WordPress Site Title Changed itself?

wphastings
(@wphastings)

6 years, 3 months ago

Hi Forum

Awoke this morning to find that our WP site had had its site title in settings changed ‘My CMS’.

– Pretty minimal site running Twenty Twelve just a handful of single purpose plugins
– WordPress, the theme and all the plugins were up to date.
– A Wordfence scan reported no problems found.
– Site is running PHP 7+
– A free online Sucuri check reports its ok

Happy to listen to experience from the forum.

Viewing 12 replies - 1 through 12 (of 12 total)

Kim White
(@kimwhite)

6 years, 3 months ago

Hi. It would help if we could look at the site. Is that possible?
Kim White
(@kimwhite)

6 years, 3 months ago
There could be a number of things at play. What was the original title when first installed? When did you last change it? There could be some Caching involved. Titles can be changed using some SEO plugins.
- This reply was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by Kim White.
Thread Starter wphastings
(@wphastings)

6 years, 3 months ago
Thanks for getting back Kim

Website is here

To the best of my knowledge the original title was installed and has not been changed for a long time (months or years). There are no SEO plugins installed.

It is a bit disconcerting.
- This reply was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by wphastings.
lisa
(@contentiskey)

6 years, 3 months ago

how many users do you have with administrator permissions?
any unfamiliar users added recently?
who has access to your webhosting account and database?

Thread Starter wphastings
(@wphastings)

6 years, 3 months ago

Thanks Lisa

Just me as Admin and one long standing editor, zero other users. Beyond a couple of webmasters and the sys admins – nobody else should have access to the hosting control panel.

I guess the questions are endless. I might expect this on a complex WP site with lots of potential back doors. But on such a simple site with so few users it seems odd.
Kim White
(@kimwhite)

6 years, 3 months ago
yea. questions could be endless. Basically what we are saying is this is a very abnormal thing to happen and there is nothing I can find documented that may cause this.
Hence we try to rule out the obvious and dig around to our experiences.

As the site title is stored in the database, it makes me think there might have been an update or something on your server or to your host. I’m just throwing it out there.

I would keep an eye on it, but can’t see any reason why this would happen. You could contact your host and just check if they updated databases or moved servers…

Running a “health check” couldn’t hurt… https://wordpress.org/plugins/health-check/
Check your PHP and MySQL are up to date.
- This reply was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by Kim White.
JeeDieRay
(@jeedieray)

6 years, 1 month ago

I had the same issue on two websites.
@wphastings: are you running any Motopress or Cherry Framework plugins?

motopress
(@motopress)

6 years, 1 month ago

Hi @jeedieray,
We do not think that title of WordPress website could be changed by MotoPress plugin. It would be useful to contact your hosting provider and check the logs.
Did you manage to find out what changed the title at your website?

JeeDieRay
(@jeedieray)

6 years, 1 month ago

Hello @motopress,
It was not my intention to blame anyone or anything. I just noticed the similar usage of the plugins in the hosting websites.

I will contact the hosting provider for logs.

Thread Starter wphastings
(@wphastings)

6 years, 1 month ago

I’m running neither @jeedieray.
Never got to the bottom of it.

JeeDieRay
(@jeedieray)

6 years, 1 month ago

@wphastings are you perhaps running a plugin to manage the theme?

Thread Starter wphastings
(@wphastings)

6 years, 1 month ago

No.