what the hells happened to my website?
Discussion
m3jappa said:
So you see ill build you a lovely drive or garden but haven't a f
king clue how the internet works 
I'm sure folks on here could point you to a decent website designer.king clue how the internet works Think of it this way, if I want a "lovely drive or garden" and I head off down Wickes for some "stuff" it's probably not going to end too well as it's not my speciality.
It sounds a little as if you've done the website equivalent.
There are lots of good Wordpress hosts out there, that piece is simple, fifteen quid a month probably covers it.
Then you need someone who knows enough to do you a decent site design.
durbster said:
Also find out about maintenance costs which are often overlooked. If they do go with a CMS like Wordpress (which would be fine), you should allow an ongoing budget for keeping it up to date but you should think of any websites like a garden; a bit of attention every now and again does the world of good.
Which should include updates to galleries, new pages, testimonials etc. Why have a dog and bark yourself?People like the OP shouldn't even entertain doing their own updates imo. Most web shops will have a hosting/maintenance 'package'. Send them an email and it's done, without the hassle and without the risk of making it worse than it was before.
A word of warning about allowing web hosting companies perform your updates. This isn't so much an issue with WP as I've never had an update crap out on me, but with Magento I've won several clients just because they let their web host do the updates (for free) and then one time it breaks the site due to some incompatibility, or some file that's been edited that shouldn't have been and they don't know what to do.
technodup said:
durbster said:
Also find out about maintenance costs which are often overlooked. If they do go with a CMS like Wordpress (which would be fine), you should allow an ongoing budget for keeping it up to date but you should think of any websites like a garden; a bit of attention every now and again does the world of good.
Which should include updates to galleries, new pages, testimonials etc. Why have a dog and bark yourself?People like the OP shouldn't even entertain doing their own updates imo. Most web shops will have a hosting/maintenance 'package'. Send them an email and it's done, without the hassle and without the risk of making it worse than it was before.
4x4Tyke said:
durbster said:
Steady on - don't question the professional.
http://www.durbster.co.uk/
It's a good job that, as an experienced professional, you know that good developers can often be too busy with client work to spend time on their own website so you don't read much into them. I haven't touched it since 2011 but don't worry, I'll get it updated the next time I'm short of work.
Feel free to show us your own website, if you deem us worthy. For some reason it's not in your profile
Efbe said:
m3.
First off, do you want to come up high in the google searches?
to get high in google (having good SEO) can be a massive pain and often not worth your time unless you can get onto the first page for a good search term, which is getting harder and harder.
Much more important is that someone can find you in google maps... and I found you straight away. second result.
I have found most SEO experts to be completely useless and do little more than try to con the customer.
also, your website looks fine now to me, decent site as well!
Security issues are unfortunately common. just make sure wordpress is set to auto-update and follow the advice of people on here with security addons etc.
I would like to come up higher in google listings. what for exactly i don't know. I am willing to send some money on this within reason. First off, do you want to come up high in the google searches?
to get high in google (having good SEO) can be a massive pain and often not worth your time unless you can get onto the first page for a good search term, which is getting harder and harder.
Much more important is that someone can find you in google maps... and I found you straight away. second result.
I have found most SEO experts to be completely useless and do little more than try to con the customer.
also, your website looks fine now to me, decent site as well!
Security issues are unfortunately common. just make sure wordpress is set to auto-update and follow the advice of people on here with security addons etc.
I want to expand a little bit (having finally realised that my job is to get the work and to ensure its done to my standard). Its a bit of a double edged sword though as i don't want to attract people who just want a price and have little or no intention of getting work done, or if they do they want to pay for someone who will top up their benefits while charging minimum wage. I appreciate thats the hard bit though and i have to carefully gauge which quotes i should even do.
I was always happy with the site, it was just the snags i wasn't happen with, maybe i should have stayed with the previous people as they never had a security issue in maybe 10 years.
I have checked again a minute ago and now the site redirects to all sorts of crap so I'm not sure whats happened, yesterday it just showed as not there.
jammy-git said:
A word of warning about allowing web hosting companies perform your updates. This isn't so much an issue with WP as I've never had an update crap out on me, but with Magento I've won several clients just because they let their web host do the updates (for free) and then one time it breaks the site due to some incompatibility, or some file that's been edited that shouldn't have been and they don't know what to do.
Even when you work with Magento a lot, its an arse. I shudder when I have to 
4x4Tyke said:
... and the dangers of listening to the amateurs here
https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/09/27/how-to...
