What do I do if my Wordpress website has been hacked?

The day you find out your Wordpress website is hacked can be the most frustrating day for any website owner. With continued upkeep and maintenance on the Wordpress website, you can definitely decrease the risk of your site being hacked.

If you are reading this and your website has been hacked, please contact us right away to help review your situation. We have helped clients with similar situations, and we know that immediate action is needed to get your website cleaned up and working correctly.

 

If your website is running smoothly, then please keep reading to ensure you have everything covered to decrease your risk of your site being hacked in the future.

Here are a few steps to follow on a monthly basis to help decrease your site’s vulnerability and increase your security:

Make sure your Wordpress version is up-to-date.

When you log into your Wordpress dashboard and go to Updates, you can see if you are running the latest version or if an update is available. As soon as a Wordpress version is available, I’d highly recommend that you apply the update, once you know that your site is compatible. One way of doing this is having a copy of your live site running, which you apply the updates to first, once you know it will run effectively with the latest updates, then you apply it to your actual live site. This ensures that you are not breaking what your visitors will be viewing.

If you’re a hosting client of ours, we test the Wordpress updates on a development server version of your site, and if there are no conflicts we’ll roll it out to your live site for you.

Check to see which plugins need to be updated.

A word of caution: even though updates are available for some plugins, you may not want to apply them, especially if it breaks a feature that you’ve been using with that plugin. Or the plugin may not be compatible with your live website setup because it’s not able to work with the latest Wordpress version, for example. Another important tip is to update each plugin individually on your developer version of the website, when the plugins are updated and fully functioning, now you know it’s safe to apply the plugin updates to your live site.

If you’re a hosting client of ours, we test plugin updates on a development server version of your site, and if there are no conflicts we’ll roll it out to your live site for you.

Having the right tools in place for preventative measures is always the best practice.

Here at Yoko Co, as we are developing sites, we always equip the sites with exactly what they need for functionality, security and usability. If you are wondering, “is my website secure?” Click here to read a few of the best Wordpress security practices that we often use on our client’s websites. To make sure you have all your ducks in a row for Wordpress security measures, check out Tips to Increase your Website’s Security.

Lastly, and most importantly, make sure you are running on the most reliable hosting available for your business.

There are several hosting companies available, but knowing that you are at the best place, might be hard for you to determine. You can do a price comparison to make sure you are getting the most affordable hosting, but that doesn’t matter if it’s not reliable hosting for your business.

If this all seems to be a bit overwhelming, then I’d recommend contacting your website developer and ask them for their Wordpress maintenance and hosting plan. Here at Yoko Co, we are ready to help each client with their website on a continued basis after we launch their website. We understand how the website functions and we do realize this can be overwhelming to know what everything means and how it works. When our clients opt for the hosting and maintenance plan, we know that gives you the peace-of-mind in knowing that we will be taking care of your website; which allows you to do what you do best, run your business!

Please contact us today to discuss your Wordpress maintenance needs, review what your hosting options are and help you get the peace-of-mind you deserve.