Was my website hacked?

  • reachabilityassociation

    (@reachabilityassociation)


    11 years, 3 months ago

    Hello,

    Earlier today I was looking for a slider plug-in and found Tiny Slider (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tinyslider).

    I followed the instructions to install and activated the plugin. It also instructed me to place the following code in “theme”: <?php tinyslider(); ?>. I’m new to WordPress, so I assumed that meant to put the code in index.php. I placed the one line within the header css coding.

    I saved, and then when I went to view my website, I just get a white page. My website has many pages, and none work. We have the WordPress linked to a url hosted by a another server, and there is nothing wrong on their end, according to them. They can see that it went down at 3 p.m., just after I installed the plug-in.

    Is it possible I put the code in the wrong place and that is why the website is not there? Or have I been hacked?

    I’m worried.

    Any help would be much appreciated.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • leejosepho

    (@leejosepho)

    11 years, 3 months ago

    To display tinyslider, using function: <?php tinyslider(); ?> in theme.

    Those instructions are not clear to me, but that might mean adding a function to functions.php inside a Child Theme. If you do not have a Child Theme, you need one, and I would guess you can fix your present trouble by restoring whatever file you had altered.

    Thread Starter reachabilityassociation

    (@reachabilityassociation)

    11 years, 3 months ago

    Thank you so much.

    The plug-in page instructed to upload Tiny Slider to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory. So that’s what I did first. Then I added the one line of code to index.php.

    Do plug-ins have the potential to hack?

    It seems odd that my entire website is “gone” from just one line of code…

    wp_sam

    (@wp_sam)

    11 years, 3 months ago

    try deactivating the tiny slider plugin and see if the site works.

    leejosepho

    (@leejosepho)

    11 years, 3 months ago

    The plug-in page instructed to upload Tiny Slider to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory. So that’s what I did first.

    That is fine, and I am new at all of this, but I think that is a holdover from manual days. Other than two small plugins I made myself, I install them right at the Dashboard by simply clicking “Install” after searching and finding them right there.

    WPyogi

    (@wpyogi)

    11 years, 3 months ago

    No the plugin would not cause a hack, but it could make your site crash. If you don’t have access via the dashboard, try via FTP to delete that plugin from the plugin folder:

    http://codex.wordpress.org/FAQ_Troubleshooting#How_to_deactivate_all_plugins_when_not_able_to_access_the_administrative_menus.3F

    The Hack Repair Guy

    (@tvcnet)

    11 years, 3 months ago

    Interestingly there is quite a bit of discussion on this in Google, mostly related to Godaddy, going as far back as 3 years.
    Example:
    http://wordpress.org/support/topic/unexpected-t_variable?replies=30

    Personally I have a suspicion it’s simply some bad coding in your theme which is contributing to this error.

    Plugins may also be responsible, though without actually disabling one a day it would be otherwise impossible to say which one is specific culprit.

    Short answer:
    Hacking: unlikely
    Coding error (somewhere): most likely

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • The topic ‘Was my website hacked?’ is closed to new replies.