Stuff You Don't Learn in Seminary Part 4
Ministry, Malware, and the $50 Fix
10 years ago when I started at Greenwood Baptist Church my title was “Small Groups Pastor” and I was told there would be some other computer stuff too. I’m a tech enthusiast so I thought - ah no problem. But I knew nothing about dealing with a hacked website…
Church Website Hack
Back when I ran the church website, I thought I knew what I was doing because I’d run a blog back in the 2000s, and 2010s. We had a Wordpress site because I was comfortable with how it worked. I spent a lot of time on it and it was a decent website. And then it was hacked…
I could login, but I had lost access to the root folder. As it turned out a hacker from China or Russia or somewhere had gained access and changed some folder permissions. Parts of the website would kinda work, but I couldn’t change anything to fix it. I could login to the web hosting provider, but not the website itself. I changed the passwords on the web hosting provider so that I was more comfortable that I would not lose access there.
I had no idea what to do. I googled until I heard about a website called Fiverr for freelance projects including web design. I searched through the advertised projects and found someone who said they could handle viruses on Wordpress sites. So, I ended up paying a guy from Asia on Fiverr to regain access to the site. I think I paid him like $50 and within a day he had it fixed.
I’m just glad he didn’t put some kind of virus on the site… Or maybe he did… I can’t believe I paid a stranger to hack into my website and trusted them to give me back the access to it. Anyway we use a specialized site provider now so that stuff doesn’t happen. Lesson learned, website security is a BIG DEAL.
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