If you have already read our article on the best free wordpress security plugins you would have noticed that we gave the first spot for malcare. Malcare is great for advanced-level security, malware scanning, and cleaning. But it doesn’t offer much basic level security and prevention. For a basic level of security and prevention, Defender plugin works the best. Defender is great for entry-level security. With this plugin, you can prevent all types of security attacks that paves way for large attacks in the future. It has a dedicated tutorial section to learn more about this plugin. In this article, I have explained how you can make the utmost use of this plugin to tighten your website’s security. Features Defender comes with lots of security features that can prevent your website from most of the well-known attacks. You can Limit login attempts, Brute force attacks, Detect file changes, Enable security headers, and much more. If malcare is for advanced prevention, the defender is for basic prevention. With both these tools under your belt, your wordpress site’s security becomes undefeatable. Security Recommendations Defender recommends security measures for your site and pinpoints the exact places where there is a lack of security and possibility of vulnerability. Expand each recommendation to know more about it. This tool also suggests the preventive measure that you should take. Follow the given measures to keep your site safe. It can also detect file changes. The file changes made by the admin and other users are also shown here for security purposes. Brute Force There is a feature to limit the total number of login attempts that the admin and other users can make in a given span of time. With this feature enabled, it becomes quite easy to avoid brute force attacks, password guessing, and username enumeration attacks. You can lock out a user after a certain number of failed login attempts. Two-Factor Authentication You can enable the two-factor authentication feature for enhanced security and prevent easy password guesses and login attempts. With the 2-factor authentication feature enabled, you need to enter a code generated by an authenticator app in addition to the login username and password. Download any authenticator app on your phone. Eg: Google authenticator. Mask login area You can easily mask the admin URL to a unique name of your choice. By default, the admin URL for any wordpress site is /wp-admin. Since it is a well-known URL, it becomes an easy target for all kinds of attacks. There are many suspicious tools that can scan this URL to find vulnerable links in your wordpress website that the attacker can use to hack your website. Masking or Hiding this URL becomes a great security step. By simply hiding this URL, hackers now have no access to the admin URL and can’t target your admin panel. You can also redirect the people who are targetting your default admin URL to a 404 page or another custom webpage. A detailed report about every activity that happened along with the IP address gets recorded. Activity Log You will get a detailed activity log with all the information about the activities that happened on your site. Recent File changes, any changes in the plugin’s settings, failed login attempts and any other activity will get recorded. These activity logs include the date and time of the incident, the activity that happened along with the IP address. Security Headers Enabling security headers without a plugin is a tedious task. But Defender makes it easier. Just by enabling a switch, you can enable these security headers. X-Frame Options – With this option enabled, you can prevent other websites from embedding your webpage within an iframe element. XSS Protection – This will prevent your website’s page from loading if it detects a cross-site scripting query. X-Content Type Options – If your website allows users to upload content, then you need to be extra careful. Because by enabling users to upload content your website becomes a target for a lot of vulnerabilities. With the x-content type options header enabled, the defender will block users from uploading content, if it detects that the user is trying to upload a different file type in disguise. 404 Detection If any users repeatedly try to request pages that don’t exist on your site, Defender will block these requests and lock them out for a specific time period. Not just that, but it also blocks those IP addresses and adds them to the block list. In order to prevent your IP from being accidentally blocked out, you can add your IP address to the allowlist. You can specify your own 404 rules. You can also ban users who request certain files or folders. For eg: If a user tries to enter your website name/wp-admin URL and you have added this to your 404 rules list, then the person who searched this URL, will get blocked out. IP Blocking You can add any number of IPs to the blocklist and allowlist. You can block users based on their geo-location or the countries where they are from. This feature comes in handy when a company in a region is facing a data breach, or if there is malware spread from a certain country. You can import the IP list as a CSV file and also export the current list of blocked and allowed IP lists as a CSV file as well. User Agent Banning This is to block the user agents or bots. There is a huge number of bots that are constantly trying to access content and spam your comment section with spammy content with malicious links. Manually segregating the bots from users is difficult but for Defender, it isn’t. It can easily identify the bots and block them from accessing the content, files, and other parts of the website. Conclusion Having a Security Plugin, especially for a WordPress site is absolutely mandatory With a lot of people using wordpress, hackers are constantly trying to find exploits

