Are You Prepared For A Website Hack Or Virus?
Earlier this week (And almost every week) there was a big wordpress website hack across the web. It effected thousands of wordpress blogs. When someone would go to one of the affected sites the visitor would be warned that there was a website virus that was going to download to their computer. We personally know of 2 people who had multiple WordPress based sites affected and they are still trying to recover, 4 days later.
Of course, any visitor who saw a message about a virus would immediately turn tail and run as fast as possible away from the site. Unfortunately, most of the time if they were a new visitor they would never return. For most of us getting traffic to our websites is one of our biggest tasks each day. So having that traffic sent way because of the work of a website security issue or a wordpress hack is one of our worst nightmares.
But this isn’t the only issue. The next task is trying to fix the problem and get the site back up and running. Once your site is affected with any kind if website security issue or is broken in anyway, it can take days or even weeks to get everything back up and running smoothly.
Depending on site it can be a very costly time with your site down, money spent on getting traffic is suddenly a complete waste and no sales are made since no one will stay on the site because it is either broken or says there is a virus. And even offline clients can’t find your phone number or location because they can’t get to your site.
So Is There A Solution?
You’re in luck because there is. You need to have a good, complete backup of your site and a system to use that backup to get your site back up and running as quickly (and easily) as possible. After all no one wants to spend hours (and hours) on the phone or chat with tech support over at your hosting company trying to figure out how to get your site back up and running.
If you are running a WordPress based site there is a solution. It is a plugin called Backup Creator. And it is AMAZING! (Yes, we use it on EVERY one of our sites 🙂 )
Backup Creator doesn’t just backup the content. And it doesn’t just backup the theme and plugins. If backs up EVERYTHING. The entire site, including settings, plugins, pages, graphics, posts…like I said, everything. And it is easy to use.
Say you get an email from a friend telling you your site has been hacked. Or maybe you log in to make changes to your theme and TOTALLY break the site. (oh…is that just me? 🙂 ).
If you have Backup Creator (and have used it before the issue happened) all you have to do is get into the admin area. Even if that means a total, from scratch installation (anyone been there before?) Simply do the new install and go to the plugins area and install the backup file like it is a plugin. (Or if the site isn’t totally broken you can restore from the backup file as well).
When you install that backup file..POOF…everything is back. EXACTLY like it was when you ran the backup.
So if you are going to make any changes, upgrade your WordPress install, add a new plugin, etc you take a quick second and go run Backup Creator first and download the file. Then if something breaks you just use the backup file to put everything back the way it was.
Or once a week, once a month, once a quarter (whatever you feel comfortable with) you log in and run Backup Creator and download the file.
Then heaven forbid some hacker gets to your site or your hosting account, you re-install the basics and run the backup file. And POOF you are back up and running.
Maybe you have lost a blog post or two…but you have not lost your site and you are back up in 20 minutes (Tops) instead of being down for days and having to start all over from the beginning.
So….what are you waiting for? Head on over and pick up a copy, install it on everyone of your sites and run backups…now…before you wish you had. Then head over to your Google calendar and add a task each week or month to remind you to log in and run your backups.
You will be glad you did. Think of it as insurance for WordPress Blogs 🙂
