I learned the hard way. When I first installed
Wordpress on my blog, I left “Admin” as my username.
I didn’t realize at the time that hackers love to
find blogs with admin as the username until…
One day, I realized that my video looked funny.
It was smaller and there was a link right beside it.
The hacker put links in everyone of my blogs to go
to a site that I think was for pharmaceuticals. I didn’t
click on it.
Anyway, I had a plug-in that I was using to back up
my website. I tried for hours to get it to work. I
realize now I should had tried that before something
was wrong with my website.
I spent hours going through all my blogs and deleting
the link. I only have 67 blogs, so just think if I had 1000′s.
I use Global NPN hosting, now. I back up my website in Cpanel.
I am a director in Global NPN, so I can host unlimited sites. It is my primary
business. So actually, I get free hosting…it is a WIN WIN situation.
I also changed my password. I used a lot more characters
and numbers than I did before. I have not found a way to
change my username, yet. I am going to do a test blog to try
a couple of things.
I hope that you take away two things from this blog. Make
sure your back up software for your website works and do
not use “Admin” as a username when setting up your
Wordpress blog.
I hope this prevents you from making the same mistakes.
Leave me a comment and let me know if this helps or feel
free to share some of your experiences.
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks, Jaden! This is good information to know! I am having a tough enough time working with Wordpress, so I don’t need any additional angst!
God bless,
TK Goforth
Hi Jaden,
This is really good information. I appreciate you sharing this with us. I too didn’t realize that hackers would want to get into blogs! I will certainly look into changing the admin extension and I need to take a second look at my password security. Thanks Jaden!
Thank you,
This is something people forget. Having a strong password and changing their name for other then admin.
I hate hackers too. Me I use b2evolution for my blog. And I really like it. The spam software include is awsome.
Continue to bring some good topics like this one.
I checked with my Wordpress Security expert Regina Smola, her website is http://WPSecurityLock.com
She indicated yes there is a way to change your user name from admin…
Yes you can do it via your database…
I’ll write up something in my next product, but wanted to give you this link for now.
http://www.lancelhoff.com/how-to-change-the-wordpress-admin-username/
Jaden,
My IT guy says you should change your passwords every six months. Using numbers and special characters insures greater security. Thanks for the good reminder to be safe rather than sorry.
Great post.
Yes if you find a way to change the user name from admin please share.
I must admit I have not backed up my Blog.
Great advice.
Thanks for sharing!
Jaden,
I have not been hit by hackers, but I did have issues with VERY SLOW load times. I went in and clear cache. Any ideas, I’m open!
Thanks
Well, Jaden, I believe you have just answered a question that’s been haunting me for some time now… and that is, how on earth do I keep getting “new users” registered on my blog. I keep changing the password, and it’s certainly long enough and complex enough. But I do have admin as my username. If you ever figure out a way to change that, I would LOVE to know!
Thanks for the very helpful post.
Willena Flewelling
Hi Jaden
That’s great info. Its really important to follow your advise, it’s a pity that there are such people out there, with nothing better to do all day. I guess they should try managing 67 blogs! then they wont have any spare time for such rubbish!
Cheers
Sandra
Sometimes there’s alot of work that goes into someone’s blog site. Like you said some have hundreds of blogs. This little bit of info could save lots of time fixing changes that “were unexpected.” I sure had no idea that anyone would even care about hacking a blog.
Thanks for the heads-up Jaden. You always have been a team player.
Namaste,
Christi
I am a newbie at this and I didn’t know not to use “admin” as a username.
Thanks for sharing. Ido not want to get hacked.
Brenda
Hi Jaden,
Oh my gosh! I didn’t even realize anyone would want to hack into a blog. I guess that shows my lack of knowledge. Thanks for opening my eyes.
Hi Jaden,
Very important lessons learned. I’m glad you shared this experience with us, so that other won’t have to go through the same problems.
btw- One other cool thing about GVO is that the technical customer service department can do a site restore to a previous version for you, because they back of every site on a fairly regular basis on auto-pilot.
Take Care,
David H. Paul
the Follow Your Bliss guy
Jaden,
Good points to remember about protecting your wordpress blog. Nothing worse than losing everything cause of hackers!
Val
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