Your customer calls you up and asks you if your site's safe to visit. When you Google yourself, you see those five horrible words: 'This site may be hacked.' Your stomach drops. What now?
Don't Panic — But Act Fast
The first thing to do is stay calm. A hacked website feels like a crisis, and it is urgent, but panicking leads to mistakes. The most common WordPress hacks inject malicious code or redirect visitors to spam sites. They're serious, but they're fixable.
Step one: contact your hosting provider immediately. Many hosts have security teams that can help isolate the problem. If you have a maintenance agreement with a WordPress agency (like us), get in touch straight away — this is exactly what we're here for.
How Hacks Usually Happen
In our experience, the vast majority of WordPress hacks come from three sources: outdated plugins, outdated themes, and weak passwords. WordPress core is actually very secure — it's the ecosystem around it that creates vulnerabilities when not properly maintained.
Nulled (pirated) themes and plugins are another major vector. They often contain backdoors that give hackers easy access to your site. Never use nulled software — the money you save isn't worth the risk.
The Cleanup Process
Cleaning a hacked site involves several steps: identifying the malware, removing it from all affected files, checking the database for injected content, updating all software, changing all passwords, and requesting a review from Google to remove the 'hacked' warning. It's thorough work that requires experience.
We also install monitoring tools and security hardening measures to prevent reinfection. A firewall plugin like Wordfence or Sucuri, two-factor authentication, and regular automated backups are all part of our standard post-cleanup protocol.
Prevention Is Better Than Cure
The best defence against hacking is ongoing maintenance: keep everything updated, use strong unique passwords, install a security plugin, and run regular malware scans. Our support packages include all of this — daily malware scans, weekly updates, and 24/7 uptime monitoring. It's far cheaper than dealing with a hack after it happens.
