Can’t access the WordPress console anymore or has your website homepage changed? You’ve probably suffered a cyber attack and now need to find a way to fix your hacked WordPress site.
A hacked and non-functioning portal can be a huge economic and image damage to your business. This “incident” is likely to interfere with your SEO ranking on search engines, cause you to lose all your business data or put your customers’ data at risk. In addition, those who visit it will have the perception of an unsafe and poorly maintained website, not to mention that they may be exposed to viruses with redirects to scam websites.
As you may have guessed, security is an issue that should not be underestimated. But how do you notice a system breach and how can you restore a damaged website?
In this article we will look at:
- Signs not to be underestimated
- How to repair a hacked WordPress site
- The importance of maintenance as prevention to website hacker breaches
- Why avoid do-it-yourself and rely on specialists
Want to recover your hacked site and looking for immediate assistance?
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WordPress site hacked: the signs not to underestimate
Before we figure out how to fix a hacked WordPress site, let’s see what are the signs of a possible breach. The portal can be compromised if you notice:
- slowed performance
- Redirects to unknown sites, suspicious or spam pages
- Error messages with unusual notifications (e.g., “Your site contains malware”)
- Changes to the pages, homepage, or the publication of unauthorized content on the site
- Difficulties in access (login) and errors in entering credentials
- Abnormal emails with spam messages sent from your domain
- Blocking of the site by hosting or search engines for activities harmful to users
Also, if you have a security plugin installed on your site you may receive a specific hacker attack warning.
Speaking of plugins, find out what the best WordPress plugins are!
How to repair a hacked WordPress site
WordPress is one of the most widely used CMSs in the world for building websites. It has many advantages, but at the same time it can be vulnerable. If you have noticed anomalies you need to act promptly to detect the problem, limit the damage as much as possible and restore the system. Here are the main steps to take.
1. Putting the website in “maintenance mode”
Setting the “maintenance mode” prevents users from seeing the damaged site. By doing so, they may perceive the outage as a scheduled processing step. To be removed when restoration is complete!
2. Change passwords and permissions
To prevent hackers from compromising the system again, all WordPress panel, database, FTP and hosting passwords should be changed. Roles assigned to users should also be checked to ensure there is no suspicious access.
3. Start the security scan
With this procedure, which is done using specific software to identify malware, infected files, and vulnerabilities, one can examine the extent of the damage and figure out where to take action to eliminate threats.
4. Remove malware and compromised files.
It takes timely action on the system (including databases, plugins and themes) by deleting or replacing infected files identified during the scan.
5. Restore the website
After ascertaining the absence of malware, a backup of the latest, cleanest version of the website is uploaded.
6. Update WordPress, plugins and theme
After recovery, updates are made to WordPress, plugins and themes to eliminate any security holes exploited by hackers. Updates, in fact, reduce vulnerabilities.
7. Check the health of the website
If the website still has problems, it is necessary to proceed with uninstalling and reinstalling each plugin and theme to figure out which ones have a problem. Sometimes, uninstalling and installing WordPress itself is also necessary to unblock the situation, even following the manual procedure.
8. Validate the site on Google
In the event of a report or block by Google, a site crawl should be requested once the problem is resolved. This is done by submitting the query to Google Search Console along with the updated sitemap.
The importance of maintenance as prevention to website hacker breaches
WordPress sites are hacked for so many reasons, including data misappropriation for identity theft or to harm the company. Certainly, an insecure WordPress site is easier to compromise. To increase portal defenses, therefore, it is advisable to:
- choose effective passwords
- Update WordPress software, plugins and theme in a timely manner
- make automatic backups
- Install security plugins to monitor vulnerabilities and suspicious activities
- Rely on hosting with robust security measures
- Implement protection with firewall, two-factor authentication and SSL certificates
These are all violations that can be reduced and prevented through a scheduledwebsite maintenance service.
Do cyber attacks scare you? Find out what you can do in our article:
How to increase the security of your WordPress site
Avoid DIY and rely on specialists to fix hacked WordPress site
If your WordPress site has been hacked, consider that fixing the problem yourself could even make it worse. The risk is to damage it further and lose more data, lengthening the recovery time.
Removing malware and repairing compromised files requires specific technical skills and a methodical approach. At Isola we have a team of skilled technicians who can offer you website support tailored to your business. You can count on prompt intervention in case of unexpected problems and ongoing support to make periodic backups of your site, make sure everything is working properly as well as renew your database, domain, and hosting as they expire.
Combined with scheduled maintenance, support helps ensure the perfect functioning of the website. It is the ideal solution for pre-emptively recognizing the signs of an attack and eliminating the problem even before it occurs.
Do you want to repair your hacked WordPress site or effectively prevent cyber attacks?
Ask our staff for a consultation!
