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bynightwatch

830 followers

7 years ago

My time here at WA got derailed over the summer because of some minor health problems I had. My cats didn't fare much better having ongoing health issues themselves, so it's been a sick house for the last 3 months.

I also got derailed by shiny object syndrome and I picked up a couple of other internet marketing courses and tools that use different strategies than WA for making money online.

The test site ( http://www.investingoldnow.com ) I built to work on WA principles has been a bust in terms of earning revenue. It's about investing in gold and silver. The topic appears to be a shiny object for hackers as the site is under repeated and ongoing hack attacks.

http://www.topdesignblogs.com/the-hackers-are-rele...

I use an arsenal of security plugins and tools to secure all my WP blogs but there are lots of ways a hacker can hijack a blog. Tools vs Hackers is an ongoing arms race. Two of the numerous hack attacks managed to get through, even though I was using the latest editions of all tools. It just goes to show that no WordPress blog is 100% secure.

One attack had infected a plugin with malware and once I identified which plugin it was, I was able to delete and reinstall a clean copy and get the site working correctly again.

The second successful hack was more serious. It took the site down. Multiple infections in the site plugins, in WordPress itself and, worse, in the site database.

These are the kind of attacks that illustrate how important it is to regularly back up both your database and your full site.

http://www.topdesignblogs.com/why-its-important-to...

So with that second hack, I deleted the database, all the site files and then reinstalled from a full site backup. All fixed within a few minutes and no content lost.

On top of this, my webhost, Hostnine, was bought out by another company who decided that customer support was an unnecessary drain on company finances. That zero tech support means I can't get a couple of dead sites resurrected because of cPanel issues that I can't fix from my end.

MalwareBytes flagging every cpanel login screen as infected with malware didn't help either. I had to put a lot of research into finding a new webhost to meet my needs. And I have to transfer about 60 sites to the new webhost now, including sites I built for clients. Because the cpanels are flagged as infected, the new webhost won't transfer the cpanel accounts for me. I have to move the sites manually.

I think that the gold site might be a bit too niche and I'd be better redirecting my efforts to my Internet Marketing sites instead. They have higher readerships.

Engagement is something I just don't get from my readers, whatever the topic of my blogs. Most comments on my sites come from WA members after I ask for comments. This lack of feedback from readers has always been the case for me, and I've been building sites for 20 years now.

A number of WA members are following me - thanks for that - so I should be back to answering questions and engaging with you here again.