Published on August 31st, 2015 | by Sunit Nandi

What If Your WordPress Gets Hacked? – An Infographic

WordPress blogs get hacked on a regular basis these days, and you’d notice that Google search shows a lot of results of people desperately seeking help. In 2012 alone, 170,000 WordPress blogs were compromised. 41% of the hacks arise due to poor security practices of the webhosts and the blogger, 29% are due to outdated vulnerable themes, and 22% are due to outdated vulnerable plugins and the remaining 8% suffer because of a weak username-password combo.

The most common reasons for which hackers target WordPress is because it is a highly used platform. Their main motive is hijacking and getting free traffic from your blog, showing off their skills, accessing your personal files and data or simply eliminating you to get an upper hand in the competition.

A hacked blog requires not only money spent on tech support to get it back running, but lots of time wasted to understand why and how the attack took place and to restore the blog to its previous state. What is most important is that, during this period of time, a lot of visitors/readers are lost and in many cases this translates to a huge loss in both activity and revenue.

Securing your blog is the best way to prevent it from getting hacked. The best way is to take regular backups and keeping your blog, themes and plugins up to date. Avoid themes and plugins from untrusted sources, use well-established hosting companies, ensure your PC is free of viruses and spyware and use strong passwords and usernames. It is also recommended to install a security plugin.

Start Blogging Online, a definitive online guide for beginners to kickstart their blogging journey, has published this infographic which discusses this issue in detail:

Tags: hacked, infographic, WordPress

About the Author

Sunit Nandi I'm the leader of Techno FAQ. Also an engineering college student with immense interest in science and technology. Other interests include literature, coin collecting, gardening and photography. Always wish to live life like there's no tomorrow.