Once my blog was clean, I dug into it further, to check the source of the attack, and what scripts had been run on my blog. I shared details on the WordPress support forum.<\/p>\n
Inspired, I decided to help other people like me. I created a guide explaining the process for removing the malware on my blog. Then I went back to WordPress support forum to help people.<\/p>\n
As it happened, that guide ended up ranking number three on Google for some crucial keywords, right after the WordPress support forum threads. It brought a lot of new people to my blog. That guide is still a good source of traffic for me, and varies between third and eighth rank on Google.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I just checked the recent stats on one of my other blogs, and it turns out the article that's pulling in the second highest amount of traffic is one I wrote back in 2004 explaining how to set up SPF records for your email server<\/a>.<\/p>\n
It's over 7 years old, and it's still a top traffic producer! Similar posts I've written over the years aren't at the top of the charts today, but have pulled in a lot of traffic in their times.<\/p>\n
The lessons I shared there weren't from an experience as difficult as Sanjeev's. But they were the product of a lot of work to understand the SPF system. And I'm sure that article has saved a lot of people a lot of the pain of deciphering the SPF specs.<\/p>\n
The lesson: once you've completed the hard<\/b> work of figuring out how to solve a complex problem, don't neglect to do the relatively easy<\/b> work of sharing what you've learned on your blog. If you can provide a clear explanation -- even if it only covers specific use-cases -- you'll provide a lot of value to others who are in the same situation as you.<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n
You can reap benefits from that little extra effort for many years to come.<\/p>\n
Plus, if you've learned the lesson by \"hard\" experience, talking about it can be great therapy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Learning lessons in the school of hard knocks hurts. But there's something you can do to ease the pain and maximize the benefit you get from it: share your experience. Over at ProBlogger, Sanjeev wrote about a time when his blog got hacked: Once my blog was clean, I dug into it further, to check...
[read more<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whitehatcrew.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whitehatcrew.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whitehatcrew.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whitehatcrew.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whitehatcrew.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/whitehatcrew.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1597\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whitehatcrew.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whitehatcrew.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whitehatcrew.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}