How many of us actually do a google search on their own website? I really haven’t in quite some time, but it certainly pays to do so on a regular basis.
I have to thank my brother-in-law, Keith, for making us aware that our site may have been hacked! Yes, we were freaking out! It looked OK on our end, but when I did a google search on our site, there was a line that said “this site may be hacked” message. I am fairly good with a computer but when it comes to code, that is way over my head. I clicked the links that said “what to do when you see this message” and “remove this message from your site”. It took me to Google Search Console, who showed me that some hacker had added a page to my site, one that neither of us had created. I tried looking for this page under control panel in order to delete it to no avail. Apparently it is way more involved to get rid of.
I started my troubleshooting with my hosting company, Bluehost. I can’t say enough nice things about them, and their hosting prices are very low as well. I spent time on an online chat with a technician yesterday who scanned my files, found the suspicious files, sent me a .txt file with the names of the files and where they are located. So I went through them one by one with the technician. I did not know what suspicious code looked like, but he schooled me on it. I edited each file individually, resaved the file, and finally, the final scan showed we were clean. (Sigh of Relief!). I have been paying for Jetpack personal which is a plug in for WordPress that advanced security and backup tools, but apparently this was not enough. I will be upgrading my security tools for sure.
I submitted a reconsideration request to Google after I got the final OK that everything was clean, and this morning the site is back to normal. I got an email from Google Search Console stating that the actions had been adjusted. So I logged into my account and lo and behold, all is well in Google-land!
I am sorry if any of you have been affected, and rest assured I will be on top of this!
Thanks, Nancy