Having a periodic backup of your website is a basic security measure. A Backup can help you restore the last saved version of your website in case of any malware attack or unexpected disaster. But storing a backed-up website is a tedious task. You need a robust and flexible storage system to store your backup safely. Google Drive is the best free cloud storage service that you can use to store your website backups for free. There are a lot of plugins to create a backup in wordpress. In this article, we use Updraft the most trusted and secure WordPress plugin for website backup, restoration, cloning, and migration to backup your wordpress site to Google Drive. Introduction Updraft offers the latest features, and with updraft, you can create manual backups and scheduled backups, and automatically store them to any external storage system of your choice. It can restore and clone your wordpress site. There is no limit on the number of backups you can create. Google Drive offers 15 GB of Free Storage with every Google Account that you create. You can make use of this to periodically create and store a backup of your website to Google Drive for Free How to Backup to Google Drive Let’s see how you can create a backup of your site using updraft and store it in google drive. Step 1: Click Plugins -> Add New. Install and Activate the Updraft Plus Plugin Step 2: Click on the Settings Options in Updraft. Select the Backup Schedule for your files and Database along with the retention period. The retention period is the amount of time you want this backup to stay. After this period, your backup will get deleted automatically. Step 3: You will find a lot of remote storage options where you want your website to be backed up. In our case, it is Google Drive. Click on the Google Drive Icon. Step 4: Scroll down to include the files that you want to back up. You can back up the Themes, Plugins, and Uploads and can individually exclude certain files. This option gives you complete control over the files that you need to back up. You can also add specific exclusion rules. Step 5: Additionally, you can enable the email notifications checkbox to receive an update in your email whenever a backup is saved. Step 6: Click on Save Button. You will be redirected to the authentication Screen, where you have to authenticate with your google drive account details. Step 7: Click Allow, to allow access to the Updraft plus to save your backup files. You will be redirected to the Updraft Plus website. Step 8: Click on Complete Setup. Now the Authentication is done. Step 9: Press Save Changes to save all the given details. You have successfully enabled Google Drive Backup on your Website. As soon as your website is backed up. It will get stored in the Updraft Folder in your Google Drive. And with the email notification option enabled, you can double-check the backup details. How to Create a Manual Backup You can also create a manual backup of your website. Step 1: Click on the Backup/Restore tab. Step 2: Click on the big blue, Backup Now button. Step 3: After the backup is complete, you can either restore or delete the backup or view the log files to view all the backup-related information. How to restore a backup To Restore a backup Step 1: Click on the restore button in the backup version that you want to back up. Step 2: In the restoration wizard, select all the components that you want to be restored. You can restore the plugins, themes, uploads, databases, and others. After selecting the necessary components. Click Next Step 3: Now Click Restore on the next screen. Step 4: If the restore process is successfully complete, you will get a Restore Successful Message with a green check mark. You have successfully restored your backup! Step 5: Press the Return to Updraft Plus Configuration button to get back to the wordpress dashboard. Conclusion Prevention is always better than cure. It is safe to have a backup of your site, that you can restore at times of unexpected situations. Taking a backup is essential especially if you are installing a new plugin, or theme or making any changes to the code. This will help you can get back to the working version of your site even if anything breaks or if the entire site gets hacked.

Forms and Quizzes are one of the best conversion-driving factors of a website. These elements help you get a lead. You can collect emails at the end of the quiz if the visitors need their results. There are hundreds of form creation plugins available. One among those is Forminator. This plugin offers a lot of amazing features even in the free version and is one of the best plugins to create quizzes, surveys, and polls. This article discusses about how you can make use of this Forminator Plugin to create a Quiz. Let’s get started! What is Forminator? Forminator is a wordpress plugin that is used to create contact forms, polls, quizzes, multi-step forms, and much more. Forminator offers a lot of features in its free version which is more than enough to create any kind of form. You can also customize the form to match your brands like the font, color, and padding of the form fields. The Forminator premium plan starts at just $5/month. The Pro version allows you to accept subscriptions and recurring payments, add premium form fields, E-signature, and get access to marketing components like popups, google analytics dashboard, and much more. The builder is an easy drag-drop builder. You can design your form as you want and arrange the form fields however you need. It also has certain pre-made templates for forms like Contact us, Quote, Newsletter, Registration, and log in, which comes pretty handy at times. You can create your forms from scratch as well. You get analytics about the number of people who have made submissions, their details, and much more right in your wordpress dashboard. How to Create a Quiz using Forminator Step 1: Go to Plugins -> Add new Step 2: Search for Forminator Step 3: Install and Activate the Plugin Step 4: From the Menu on the Left, Click on “Forminator“ Step 5: Click on “Create Quiz“ Step 6: A Model Opens up, give a title for your quiz and select the type of quiz. Forminator offers two different quiz types. The Knowledge Quiz and the Personality Quiz. Enter the required details and Click Continue Step 7: Now if you want the user to enter their email and other information before or after the quiz, enable the ‘collect leads’ feature. If you are not collecting any details. Disable it. Click on “Create Quiz“. Step 8: Provide an Introduction for your quiz. An intro title, image, and description. The Introduction will get displayed before the quiz starts. You can also provide the instructions and rules for your quiz here. Once you have provided all the details for the introduction, Click on “Questions” Step 9: Enter the question, an image for the question (if needed, a Quiz description, and the answer for the quiz. Click on “Add answers” to add options/choices to the question. Enable the Correct Answer Check box to mark that option as an answer. If you have entered all the details required for a question, Click on “Add question“. This question gets added to the quiz. Step 10: To add more questions, Click on the “Add question” button and repeat the above-mentioned step. Step 11: If you have added all the questions, click on the Preview button to see a preview of the quiz. If you are satisfied with the preview, Click on Appearance. Here you can change the appearance of the quiz. You can customize the color of the buttons, overall fonts, and the style and padding of the form fields. If you are done with your customizations, click on Publish. Now your quiz has been published successfully. Conclusion If you are looking for an easy and free method to create quizzes without restriction. Forminator is thebest plugin to use. And with the premium version, you get access to lot more features.

