How-To-Guide for Recovering Hacked Sites on WordPress

The downside of a website is that contains and publishes all your hard-done content is that it could get hacked. That doesn’t mean that websites developed on specific CMS platforms such as WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla are anymore or any less safe than regular HTML.

In fact, WordPress claims to be one of the most secure CMSs on the web. It releases new versions on a regular basis to fix security bugs and other issues related to the WordPress websites.

So while the platform is pretty secure, the sheer number of users and its increasing popularity simply make WordPress websites near-irresistible to hackers.

Now, there are many ways to prevent or protect your site from hacks and malicious activities. But if your site has been hacked, then you need to take some steps to recover it.

In this post, we will look at some easy-to-follow steps to fix and clean up your hacked site with ease.

Note: Keep a backup of your website before you start anything. Use BackupBuddy or VaultPress plugins for automatic site backups.

1. Detect the Hack

Keep calm and composed while dealing with a hacked Website.

Take steps deliberately and pen down the possible reasons for the hack. Run down the following checklist in order to identify the hack.

* Does your site contain any illegal links?

* Can you login to your WP admin panel/ dashboard?

* Is your site automatically redirecting to another site?

* Is Google considering your site insecure?

Note: Change your password before you fix your hacked site.

2. Cross Check with your Hosting Company

Next: Cross-check your site with your hosting provider. It becomes essential if you are on a shared hosting plan.

A shared hosting is a service where multiple websites are hosted on a single server. It means your site is more vulnerable to hacking attacks. If there is any suspicious element in any one of the sites, it will affect all the websites hosted on that server (including yours). Therefore, it is essential to ensure whether your hosting provider is responsible for the hack or not.

If your hosting provider is helping you out with the hacking issue, then you can ask for additional information such as location of the backdoor or other possible reasons of the hack.

1. Restore your site

If you have a backup of your site, then you can easily get back to your last saved version. But, if it is not backed up, then you may lose all content and other information on your site. And you need to put extra efforts to restore your site to its original position. In such a situation, you need to clean up the hack manually.

2. Malware scanning using website scanner

Scanning a website is a great way to detect suspicious activities on your site. To do this, you can use a site scanner, such as Sucuri or WordFence. If you detect something fishy, you can instantly remove it from your site.

When you run the scanner, it will tell you the integrity status of your WP files. It simply identifies the area where the hack is hiding. The most commonly attacked areas are the wp-config.php, themes and plugins directories, .htaccess file and upload directory.

Note: Before running the scan, deactivate and uninstall all the unused themes, widgets, and plugins from the site.

3. Check user permissions

Check the user roles section of WordPress to ensure that only you and your authorized members have admin access to your site.

If you detect any suspicious user, immediately remove them.

4. Change the security keys

WordPress produces a set of security keys to encrypt your passwords. So, if a user stole your password, they will remain logged in as their cookies are valid.

In order to disable the cookies, you need to create a new set of security keys and then embed it in your wp-config.php file.

In simple words, this method invalidates all the cookies, so that the hackers won’t stay logged in even after changing the passwords.

5. Change your Passwords again

Yes, you need to change the password again if you want to tighten the security of your site.

Update your WordPress password, FTP/MySQL/cPanel password – all your passwords. And always use a strong and unique password.

Note: You should use the combination of numbers, special characters and uppercase and lowercase alphabets.

Tips to protect your site from future hacks/attacks:

Here are some tips that you can follow to enhance the security of your site:

* Don’t use default username “admin”. Create a new and strong one.

* Create unique and lengthy passwords

* Choose a reliable hosting provider

* Buy themes and plugins from the trusted source

* Remove the unused plugin from the site

* Always keep a back up of your site

* And, update your core WordPress, installed themes and plugins on a regular basis.

Conclusion

That’s all.

In this post, we explored the steps that one should follow when they find that their WP site has been hacked. You can recover your hacked WordPress site by following these easy-to-follow guidelines.

Author Bio: Lucy Barret is a talented WordPress developer and a passionate blogger. She is currently employed at HireWPGFeeks Ltd. and has the responsibility of managing all HTML to responsive WordPress theme conversion projects. Get in touch with her company, HireWPGeeks on Google+.