Have you not seen the percentage of the internet that runs on WordPress? There is nothing wrong with it for the OPs website.https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/09/27/how-to...
Yes it can be a vulnerable platform, but taking a few basic steps and updating the the version will mitigate most.
4x4Tyke said:
Opens page.. That's hiring trends for DEVELOPERS, not web developers.Sees.. Changes in Demand chart. Please tell me how you use Apache Spark when developing websites.
Sees.. Low Supply, High Demand. Oh look MySQL and PHP in high demand.
What isn't in low supply is s
t agencies that blast out poorly made wordpress sites outsourced to one of the millions of "wordpress developers" that fumble around and botch a site together for $5 a hour. The barriers to "wordpress development" are so low, even a 10 year old could do it after a few weeks training.You should be embarrassed if you do work in tech.
Edited by cat with a hat on Sunday 25th February 21:31
m3jappa said:
Efbe said:
m3.
First off, do you want to come up high in the google searches?
to get high in google (having good SEO) can be a massive pain and often not worth your time unless you can get onto the first page for a good search term, which is getting harder and harder.
Much more important is that someone can find you in google maps... and I found you straight away. second result.
I have found most SEO experts to be completely useless and do little more than try to con the customer.
also, your website looks fine now to me, decent site as well!
Security issues are unfortunately common. just make sure wordpress is set to auto-update and follow the advice of people on here with security addons etc.
I would like to come up higher in google listings. what for exactly i don't know. I am willing to send some money on this within reason. First off, do you want to come up high in the google searches?
to get high in google (having good SEO) can be a massive pain and often not worth your time unless you can get onto the first page for a good search term, which is getting harder and harder.
Much more important is that someone can find you in google maps... and I found you straight away. second result.
I have found most SEO experts to be completely useless and do little more than try to con the customer.
also, your website looks fine now to me, decent site as well!
Security issues are unfortunately common. just make sure wordpress is set to auto-update and follow the advice of people on here with security addons etc.
I want to expand a little bit (having finally realised that my job is to get the work and to ensure its done to my standard). Its a bit of a double edged sword though as i don't want to attract people who just want a price and have little or no intention of getting work done, or if they do they want to pay for someone who will top up their benefits while charging minimum wage. I appreciate thats the hard bit though and i have to carefully gauge which quotes i should even do.
I was always happy with the site, it was just the snags i wasn't happen with, maybe i should have stayed with the previous people as they never had a security issue in maybe 10 years.
I have checked again a minute ago and now the site redirects to all sorts of crap so I'm not sure whats happened, yesterday it just showed as not there.
To make it harder it has to be first place for a phrase actually searched for that wouldn't find you anyhow.
You are currently 6th for "paving essex"
And page 5 for "driveway essex".
edit:
Oh actually no, your website is asking of if I want casual sex partners. So I think it's broken again!
Edited by Efbe on Sunday 25th February 20:57
Not read through the thread but just off some comments it will be a pretty easy fix, daresay you have an outdated version of WP or plugin which was vulnerable.
Normally see injected scripts or some core files have been modified, expect to pay £50-100 for a decent job fixing it (minimum)
You should brush up on SEO yourself and learn to wordpress, its very easy and some 'professionals' have just picked it up as they go and chagre £25 and hour for their SEO skills....
Normally see injected scripts or some core files have been modified, expect to pay £50-100 for a decent job fixing it (minimum)
You should brush up on SEO yourself and learn to wordpress, its very easy and some 'professionals' have just picked it up as they go and chagre £25 and hour for their SEO skills....
Hoofy said:
strain said:
Normally they have left a backdoor in the website somewhere and a script will run every 24 hours or so to ensure it hasnt been fixed
Oh right, so someone hasn't really sorted it out.You need the code to be cleaned up and checked for back-doors and then as soon as it's up, install and enable the likes of WordFence and/or Sucuri both of which will check the code your site is using with that of the original developers and flag up any differences.
It's also worth going through the users list on the site and checking for any users you don't recognise and also change the password for any user you log in as.
I have a single admin user on my wordpress sites with a complex username and password which I use for administration only, and all other content management is done using a user with 'editor' level privileges only. That way is also lessens the chance of a brute force attack where they try and guess username (often from the 'published by' info on posts) and password.
On top of that, install something that supports 2 factor authentication on login so you need to use a code generated on your phone, for example, to confirm your login.
I'm sure others have offered to help already, but drop me a line if it's still all going wrong, I manage a few WordPress sites and should be able to help
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