Upgrade WordPress to avoid being bitch-slapped
29 May 2008
I’ve just noticed that a friend’s blog is running a very old version (2.1) of the popular self-hosted WordPress blogging software and his site has regrettably but understandably been hacked.
If you have a non-current version of WordPress installed the first thing you should do right now, regardless if you think your blog has been hacked, is to upgrade to the latest version of WordPress and make sure your themes are clean of any malicious content/links.
If you don’t, your site will be at risk of being blocked by network and ISP filters because of offensive content as well as more importantly it will get your blog banned/dropped by search engines. Technorati and Google do not show any sympathy towards a site that is compromised.
While it is definitely a boring 15 minutes waiting for your FTP program to upload the files and some more time is lost testing as well as possibly tweaking plugins/themes to ensure they work with the new version it is much less stressful than having your your site hacked.
The latest stable release of WordPress is version 2.5.1 and can be downloaded for free at http://wordpress.org/download/
1 comment… read it below or add one
Better still, install the Instant Upgrade plug-in for WordPress. It’ll take care of upgrading for you (though it’ll ask you first.) Use it with the Wordpress Database Backup plug-in so that if something goes wrong, you can restore a backup you make immediately prior to the upgrade (mind you, touch wood, but Instant Upgrade has been flawless for me so far.)
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