I can’t say that this has been a good week. This website suffered an another attack completely taking it offline this week. My website wasn’t the only one to be hit; I heard from many other people in the same situation. While I don’t know exact figures, I’m pretty sure it was a massive hack of WordPress and/or major hosting providers.
To say the least it was a stressful time for me and honestly I’m still filled with anger directed at the faceless hackers. A lot of Coca-Cola and chocolate were consumed while music blasted through my earbuds. Having your website hacked is no fun.
It has been a huge learning experience. I’ve learned a lot about WordPress and website security. I joked with folks that I’ll be an expert at the end of this process. I also learned a part of being a smart small business owner is knowing when to get professional help. After 24 hours of dealing with the hack myself, I decided I needed to turn my site – the online extension of myself and business – to professionals specializing in WordPress and security. The site now has a clean bill of health thanks to professionals at WP Security Lock as well as recommendations going forward.
I’ll be writing about this topic for July’s newspaper column in Lexington Herald-Leader. In the meantime, if you are using WordPress to power your website, I urge you to update your version of WordPress. On Friday, WordPress released an important security update, version 3.5.2, to combat the recent attacks against the platform. Please do that now. And install a security plug-in, I use the free Better WP Security and it has been successful in alerting me to questionable behavior on the website.
I’m still dealing with the after effects. I’ve had to redo a lot of my layout and settings in my theme. And still am.
Keep your site safe. Until next week…

The Book

Social Media Crisis Communications: Preparing for, Preventing, and Surviving a Public Relations #Fail is now available in eBook format. Buy it now! (If you like the book, please  leave a review; it is greatly appreciated)

TIME CRUNCH? Are you putting your crisis communications plan together and need help? Or are currently dealing with a crisis and need crisis communications assistance? Get help NOW. Contact Ann Marie at ann@mindthegappr.com or +1 302.563.0992 today.