Here’s something you might not know – at the start of 2020 over 35% of all websites worldwide were powered by WordPress.
In perspective, that makes for around 200 million websites running on WordPress and that includes big business like CNN, Spotify and CBS right down to the local 1 person shops.

But what happens when it all goes wrong?

Unfortunately, due to the massive market, there are some that like to grab their slice of the pie using nefarious methods like dodgy themes and plugins which can lead to malware and spyware gaining access to your site causing a plethora of issues from scripting errors to unwanted ads.
Definitely not what you want to find at the forefront of your businesses online presence.

What do I do!? What do I do!?
First of all, don’t panic!
Clicking frantically, adding and removing plugins, and pulling the unknown code out of theme or core files will just make the situation worse.

Dependant on the severity of the problem, it might be wise to put your website into maintenance mode, as this will let your visitors know that either you or your developer are on the road to recovering your website without causing any inconvenience to your hard earned traffic.
Your host is a great place to start. Whilst it’s great signing up to a $2 a month deal with unlimited disc space and bandwidth it will, in the end, cost your business. It’s a get-what-you-pay-for sort of thing, and servers should have heightened security, tough firewalls and protection against the thousands of online vulnerabilities. Insecure servers can be susceptive to database injections and exploits that allow the hacker root access.

Big bad wolf?
In rare occurrences, the code can be encrypted and buried within core files, themes & plugins that not always is it effective to remove the exploit, and it has been seen before where it’s simply not possible! To combat this, it’s important to have a daily, weekly or monthly backup of your website so that the last known good configuration of files and the database can be restored. We see time and time again developers that are not taking backups of a website. This can not only be costly to a business in terms of rebuilding or removing the malware, but can also result in a considerable amount of downtime leading to a loss of traffic, possibly search engine rankings, and of course, placing your brand into potential disrepute.

Save me, save me!
Sounds scary, doesn’t it? But it doesn’t have to be. So how do you protect against this?
For a start, it’s important to have 24 hours monitoring not only to ensure that your site remains online but also for malware. Through our maintenance packages, we also include systems that work ensure that your WordPress core files, along with additional themes and plugins, are kept up to date and continue to provide the correct functionality whilst being safe.

Here at Point and Stare we have five levels of WordPress maintenance that are definitely value for money and have additional benefits to the security of your site. We offer 24/7 security & uptime monitoring with every package, and backup all relevant files on a daily, weekly or monthly basis including the WordPress core, themes, plugins & databases so that following a breach, your full website can be restored in a matter of minutes.

Alongside this, our packages offer many other features such as content management for your pages & blogs, as well as the installation of professional SEO facilities and huge speed or loading time improvements. Our customer service is only bettered by John Lewis and we are able to offer priority email and direct telephone support amongst a plethora of other features in our WordPress Maintenance Packages.

If you’d like to learn a little bit more about how we can keep your website warm and snug please check the WordPress Maintenance Packages information and get protection today.

 
FURTHER READING