ejm

Many thanks for your help.

I’m happy to say that my site is back online (so far). I’ve installed iThemes Security plugin. Fingers crossed that all these new precautions will do the trick.

Thank you for your reply.

I do realize that this is not WordPress specific. But it does seem that anything with a database is vulnerable.

To answer your first question: it is not the entire webhost; it is just my site. Various pages are being hit. I have two WPs both in separate folders, so the login page for one of the WPs is being targetted, as well as that WP’s xmlrpc.php, as well as the index page for the site and for two other folders. Various pages of the other WP are being slammed as well.

Most (as far as I can tell) of the errant ISPs are from China. But there are some from USA, Russia, Germany, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Slovenia, and the Phillipines.

I get the impression that the webhost will help BUT I need to know what I can do (if I ever get back in again) to help prevent this from happening again.

I really am most appreciative for all the help, ronangelo. But after all that you have done, I have decided to go with adding a search.php in the child folder:

<?php
/*
Template Name: Search Page
*/

get_header(); ?>

<div id="content">

<p><strong>WordPress found <?php echo $wp_query->found_posts; ?> search results for [<?php echo attribute_escape($s); ?>].</strong></p>

<ul class="search-results-list">
    <?php if ($posts) : foreach ($posts as $post) : start_wp(); ?>
        <li><h3><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a> (<?php the_date(); ?>)</h3> <?php the_excerpt(); ?></li>

    <?php endforeach; else: ?>
</ul>
    <p><?php _e('Please try again using different search term(s).'); ?></p>

 <?php get_search_form(); ?>
    <?php endif; ?>

</div>

<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
<?php get_footer(); ?>

The other function fixes have been most informative though. Thank you again.

Thank you, once again, ronangelo. This display_search_terms() is most helpful.

But I’m not sure that using “display:none” for not showing the content is the way to go here. I worry that it might flag the site as an undesirable for the big search engines. (I get the impression they aren’t too keen on “display:none” when there is content there to be seen if the styles are disabled.)

I know the following must be wrong wrong wrong. But this is as far as I can guess from staring at http://codex.wordpress.org/Class_Reference/WP_Query

<?php if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>

		<?php if ( $wp_query->found_posts == !is_singular() ) : ?>
	<ul>
<?php  if ( $the_query->have_posts() ) {
	while ( $the_query->have_posts() ) {
		$the_query->the_post();
		echo '<li>' . get_the_title() . '</li>';
	} ?>
</ul>
<?php } else {
	// no posts found
}?>

Fantastic! I’ll give that a shot. Many thanks, ronangelo!

Many many thanks, ronangelo! That works beautifully.

Excuse me for replying to myself.

Following http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/get_search_form I realized that even though I cannot manage to change the search box in the header, I CAN use the theme’s functions.php to add the search form to the sidebar of Asteroid Child. The following coding works:

function my_search_form( $form ) {
    $form = '<form role="search" method="get" id="searchform" class="searchform" action="' . home_url( '/' ) . '" >
    <div><span id="exact-phrase" title="toggle for exact phrase"><input type="checkbox" name="phrase" id="phrase" /><label for="phrase">toggle for exact phrase</label></span><br />
<label class="screen-reader-text" for="s">' . __( 'Search for:' ) . '</label>
    <input type="text" value="' . get_search_query() . '" name="s" id="s" />
    <input type="submit" id="searchsubmit" value="'. esc_attr__( 'Search' ) .'" />
    </div>
    </form>';
    return $form;
}
add_filter( 'get_search_form', 'my_search_form' );

But I would like to add a dropdown list to allow restricted searches of specific categories. I got this far but this adds two dropdown menus: one above the search form and the other inside the search form. What am I doing wrong?

function my_search_form( $form ) {

$dropdownmenu = wp_dropdown_categories(array('show_option_all' => 'all categories', 'exclude' => '3'));
// where category 3 is the administration category
    $form = '<form role="search" method="get" id="searchform" class="searchform" action="' . home_url( '/' ) . '" >
    <div><span id="exact-phrase" title="toggle for exact phrase"><input type="checkbox" name="phrase" id="phrase" /><label for="phrase">toggle&nbsp;for&nbsp;exact&nbsp;phrase</label></span>'.$dropdownmenu.'<br /><label class="screen-reader-text" for="s">' . __( 'Search for:' ) . '</label>

    <input type="text" value="' . get_search_query() . '" name="s" id="s" />

    <input type="submit" id="searchsubmit" value="'. esc_attr__( 'Search' ) .'" />
    </div>
    </form>';
    return $form;
}
add_filter( 'get_search_form', 'my_search_form' );

Many thanks for any help you can offer.