Good evening to you, our dearest reader,

Time flew by so fast that I couldn’t believe it was my time again to write the weekly letter. But hey, I’m glad to address you again ;)

This week in bullets:

• FUBAR x kaffie is a go!
• Fixing WordPress for a fellow business owner.
• Business nuggets.

Two weeks ago, we mentioned that FUBAR is taking place again during the Gentse Feesten in the old Fnac building.

This week we’re here to tell you that kaffie will do the launch campaign! So, if anyone is feeling the vibe to act in a launch video of a Gentse nachtclub -> one address: [email protected]

Have you ever felt the need to bang your head against the wall for no reason? Let me stop you right there since there is a better way to torture yourself.

Here goes the story:

A friend & fellow business owner called me in light distress concerning a WordPress website she maintains for one of her clients. 

The site gained a visit from malware & it went rogue, i.e. they placed inappropriate content all over the place. So much that you would think that the business no longer does yoga & massages and switched to a more lucrative side of physical relaxing - If you know what I mean 😏 -

So began my WordPress distress journey. Small disclaimer: I never worked with WordPress before.

My actual plan:

• Contact the hosting partner to place a backup from before the infection.
  • It seemed like a pretty straightforward thing to do.
• Update WordPress & WordPress plugins to mitigate the risk of application attacks.
  • Hackers like old software versions because upgrade notes often spill the beans on how to take control of the ship. So take this advice like I am your dentist telling you to floss → UPDATE YOUR SOFTWARE. (Who flosses anyways?)
• Migrate the website from unmanaged hosting to managed hosting.
  • Unmanaged hosting is cheap because... it’s unmanaged. That also means that you - yes, you - are responsible for keeping the software on the server you rent up to date. (minus some exceptions, but keeping it short right now). So, moving things to managed hosting will cost you a couple of bucks more, but you get a good night’s sleep in return. Siteground, for example, maintains WordPress hosting & keeps the software + plugins up-to-date.

My actual plan → how it went:

• Contact the original hoster (the unmanaged guys).
• Request a restore from a backup.
• Found out that the oldest backup also was infected.
• Found out that the hoster put the website down because they found malware. However, they did not check on malware when taking the previous backups :’(
• Eventually removed the malicious files on the server.
• Bring the website back to life.
• Started the migration to the managed hosting partner.
• Found out server limitations were preventing the migration.
• Fixing server limitations (max upload & file size were spread all over the place)
• Ran the “easy-to-use” migration tool from WordPress for the first time.
• Check the error log on what went wrong & fixed it.
• Ran the “easy-to-use” migration tool from WordPress for the second time.
• Check the error log on what went wrong & fixed it.
• Checked what went wrong with the support of the new hosting partner (managed hosting)
• Gave them access to the unmanaged hosting.
• Gained an IP ban for trying to get access to a server with the credentials the hoster provided me.
• Contacted support once again. 25-minute phone call in which I spoke to a human +- 1 minute and 30 seconds.
• If you read all this, I’m buying you a beer when visiting Fistong.
• Currently, I’m in the final stretch of migrating the website. Crossing fingers that we land this piggy back on its feet.

⬇️ This is my mantra for this weekend ⬇️

• Gravifill configurator, photo/video session & mail strategy are coming to life 🚀
• Fistong opening doors in 1 week 🍻
• New interesting prospects in home interior coming our way 🎉