Wordpress hacked!

The nightmare of probably any blogger, coming on your blog and realizing it would be hacked. If you’d have to make a top 10 of the things which you’d absolutely not desire to see it’d probably stand way above the rest on number 1.

Just searching on Google alone for the terms wordpress hacked returns an astonishing 792,000 hits and probably won’t take long before the million mark would be reached.

One of the more popular wordpress bloggers, Lorelle vanFossen, recently highlighted the issue once more on blog herald in her wordpress Wednesday news. But also on her own blog she gave attention to the matter on hacks by google redirects.

How to secure yourself

Unfortunately you can never be 100% protected against hackers, it would be attractive, but it’s a utopia. Hackers can be so determined to break stuff making it inevidatable to work all of the risk out of the world.

But the key is minimizing the risk! Sure you can keep your door unlocked, windows wide open and hang a sign on your door stating you’re out of the country for the week but do you do that? People would probably think you’re going totally nuts.

Yet many bloggers do exactly that to their blog. There might not be a physical lock or windows on your blog, but known hacks enter through security loopholes which can easily be shut by updating wordpress.

Especially as an update is quick and easy, possibly within 5 minutes, there’s no reason not to stay up to date. Before upgrading though do take some time and walk through the usual upgrade preperations to save you from several potential headaches afterward, but to be quite honest in the past 2 years of using wordpress I have yet to run into an upgrading issue.

What more can I do

There is one thing which I will recommend definitely doing more than just staying up to date, make periodic backups! It couldn’t be emphasized more as to how important backups are, definitely considering how easy backing up wordpress is.

In case things might go wrong these sort of periodic updates will save you from the nightmare of losing it all, to see everything you worked for with your blog could suddenly be gone.

Are you secure? Ask yourself these questions right now:

• What version of wordpress am I running? In case it’s not the latest edition do yourself a favor and update your blog ASAP. At the moment of writing this entry the latest version is 2.5.1 but to be certain check the wordpress downloads or in newer versions of wordpress simply through the update notifier in your dashboard.
• When was the last backup I made?
  Never?! In that case definitely start making them right now! Give yourself that little extra security.
  A months ago? Have a look at how many posts, comments and trackbacks you’ve received since then. In case it would have been a single post you’re doing fine, made 30 entries however, received 400 comments or gained about 150 trackbacks? Increase the frequency by which you backup!
• How much do I care about my blog? Perhaps this is the most important question of all, in case you’re a passionate blogger definitely make sure for yourself how secure you are. Never let a wordpress hacker get the opportunity to steal that passion for blogging by ripping apart your blog.