Your WordPress Website Was Hacked! Now What?

Because of the popularity of WordPress, it’s not uncommon for hackers to target the platform. Unfortunately, if you have a WordPress website, you could be their next target if the proper precautions and care haven’t been taken to ensure you are protected. Whether you are in the throes of recovering your WordPress website after a hack or just want to ensure you are protected in the event of a catastrophe, here are the steps you should take to recover.

Determine the Extent of the Problem

Is an outdated plugin provided an open gateway for hackers to take advantage of your site or were you just unoriginal when creating your password for the sake of convenience? Determining how your website was hacked in the first place is critical for ensuring that you don’t fall into the same trap. Once the hack has been pinpointed, you can start working to restore your WordPress website and protect it from the same thing happening again.

Restore from a Backup

Because you are a responsible website owner and constantly perform a complete backup, you should have access to a recent version of your website before it was hacked. By restoring this backup you can learn from your mistakes and fix any problems that led to the current problem; however, you may lose some of the recent content that was added to the website including blogs or comments that occurred after the hack occurred. If you don’t have a backup plan in place, contact your webmaster for more instruction or assistance.

Change Your Password

Once your website has been restored, the first thing you will want to do is create a new strong password for your account. Avoid using any real words and attempt to replace letters with special characters or numbers that may serve as a replacement for them. Alternatively, you could use an automatic password generator and save the password in a document for future use to ensure you don’t lose access.

Complete Available Updates

WordPress and it’s associated plugins are constantly being updated to improve both security and functionality across the platform. If you haven’t been consistently updating your plugins or WordPress version, there’s a good chance that you still have vulnerabilities that have been patched. Complete any available updates you may have on your dashboard to ensure you are protected from potential exploits hackers may utilize.

Still Need Help?

If you do not feel confident updating your website yourself or are fearful of potential damages that may occur if it doesn’t go smoothly, the experts at Skynet Solutions are here to help. As the top web design firm in Tulsa, the Skynet Solutions team does these types of updates many times each day and can typically perform them very quickly and efficiently. If you are interested in our WordPress Maintenance plans to ensure your website remains up to date, please contact us today to get started!