Hi. This is my third report about the 30 Hubs Every Quarter project. If you want to know how this project came about, read this post. I am so disappointed with myself because I am not making much progress with this project.
January to March 2017 is the second quarter that I'm taking on this project. But so far, I have only published one article on HubPages. I really should be writing more. Because when I publish a new article, it causes a spike in my hubs traffic and increases my advertising revenue. Well, there is still time - 20 days to go before the quarter ends. I hope I can push myself to come up with more hubs.
Want to know the Number ONE Reason Why I was Unproductive with this project?
This blog was hacked last December. It was so frustrating because my entire blog was gone and all I can see then is a page that the hacker set up.
I tried not to panic yet. I forwarded my domain name to Blogger first. I still have my old StayAtHomeBlessings blog there. Then, I published an announcement post that my blog was hacked.
Then, I tried to reach out to my hosting provider for help. I knew that my hosting system keeps a back-up of the blog for one week. So, there was actually enough time to get the blog back up. But the problem was the very slow support system.
To cut the story short, after chatting with support and constantly following them up, they were not able to restore my blog. I just installed a new wp blog for this domain using the same hosting and was able to upload only the posts from the time I transferred my domain to Wordpress from Blogger. So, all the blog posts I was able to put in easily were from 2007 to 2012.
I tried to find all the other posts from 2013 to 2016 I had published online using archive.org. Yes, I know. I should have made a back up of all the posts on my hard drive, but I didn't. So, can you tell how much work I had to put in just to be able to restore this blog? Well, I was not able to find all the posts because some were already overwritten with the hacked page. One example is the post on this Project's Report #1. So, if you can't find it, it is because it's gone.
I thought if I could just republish all the posts, then my blog will be okay. But OH NO. There's more bad news. I got a message from Google that they placed a warning on my site because it has a malicious info/page or something. That hacker is really bad. Because of this, my blog literally got zero traffic.
I checked almost all pages in my cpanel just to try to find out what I can do. Obviously, since I'm not a techie, I was not able to do anything. All I can do is nag the support. But I did find out that the hacker put his email inside my hosting account detail, so if there are updates on my hosting account like the new wp installation, he will know about it. So, the hacker did not just hack my Wordpress blog but my hosting itself.
What made me angrier is the comment made by the hacker himself. He left a comment on the announcement post that my blog was hacked and offered to help fix the problem. I knew it was him because the email he used is the same email he put in my hosting account. Ang kapal ng mukha niya.
What's the Solution to All This?
I really don't know if I did the right thing. But because I'm pissed off with my hosting provider, I just decided to cancel the hosting and moved back my blog to the Blogger platform. At least for now. After doing so, I contacted Google and, thank God, they lifted the warning.
It's been more than two months since the hack. Thank God, I did get back some of the traffic slowly. Still working on it. So, what did I learn from all these things? Let me tell you in five words...
Back-up
Security
Keep going
Ok. I'm sorry that this post was filled with bad news of my experiences. I just wanted to vent off what is in my mind and move on.
I hope I can write more hubs until my next report on this project. Keeping my fingers crossed. Thanks for reading.
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