Yes, WordPress might be one of the best and most popular content management systems (CMS), especially among bloggers. It is very easy to use, and even people who have never built a website can do it with a WordPress theme.
WordPress sites are still not very well protected if you don’t use third-party software. You shouldn’t even try to use a page with no protection plugins, even if they are free. And if you spend money on a high-end tool, that’s even better.
Of course, there are many other signs that you are/might be affected by something strange that needs to be watched more closely.
If you care about your online project, you should care even more about keeping it safe. Why do all that hard work if it all goes away in the end?
Overnight Website Traffic Decrease
When it’s time to check your Google analytics to see how your page is doing, you should look into it more if you see something strange, like a significant drop in traffic. This could mean that someone is attacking your WordPress site.
Some hackers attack your page to send visitors to their content and ads, from which they make money.
On the other hand, if your page has content that looks suspicious, Google might start warning people about it. They would instead not go into your web space and instead go to a safe and secure site.
You Can’t Enter Your WordPress Admin Section
The funny thing is that when you try to sign in to your WordPress dashboard, you can’t, just like that. There is a strong possibility that hackers are responsible for this occurrence. Hackers sometimes change your username, email, or password for whatever reason they may have.
It can also happen that they completely delete your account. In this case, you can’t change your password, so you have to look deeper to get back into admin. Also, after you do that, check your whole WordPress site for malware, clean it up, and improve the security of your site.
An increase in absurd user accounts
In this case, two things could happen.
First, if you let people sign up for your WordPress page, you will probably get many spam registrations. And you’ll know right away which ones are spam and which are real. Don’t worry; installing a spam protector is the fastest way to fix the problem.
On the other hand, if you manually add people and suddenly notice an enormous increase in accounts that are blatant spam, you are likely under attack. Some of these “ridiculous” accounts are also admin accounts, which means you can’t delete them. If you’re not a coder, you’ll need help to get things straightened out.
Poorly loading website
Hackers are more likely to attack you as soon as you step into the online world. It’s the way it is, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Checking the performance and responsiveness of your site is one way to find out if something is wrong. If things are not going well, look into what might be wrong as soon as possible.
When your WordPress site takes a long time to load, it could be because they send many requests to your server simultaneously. And if your server isn’t big enough, this means that your page will load slowly. They use several computers and servers with fake IPs to carry out these attacks.
Pop-ups and pop-unders pushing spammy content
All this is done so your traffic will go to their (shady) offers. But they do it intelligently, so you might not notice at all, or you might only notice a long time later when they have already taken a lot of your users. Occasionally, the situation becomes quite challenging.
So, a hacker gets into your website and sets up pop-ups and pop-unders on your WordPress site so that they don’t show if you are logged in. Most of us are always signed in to our pages, but it’s good to log out now and then to see how things are going. Try asking a friend to access it, using a different browser, or going incognito.
A sudden increase in spam
Spam can be in anything: comments, emails, sign-ups for new users, and so on. Still, if you suddenly see a lot of it on your page, you might have been hit by a tracker that keeps sending out ads, viruses, or both. You definitely don’t want it on your website, especially when it comes to comments. Make sure that you can manually check and approve all WordPress comments. Still, if your spam blocker isn’t working well, you should change it or buy a paid tool that will keep your page spam-free.
Search results that are just not relevant
One thing is for sure: if you want to run a smooth and successful WordPress site, you must check it often. Hackers can mess with your website by changing the meta titles and descriptions of the pages. It is not something that site visitors can see but hidden (even yourself).
On the other hand, search engines know about the change and may rank your site and articles differently. Not only will your rankings worsen, but you’ll also see less traffic to your site and fewer leads and sales. Always be aware of what’s happening and ensure the website is safe.
