Someone did quite a number on my site

[Doug]

I have no idea what happened but someone got into my investing article site and messed with it. Now there is a forbidden error when I try to go there. I went into the files and found some suspicious ones that were modified recently and deleted them. They have nothing to do with the site and they werent there before. Even though those were deleted it still doesn't work. Im stumped, and very very angry.

[Blue Cat Buxton]

Have you checked the permissions on the files / folders ??

If you can get into cpanel (sounds like you can?) check from file manager

[KLB]

If someone gained access to your site, you need to contact your web hosting company to help ensure that the server has been secured and you will need to change passwords, purge all scripting/html files from the server and replace them with your offline copies to ensure that no malicious code or back doors still exist on your site. You may even need to have the hosting company wipe the server and start over fresh.

[Chris]

I would switch hosts altogether. It isn't worth the risk that the host allowed a back door get installed.

Servers getting hacked are like herpes, once you're infected give up on finding a cure. No matter what you do you'll always have that virus in your system and it could flare up.

Your server has been tainted, time for a new one.

[KLB]

Like Chris says, the only sure cure to something like this is to start over. In simpler terms, "format C:". I hope you maintain an off line version of your website because all online code should also be purged.

[Doug]

I do have an offline version but the only problem is it is an article directory and I have no idea if I can get the articles back.

[Doug]

I re-loaded everything and it works now. I don't really want to go through the trouble of switching hosts but it would definately be better than dealing with this crap. Boy, I sure can tell what site is the bread winner. I was busy all weekend and the site went down Thursday night by the looks of it. It was down all weekend and my adsense this month is hurting because of it.

[KLB]

Having suffered from the July 27th Google update and lost AdSense revenue because I was out of the SERPs until Sept. 15th, I can really feel your pain in regards to lost AdSense revenue. All is good with my site's now, but losing a month and a half of revenue really hurt.

[Westech]

You should look into website monitoring services. They can be set up to periodically check for certain content that should always appear on your webpage and send you an SMS message if your page is down or modified.

Two such services are:

http://www.alertra.com/
http://www.siteuptime.com/

[Doug]

Thanks Westech, I'll have to look into those.

[KelliShaver]

With regards to remote monitoring, I've been using HostTracker for about 2yrs now with no complaint.