There is nothing worse than having a client, who didn’t take out my maintenance package, come back to me with a hacked website. Loosing everything to a hack is everyone’s worst nightmare.
I now have mandatory maintenance packages with all my website just because of this issue! With my maintenance packages I back up my clients’ websites every week and ensure that everything is working correctly. And if anything does go wrong, I can sort it in a few hours.
There is nothing worse than having to tell someone that they need to have their entire website rebuild because they didn’t backup their website. I wanted to tell you the story of Sarah who this happened to:
Sarah’s Story
Sarah came to me with the dreaded blank screen. This means that when you went to her website all you saw was a blank screen. No error message, no indication as to what was wrong. Even worse she couldn’t access the backend admin area of her website either.
Sarah was a new client (I didn’t build the original website) and she was referred to me to see if I could help.
Always happy to help
I’m always happy to have a look and see what I can do. After gaining access to her hosting account, I used and FTP client to log into her website files on her server. I did the usual, disabled all the plugins, changed the theme but still nothing was working.
After a little more digging
So, after a little while of looking around I found the issue. There had been a hack on the site. Unfortunately, the hack had gone deep into the website files and database. It would have taken hours upon hours to sanitize.
Cheaper to start again
After running the numbers on my hourly rate, it quickly became clear that it would be cheaper to rebuild the website than to try and remove the hack.
It wasn’t the ideal solution, no one want the cost in time or money of starting from scratch. But Sarah went ahead and also took out my maintenance package to make sure this never happened to her again.
Always back up your website
To avoid this happening to you, of course you could take out my maintenance package (just email me! [email protected]), but you need to make sure your website is backed up. Preferrable backed up each week. This may seem excessive but if the worse does happen you will be thanking me!
Do you have a WordPress website?
If you have a WordPress website, you can simply download a plugin to backup your website for you: Updraft Plus.
Just download the plugin and press the back up button. Make sure to tick the boxes to include your website files and your database.
Once the backup has happened, download the files to your computer. You don’t need to keep every backup; I only keep the last two weeks of backups for each website. As long as everything is working on the website.
If you need any help along the way, pop over to my Facebook Group and ask, I’m here to help! Let’s get those websites backed up.
Let me know!
Thank you for reading this week’s blog – Loosing Everything To A Hack. Come on over to my Facebook Group and let me know how you got on!
Until next time, happiness is fleeting, strive for contentment. Gowns on!
Kelly (Your WordPress Queen) x
Kellys Web Designs - 07894 112 567
p.s If you haven’t joined my Facebook group – The Dressing Gown Guild, head on over for more business, web design tips and lots of fun.
