Title page installed in my WordPress blog by a hacker

It’s every webmaster’s or blogger’s nightmare to visit your website to find it has been hacked. A few of my own WordPress blogs were recently hacked. Including this one. On a recent visit after a short absense I immediately discovered the home page was changed along with my username and password used to login the admin panel.

I was shocked when I first visited this very website. Instead of the usual homepage displaying recent posts and the usual stuff, I instead was faced with a black page with red and yellow Arabic writing according to Google Translate.

However there is no need to worry. There is a procedure to fix the password that I found at the Official WordPress Support Forums.

As I have access to the webhosting account for my hacked domains, after some research and investigation, I found it very simple to get my website back to normal.

In this instance the hacker had only changed a few specific things in my WordPress accounts. The items changed were the index.php file to display the Hacker’s message, my username, password and email address. So here is what I had to do.

1. In my hosting account I eneterd Cpanel to access the MySQL database for the WordPress blog via the phpMyAdmin utility.
2. Select the WordPress database username.
3. Select the “users” table from the list of tables. I could see my details had been changed for my user record.
4. Press the Edit icon (pencil) of the user record that has to be ammended.
5. I had to change my user_login, user_pass, user_nicename, user_email, and display_name. NB. When changing the user_pass make sure you select MD5 in the Function drop down list.
6. Press Go to save the ammended table, and exit phpMyAdmin. The user_pass will be encrypted and show as a bunch of Alphanumeric characters and symbols.
7. Test the Username and Password by logging into the WordPress user inetrface.
8. The only other file that was changed was the index.php file for the Theme I was using. So in the WordPress dashboard go to Appearance, Editor. Select index.php – I could see how the hacker had replaced the Theme’s Index Page with their own. Delete the code from the hacker, and copy and paste the correct index.php code for the Theme. Download the Theme again if you don’t have a copy of the original Theme on your hard drive.
9. Then I checked my website and all was back to normal again.

I was lucky that only one file for the Theme had been changed. It is worth the effort to make sure no other files have been changed. One way to do this is to compare the exact file size of your installed Theme against the copy on your hard drive. The easiest way to do this would be with a FTP program like WS_FTP. Then just compare files between your Local computer and the Remote site all on the one screen.

And that’s all there is to it.

If there is anything else to add or be aware of when your WordPress blog is hacked please leave a comment below.

Google is indexing new content in seconds

A couple of days ago I was adding some new posts to a brand new fashion blog, when I got the shock of my life. I noticed when I put the domain of my new post into Google Search it was getting indexed very very quickly. As I had quite a few new blog posts to add to this new site I kept checking how quickly Google was indexing my new posts. So as soon as I published a new post I went straight to Google to see if it was there. every time I checked the new post was indexed. In fact found that within 10 seconds or less my post was being indexed.

The method I use for checking whether my post was being indexed was entering into Google search, site: mydomain.com.

The next thing I wanted to test was whether these new posts were getting ranked. So it seems it is very easy to get webpages indexed into Google, however it may be another thing to get them ranked. So what I did was take the headline of my new blog post and into that into Google search. To my surprise each post would be ranked against my competition for that headline. Keep in mind my headlines were 5 to 8 words long and would be considered long tail keywords. Nonetheless they were being indexed anywhere from position four two page 10.

Now you may be thinking that my fashion blog may have already had Google Page Rank and lots of back links. Well this may surprise you. I registered that domain just over a year ago, installed WordPress, and just forgot about it. So for 12 months it sat on my hosting account with the standard WordPress post and comment and that’s it. Somehow Google had managed to find it and only the homepage was indexed. It had zero back links when I checked in Yahoo.

So it is truly amazing that a brand new WordPress blog can be indexed and ranked within seconds. This is happening at a time when this week Google have announced that they are providing instantaneous search results. They are saying that as soon as you type new content it will appear in their search index.

A new experiencing the same results? Please let me know by posting a comment below.

