GoDaddy WordPress Sites Getting Hacked

WordPress Sites on GoDaddy Being HackedIf you have a WordPress site on GoDaddy, keep a close eye on it. This week alone two different people have come to me with site issues that have turned out to be the same exact hack. There seems to be a spate of them going on – see this thread in the WordPress forums that I came across – this is the same hack that I found. Fortunately in the cases I’ve seen it hasn’t caused a ton of damage – more a nuisance than anything, but it indicates vulnerabilities in your site. GoDaddy of course will provide you with no help at all – they won’t even check if it’s a hack, they will just assume it’s some WordPress issue and not even give you a place to start trying to fix it. I’m not a security expert so I’m not sure if the timthumb vulnerability was the way in, but in both cases that vulnerability was present. In both cases I found code added to the functions.php file as well as a few other dodgy files showing up. 

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Why Premium WordPress Web Hosting Is Worth It

WP Engine - Premium WordPress Web Hosting

In the past few years a new breed of web hosts has emerged that focus specifically on hosting WordPress web sites. Some of the key players are WP Engine, FlyWheel, Pressable, Kinsta and Page.ly. These web hosts tend to be a little more expensive that the typical shared web hosting plans you can get through companies like Bluehost, Hostgator, Siteground etc. Whereas a Bluehost plan will cost you around $6/month, premium WordPress hosting starts around $25/month. If you’re used to shared webhosting and nothing has ever gone wrong for you, the price of a premium host  seems a little steep, and indeed I was a little skeptical in the beginning too. I had never experienced firsthand any major problems with my current webhosts – no hacked sites or any outrageous downtime. So I really didn’t have much motivation to move to a premium host. But after I had the opportunity to try WP Engine’s service I quickly became a convert for many reasons, including the fact that my site ran significantly faster and the support was excellent. So these days, for my business clients, I always recommend a premium WordPress host and my host of choice is WP Engine.

Full disclosure – I am an affiliate of WP Engine and if you click the links in this post and  sign up with them, that will result in me receiving a little extra cupcake money. If you want top notch hosting but are philosophically opposed to me eating more cupcakes you can certainly sign up without using my link and get the same exact price and service.

The reason I am an affiliate is because I use WP Engine every day (this site runs on WP Engine), as do several of my clients, and I love it. I recommend it to all my clients running an actual business on WordPress. As with any decision you make for your business, do your research to pick the right solution for your situation.

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