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 on
http://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
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
