How To Recover Your Hacked WordPress Website In Easy Steps?
WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems at
present. However as a general law, the increasing popularity comes with a
number of dangerous has gained attention of bad boys as well. There are
so many people who are reporting the cases of hacked WordPress account
on a regular basis. So I have thought of putting a complete guide to
discuss how to recover your hacked WordPress.
Ways To Recover Hacked Account
Below is the perfect path to follow to get your hacked account back:
Backup – Even if your website
is infected to a small extent, it is still very much necessary to secure
the backup for your website before waiting for watching the things
turning into worst. Don’t forget to take backup of your entire database
and all files. You can also try for a faster solution by using
BackupBuddy.
Change Login Details and Secret Access Keys –
At the time you sense the hacking attempt, just try to login to your
account to check whether your login details are still effective or not.
If the username and password details are not yet changed then
immediately change all the WordPress secret access keys in wp-config.php
file and of-course your username and password.
Running Scanners – Running a
scanner is also a very helpful step and comes at number 3 in this list.
The scanners are basically used for identifying the compromises at the
level of database. You can try out Cloud Sites WP Scanner plug-in or
Sucuri Malware Scanner. After running the scanner you should make sure
to move the next step stated below.
Installing Your WordPress Again –
Next important step involves Deleting all the files existing in the
directory of WordPress except wp-config.php file and wp-content
directory. After that you need to download and install a totally fresh
copy of WordPress. Now edit the wp-config-sample.php file by
substituting the sample values by picking the actual database values
from the wp-config.php file that you haven’t deleted as stated above.
Now you can delete the present file and replace it with your own file.
Review Content Folder – Next
task involved to check all the folders to find ones with any suspicious
activity in your wp-content directory. So carefully analyze the folders
content and remove any one that seems not to be belonging to you. If you
later find that the folder was actually needed then you can get it back
from your backup.
Analyze and Re-install Your Plug-ins –
The next steps after completing with reviewing the folders’ content
includes reviewing the plug-ins. Collect information about what plug-ins
you are not using currently and uninstall them all for the time being.
Now coming to all other activated plug-ins that you are using currently,
deactivate and delete these plug-ins and then re-install and activate
the active plug-ins.
Analyze Your Themes – Now the
next thing that should be taken care of is the task of removing the
extra themes which are not in use currently. Next task again involves
reviewing your activated theme. Look through the PHP or Javascript code
to find out any suspicious activity there. Most of the time hackers make
such malicious changes in header.php or footer.php files.
Following this step by step guide can really help you a lot in getting
your WordPress back. Also always remember to keep checking for the
activities on your WordPress site. Also make it a habit to keep a time
by time backup of your database. For more recovery details you can check
onhttp://codex.wordpress.org/FAQ_My_site_was_hacked.
How to Secure before Getting hacked !
Every one is looking to make their blog looks secure and try to make
their blog safe from hackers so that hackers can not take any kind of
information from your blog. You can protect and increase security of
your by doing following things :-
Chap Secure plugin
You can increase the security of your log-in by using Chap secure
plugin, It helps in encrypting passwords by using CHAP protocol. It will
help hacker to get in trouble.
Login Lockdown Plugin
This plugin helps a lot in stopping a hacker because if he is trying to
play with your login screen then this plugin will limit hit after few
wrong attempts.Just download the plugin and activate it. This plugin
helps to secure your blog from newbie hackers.
WP Security Scan
This plugin helps to check all the codes of your website from hacking
Malware and scripts. It can find out which code or which file has virus
in the blog.
Updating WordPress regularly
Try to upgrade the WordPress regularly as soon as any new version is
launched. Most of the bloggers do not update WordPress and chances are
huge that old WordPress version can get hacked.
Tac Theme Checker
You can install a plugin “Tac Theme checker” which can check your theme
before activating it. It helps you to check the complete theme when you
upload it into Dashboard and it helps to check the files completely in
few seconds.
Make your security Bullet proof
You should increase your security more and more by adding some official steps from WordPress website and you can read them here http://codex.wordpress.org/Hardening_WordPress.
Theme of your Blog
Your theme plays an important part in hacking, If you are using some
cracked version of theme then be ready to get hacked soon. Cracked
themes often have codes which helps to get you hacked. I would suggest
that get a proper theme from any web design company so that there is no chance to get hacked due to unethical themes.
I hope these steps will help you to protect from all the hack attempts. If you have any other method then do let us know in below comments. Thank you