Len

3 different IP addresses have tried to access wordpress\xmlrpc.php

Welcome to WWW. 🙂 I get dozens of hack attempts a day. Just make sure to harden your install.

With respect to that plugin make sure you’re using the latest version. There was a vulnerability in an earlier version. A good place to keep an eye on plugin vulnerabilities is milw0rm.com. Type wordpress in the search engine.

I found my theme folder in a subfolder in one of my plugins folder. I noticed that my wp-includes is in my wp-admin.

Wow. 🙂 A WordPress install will contain 3 main folders ->
1. wp-content
2. wp-admin
3. wp-includes

with a series of files living outside of them.

All of your posts and comments and such are stored in the database. If you’re unsure of what you did exactly you might want to delete the WP files and re-upload fresh copies.

Make sure you don’t delete:

wp-config.php file
wp-content folder

if you’ve added any custom rules to your .htaccess file you might want to hang on to that as well – if not get rid of it as WP will generate a new one when you use fancy permalinks

If you still have the server logs available send all pertinent info to security (at) wordpress (dot) org

@qti – They weren’t gunning for you specifically. They use scripts that scan the web looking for vulnerabilities. The entire process is automated.

The software used on wordpress.com isn’t WordPress – it’s WordPress MU. (multi-user)

I’m not familiar with those plugins but if you’re simply wanting to show snippets of your post on the front page you don’t need a plugin. Use the template tag the_excerpt() instead of the_content()

Additionally, WordPress by default will limit excerpts to 55 characters when using the_excerpt(). You can change that by adding this to your theme’s functions.php file,

/* custom trim excerpt lenghts */
remove_filter('get_the_excerpt', 'wp_trim_excerpt');
add_filter('get_the_excerpt', 'custom_trim_excerpt');

function custom_trim_excerpt($text) { // Fakes an excerpt if needed
global $post;
if ( '' == $text ) {
$text = get_the_content('');
$text = apply_filters('the_content', $text);
$text = str_replace(']]>', ']]>', $text);
$text = strip_tags($text);
$excerpt_length = X;
$words = explode(' ', $text, $excerpt_length + 1);
if (count($words) > $excerpt_length) {
array_pop($words);
array_push($words, '...');
$text = implode(' ', $words);
}
}
return $text;
}

Just adjust the line $excerpt_length = X; to whatever you want.

testcricket is right. Check wp-blog-header.php at root.