Whenever there’s trouble, we’re there on the double!
Recently a client of ours, who hosts their website through Go Daddy, was cyber attacked. Luckily, this client has a monthly service package with us, so we caught it right away. Unluckily, the site was compromised anyway, because they chose to host their website through GoDaddy (against our recommendation). Even with our team keeping tabs on the site monthly, the site was compromised. From the outside, the site looked great and would have continued looking great, but on the inside, it was slowly being taken over page by page. Had it not been for our diligent monthly checks, the hackers would have gone on for MONTHS before anyone would have noticed, and the site would have been entirely taken over.
Two things can prevent this sort of total takeover:
- Host your website with a top of the line secure host like the one we recommend, WP Engine. Why WP Engine? Read This.
- Sign up for Red Technologies’ monthly security package (which happens to include hosting through WP Engine).
In all our years as a website development company using and recommending WP Engine, we have never had a website hacked while hosted through WP Engine.
The same cannot be said for GoDaddy and similar hosts. Often clients see the less expensive option, for the same service, and “give it a try”. But almost EVERY SINGLE site that has gone against our recommendation, eventually has had issues. Some are fixable, but always at a price way more then if WP Engine was simply chosen as the host to begin with.
When you are ready to take take your website live on the internet….one of the biggest questions you need to budget for is “who is your host”? This latest breach would have cost $1000s of dollars to repair, had our team not been hired to protect the site. This confirms that monthly security and secure hosting is no longer an option you can shop around for the lowest bid. You truly do get what you pay for when it comes to the hosting of your website.
The fact that scares people, is that WP Engine costs more, but the safety of your site is worth it! A hosting service like WP Engine is the insurance you need for the “worst case scenario”. Had it not been for our team, our client’s hacked site would have eventually been entirely taken over. The hacker had a very small window to get in and start destroying pages. We were able to provide a full recovery of the site due to monthly backups provided by our team, however; months of SEO work has been affected that was beyond our control. We will now be moving the site over to WP Engine, so it can NEVER happen again, but it may be weeks before we can get the site ranking again to where it was before the hack.
It’s all fun and games until it happens to you. Don’t wait until it’s too late. As we emphasized in last month’s blog: Don’t be afraid! Be proactive!
Our Red Tech security package and WP Engine hosting are great ways to prevent the worst from happening to you. Contact us today to sign up for our security package to prevent your site from being hacked!