Recovering from the Hack

Getting hacked was one of the most traumatic things that has happened to me since I first launched a website in the 1990s. My traffic was completely pulverized dropping 60% year on year when I had been growing at a nice 20-30% rate, I have lost a tonne of repeat visitors who have lost trust with the site, my search rankings seem to have been adversely affected which really sucks and all of my social media marketing is shot. The bottom line is now that I am over the hack and clean and all the major places that were blocking me have opened up again my traffic is down 20% year on year and roughly 1/3 from where I would have expected it to be.

 

Rebuilding is going to be tough but I am planning to do some of the things I have been holding off of for a long time:

 

   
1. redesign the site – I am stuck in 2004 with design and need to fix
   
2. move the videos back to youtube – revver isn’t worth it for the money any more and youtube generates traffic when used right
   
3. work out a way for users to contribute more easily – cocktailmaking.co.uk has benefited tremendously from users contributing paper airplanes could do so too.

 

Wish me luck in this new endeavor, as always I will try and post progress on the project to this  blog and would be keen to get your advice on how to proceed.

Comments

[beth iflorist.co.uk]

I can understand getting hacked traumatic things but how can we stop our website being hacked?

[Simon - iflorist.co.uk]

This has happened to one of the sites I have developed before being hacked, traffic went from 300 a day to 40 a day after the hack was fixed, was devastated.

[Will - ArenaFlowers.com]

So how did they hack the site? Or can't you say?

[Keith]

Outsource, outsource, outsource...