Content writing for clients has its risks.

I just read an interesting post at CharfishDesign’s blog on Ways you can recognise the client from hell. It covered some warning phrases that any freelancer should be aware of when they hear it coming from a client.

These warning phrases include ones like “I don’t care”, “It’s up to you”, “You can do anything you want”, and a here’s beauty, “We need to make a few changes”.

I used to do wedding videos, run a home services franchise and be a sales consultant for several residential project building companies. So over a period of 15 years I got to deal with hundreds and hundreds of clients. Thank God most clients are kind and good natured. However when dealing with the general public you do get to deal with the good, the bad, and the ugly. Unfortunately it’s the last two types that we generally tend to remember the most.

It can sometimes be difficult to determine which clients will be good and which ones will be bad when we first meet them. Over time we do learn to read the warning signs. But there are a few things we can do to prevent a difficult situation arising if we decide to take someone on as a client.

Get paid UPFRONT. No payment plans, no deposits unless they are to secure your services before the job, or if the job is going to be over $1,000 or $2,000. If the client or business cannot afford $1000 or so up front, they are not worth the risk.  Payment plans are for large corporations or government utilities that have the resources to employee lawyers and debt collectors. Or for businesses selling retail services or products using your credit card for regular payments. However as a small to medium-sized business freelance work should always be paid upfront.

But at least get paid in FULL before you start the work. No exceptions. If you are good at what you do you should be able to provide adequate examples, demos and testimonials of your work. If that is not good enough for your prospective client let them walk. The good and SERIOUS ones will come back. Don’t be so desperate to get a client as that shows (even subliminally) and it lowers your bargaining power.

If you are a web designer and/or content writer and are sick of dealing with bad clients. There is a way to still make money. Just setup great WordPress minisites with unique content (10-20 pages is enough) on a particular niche. Then sell them at the internet marketing forums like DigitalPoint or WarriorForum. Those Internet marketers are easy buyers and love to buy new sites. If you also provide a good product and service, they will be pestering you for more sites to purchase. This might provide you with another income stream.

Rating in a product review

Product review sites have been popular on the web for many years. If you do a search for product reviews at Google it will return 378 million results. That’s a lot of product reviews online. If you put that same search term in quotations for an exact phrase search you still get 62.5 million results. And that’s just at Google.

People that want to buy a particular product maybe a bit suspicious about manufacturer claims. They are wary of sales hype. Rather they would like to read some real reviews from others that have either tested the product who use it for themselves. They want to know if the product is any good. Is it reliable, does it do what the manufacturer or retail store claims. Is the product good value for money.

That’s where a good product review comes into play. The reviewer gives their assessment on whether the product is good, just OK or bad in their eyes. It helps the reader to decide whether they want to go ahead and buy that product, or look for an alternative model or brand.

I personally use product reviews a lot myself when buying products. Especially expensive products or ones that will take up a fair bit of my time. Reading the opinions of others helps in making that decision. But if I feel those opinions are a bit biased or based on poor information, then I like to read more scientific based product tests. Like those that are done by the Australian Consumers Association at their Choice website.

As I use these type of reviews a lot myself it gave me the idea to also setup websites to review specific products. Things that I have a high degree of interest and passion. Like electronics gadgets such as GPS units, mobile phones, cameras and camcorders.

So the current project I’m working on are product review sites. I’ve just registered a keyword focussed domain at GoDaddy and created a new account on my dedicated server. Installed WordPress, installed a theme and about 20 plugins.

I won’t mention the domain name yet as I still have to upload content. So I don’t want it crawled by the search engines until the basic are ready. You know the usual mandatory pages like contact, privacy policy, disclosure and so forth. And a few pages to help visitor understand how products in that category work, what to look for when buying one, and other useful information. Then the product reviews will start.

I can’t wait to share this with you. So I’ll keep you posted on its development. Stay tuned for more.