WordPress is a popular platform for blogs and other websites. That’s because it’s so easy to use. People have flocked to this quick way to build and maintain a site, but this popularity has it’s dark side, too. So many people, all using the same online software, form a big target for hackers. When they find a vulnerability in WordPress, they have a million websites where they can exploit that vulnerability. So WordPress site owners need to be especially vigilant to avoid having their site taken over by hackers. Even sites owned by governments, sites that we might rightly consider... [...]

Hacked sites go downhill fast. Google doesn’t trust them (and rightly so) and removes them from the search results. It can take months or years to rebuild trust. You even can get into legal trouble with the Consumer Protection Agencies if the hacker starts stealing people’s credit card information. It can cost you hundreds or thousands of dollars in lost sales, not to mention time wasted and frustration when you get hacked. Isn’t it worth a small investment to make sure that doesn’t happen? Matt Garrett’s site was hacked. He tells about this terrible event in his business life here: How... [...]

We have warned you in the past about the risks of hacking for a WordPress site. The fact that there are millions of sites using WordPress, all of them configured by default the same way, means that when a crook finds his way into one site, he can find his way into almost all. If you want yours to be one of the exceptions, you may need ;Blog Defender 2015, the latest version of Matt Garrett’s protective shield for WordPress, first released in 2012. Garrett reports that since the first release, none of the 2500+ sites it protects has been hacked. That’s a significant improvement, from 75% hacked... [...]