.6.1 is out today. They are labeling it a “maintenance release” meaning it’s not a required upgrade, but if you’ve experienced any bugs with your install of 2.6, then you should upgrade. This version fixes 60 different bugs from the previous version. Here’s a list of the changed files if you just want to replace those in your current install. Or go download the whole thing.
If you’re looking for a no muss, no fuss method of upgrading WP, I highly recommend the WordPress Automatic Upgrade Plugin. It only takes minutes to upgrade WordPress on most servers. Everything is done right from your admin area, you don’t have to bother with files or FTP or databases, the plugin does everything for you including backing up your whole site before you start.
And if you just don’t feel like taking a few minutes to upgrade your blog right now, but don’t want to have to look at that annoying upgrade notice that’s at the top of your admin pages, the Hide the Update Notice plugin is really handy. It just hides the big notice at top, it’ll still say there’s a new version down at the bottom of the admin pages, so you’ll know when there’s an update.
