These last few weeks brought a lot of outage to the Spirits website but we turned the corner. The site is secure and operational once again; although elements on the Home Page which remain under construction.
I worked to restore the site and avoid a rebuild it. That failed. In fact, I oversee three websites and was forced to rebuilt two of the three. Many hours were consumed in getting spiritsofstl.com up and running again.
What occurred was a global incident whereby thousands of WordPress website were infected with malware. Fancy word for software placed on the server to do something other than intended. In fact, the malware was designed to mine crypto currency, in the background. Our hosting provider noticed our consumption of server resources spiked and they suspended the account to protect their systems. The provider worked with me extensively to eradicate the malware.
At no time was personal data or credit card (CC) data compromised. In fact, financial data is never stored on our website. When you conduct a registration, renewal or make an event purchase your CC information goes direct to the CC; processor. We merely get an email notice the transaction was successful.
It appeared we had it licked but then our administrator accounts were locked out of the admin console for two of the sites. Never figured out why. After more attempts and the use of AI there was no solution to be found other than a rebuild.
Thankfully our content was safe but the “structure” of the site needed to be rebuilt from the ground up. As I said work continues to get content placed back on the Homepage.
Dan and I have some catching up to do with content so be patient. We are almost there.
~Stephen
P.S. I am still looking for another computer / web savvy individual to assist me. Experience with WordPress is helpful but not required. I self-taught WordPress so you can learn it as well.