Uncover the Hidden Secrets to Fully Restore Your Hacked Website—Step-by-Step Recovery Exposed!
To be completely on the safe side, rescan your live site files and database tables for remaining threats. Use a malware scanner both from inside WordPress and outside.
12. Deal with the aftermath
Once the immediate problem is resolved, you need to deal with its fallout:
- Communicate with your customers: If the hack affected your users through downtime, strange behavior, or a potential data breach, be transparent. Let them know what happened, what you’ve done to fix it, and what steps you’re taking to prevent the problem from occurring again.
- Submit requests to remove your website from Google’s blocklist: If Google Search Console flagged your site as dangerous, request a review via Security & Manual Actions → Security issues after the cleanup is complete. This helps restore search visibility and remove browser warnings. Do the same for other blocklists you may have appeared on.
- Restore any lost content from backups: If pages, images, or posts were damaged or deleted, recover them using your most recent clean backup. Double-check everything before re-publishing to ensure you don’t reintroduce malicious code.
- Analyze the hack: Document what happened, how your site was compromised, what actions you took, and what you plan to do going forward to strengthen future security.
- Keep monitoring: Set up ongoing monitoring tools, such as an activity log to track user logins, site changes, and system events. Monitor changes to files, regularly scan your site for malware, and keep an eye out for any of the signs of a website hack we discussed earlier.
Prevent website hacks before you have to fix them
The final step is to make sure you never have to be in this situation again. First, follow security best practices:
