WordPress Alert!
There’s a worm circulating that can totally infect your WordPress blog, unless you upgrade it to its current version (2.8.4). This is pretty easy to do manually. I listed all of the steps here: http://ovblogger.com/473/upgrading-wordpress/ that will guide you through.
It’s important to have a backup, just in case something goes wrong, and that’s easy with the WP-Database Backup plugin. Since this blog was hacked a couple of years ago, I’ve had a backup sent to me via email every week. Thank heaven, I’ve not had to use the backups, but you just never know. Believe me, it really sucks when everything you’ve posted for a couple of years is wiped out. And you know that I post a lot.
But if you installed your WordPress blog via Fantastico, it’s even simpler to upgrade. Just go into cPanel, and check to see if you can get the upgraded version. Then, it’s a matter of just clicking a button to have Fantastico do the upgrade.
The only problem there is that it often takes Fantastico a while to get the newer versions installed. That’s why it’s good to learn manual upgrading because then, you’re not hanging out to dry while Fantastico does it stuff. Manual installation and upgrade isn’t at all as hard as you think. WordPress has some excellent tutorials on the process, too.
The worm in question wipes out archives, which is bad in terms of your search engine standing. When Google sees too many pages of any site not working, they tend to remove it from their index, which can cost you lots of traffic. Don’t let hackers do to you what they did to me. Get yourself upgraded, and always, always be sure to back things up.
