Get thee behind me, hackers!

ooobop party dress in Power Rangers pose
Don’t mess with the real Power Rangers!

I’m back, I’m back!!

So sorry to everyone who’s tried to reach me over the last month or so. Ooobop was subject to a nasty hack and took me completely off line. I kept telling myself that worse things happen at sea and that maybe it was a sign to take me away from the screen for a while but actually I was devastated! And guilt-ridden. For weeks my screen displayed a message of danger in black and red. The possibility of users inadvertently and unknowingly downloading malware was too much to bear. My host suspended my blog to prevent such things happening but I didn’t have a clue how one fixed such things. Until a wonderful star of a work colleague stepped in to the rescue.

And now it’s fixed. And safe. And all is happy again at house of Ooobop!

But I’m not holding breath and will never be so complacent again. It happens. To everyone. What is wrong with people who seek to sabotage and destroy? A life unfulfilled I can only imagine.

So remember to back up your work people. And if possible install a plugin to scan for hacked files and to monitor the access of visitors to your site. Changing your login passwords occasionally is a good measure too. I’m not going to pretend to know everything one can do to protect a blog but it does pay to know someone who does. Or pay someone. Especially if like me your blog is a big part of your life.

Transpires there are so many published posts on how to protect your blog from hackers. But I found the following to be in the kind of language I understand! I’m way too easily bamboozled by tecchie lingo.

A guest post on Be A Better Blogger by Cassie Philips of Secure Thoughts,  http://beabetterblogger.com/protect-your-blog/

And ProBlogger has a whole heap of articles and advice from guest bloggers on it site here: http://www.problogger.net/?s=how+to+stop+hackers. Incidentally Darren Rose makes for great listening on the ProBlogger podcast too.

So if you haven’t done already, please take a mo to protect your work. And best not to close the stable door after the horse has bolted, like I did!

And if you have any similar experiences or tips to share, please leave a comment so we can all be safer going forward.

I can’t wait to share some special makes with you soon. Including my 50th party dress, a teaser of which features in the mad photo above and which has had some coverage on Instagram but needs to be properly documented on here, insides and out!

In the meantime, wishing you all peace, love and hope throughout this festive period and always.

Love Janene x

2 Replies to “Get thee behind me, hackers!”

  1. I wonder whats in it for them? hacking a sewing blog? its not exactly rock and roll why do it? So sorry to hear of this. and looking forward to your dress pics. I’ve seen pictures on IG and it looked amazing, glad you had such a great time. xxx

  2. Ouch! Glad to see you’re back!
    I use the following plugins for WordPress:
    UpdraftPlus does automatically create a backup and saves it on a remote storage (dropbox, google drive… there are several options to choose from, even if you use the free version) or sends it by email. You can choose how often. If you use the remote storage, you can also choose how many backups to keep so that it won’t use all of the available space.
    iThemes Security offers several security tools. You don’t need to activate them all, some are specific (if you have multiple users for instance) so you don’t have to activate them all. It takes some time to go through everything but once it is set up you don’t need to worry about it anymore. It also create backups so in theory you don’t need to have both, but I had already installed updraftplus so I keep them both. It will email you once a day with a report, which most days will say that it has blocked someone, but if you do not have multiple users you don’t really need to worry about it.
    Also, keep your wordpress, theme and plugins updated. Hope this helps!

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