The trials of keeping a web site up

[Ackadia]

Thought I'd share a blog post I wrote after a rather trying week or two.

I had a VPS server with Hostgator and somehow hackers got into it and got up to all sorts of mischief. Malware injections, Advert uploads, .php loaded into old domains. Basically, attempts (including their security support) to remove them proved useless. This included renaming every database, changing every password, restoring sites from known good backups. Then you get Google email you (via webmaster tools) to say get it sorted.

So, upgraded to a dedicated server, killed all the old domains, restored current sites from known good backups (no point getting your host to migrate compromised domains, eh!). And added extra security in the form of third party firewalls and SSL.

And broke everything.

At first I thought may have been my studiopress theme at fault is it was the style sheets getting blocked. Rolled back to a default theme, looks ok, puts my child theme back and it looked worse than ever.

As far as I can tell it was actually a plug in called 'Use Google Libraries' to blame. In itself it's probably fine, but it and SSL don't seem to like to party together and when you have multiple layers of cache to wade through to sort it, it's frustrating to say the least.

In the end I fixed everything except a niggle with logo resizing at some widths, but I can sort that next month when I have more time.

Anyhow, wrote my thoughts here if any are interested:

The trials of keeping a web site up

https://ackadia.com

[Susan]

Thanks for sharing!

I always recommend disabling all plugins as the first step in troubleshooting. 🙂

[Ackadia]

I did, Susan, the problem was buried like a tick in one cache or another. Had to clear several caches and wait nearly two days before I nailed the little bugger! It was once of those times when you are inspecting elements and pouring over viewed page source and thinking, "Hang on, that's being called from /wordpress/some/other/directory, I changed that to /menu days ago.

It's that AHA! moment when you realise you aren't seeing the true picture. I think the internet has more cache that a bent politician 😀

[Susan]

LOL!

[Author]

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