Google Adsense account suspension won’t happen overnight. It occurs because of neglected warnings, and a history of policy violations. In this article, we have covered all the details about how you can find out if your Adsense account is suspended, common reasons for account suspension, how to fix the suspensions and how to avoid it in the future. How to find out if my AdSense account is suspended? If your account is suspended, Google will notify you through email notification and also mention it in your Adsense account. You will get an email about the suspensions, various possible reasons for them, and the suspension period details. You can also check by signing into your Adsense account. Here are 3 simple steps to find out if your account is suspended: If there are no issues, then it would look like this. How to Fix the Suspension You should take all the necessary actions within the suspension period and apply for a review to reactive your AdSense account. But if the violation persists even after the suspension period, the chances of your AdSense account getting disabled permanently are high. If your site gets permanently disabled then Google will withhold your earnings in the past 60 to compensate the affected advertisers It is possible to fix the account suspension and get back your account. But this process involves several steps. 1. Find the Possible Reasons Before proceeding with the steps for account recovery, try to find the reason why your account got suspended. Finding the root cause of the issue and fixing it all together is the only effective solution to completely recover your Adsense account and also prevent it from further suspension. Check if your website has all the basic and mandatory pages like Privacy Policy, Terms, and Conditions, and Contact Us Page. If you are running an e-commerce site then having a Refunds & Returns Page, and Cancellation Policy is mandatory. If your site uses affiliate links in any form, explicitly mention the affiliate link usage on a disclosure page. The absence of any of these pages is a policy violation and can lead to account suspension as well. 2. Check for Malware Malware is one of the biggest reasons for account suspensions. The hard truth is that most of the time they are present on your site unnoticed. Unless you perform periodic scans and monitor the activity of your site, finding the existence of any malware on your site is difficult. If your site behaves so weirdly and faces random redirections to improper sites, the chances that your website is affected by malware are high. Use a Free Security Plugin like Malcare to run a full site malware scan. If your site is affected, then use the malware removal plugin or software to remove the malware. Seek expert guidance if necessary. 3. Fix payment issues If you are an ad publisher, any withstanding payment to be made can be a reason for account suspension. Unresolved payment issues are one of the common reasons for account suspension for publishers. Clear the pending payments. If there are any outstanding payments to be made, pay them as soon as possible. Check the payment method, and whether your debit or credit cards work. 4. Submit for appeal If you have rightly identified the root cause and rectified the mistakes, then google will automatically remove the suspension in a period of time. You need not ask for an appeal. If the error is rectified, your account suspension will be taken off. However, if the suspension still persists after several days of fixing the issues, you can write to google with all the details related to the account suspension. And appeal to activate your account. Double-check that your site no more violates any policies. If you are sure enough, then appeal to google by filling in the form, Give detailed steps you took to fix the issues along with proof and attachments like screenshots, reports, and before and after images. etc.., Any appeal made is manually reviewed by a member of the google team and if they feel that policies are no longer violated and your site is perfectly fine, you will get back your account. Types of Adsense Suspension Even if your google AdSense account gets suspended, you will still be able to log in to your account. However, no ads will be shown on your website, until the issues are fixed. There are three different types of AdSense suspension. Adsense can suspend your account either on the Page Level, Site Level, or Account Level. Google will also hold your payment, site reviews, and account upgrades until the suspension gets removed. Most Common Reasons for Account Suspension Policy Violations Google has put forward a list of program policies that you should follow. If your site frequently violates the policies and doesn’t take warnings into account, your site might get suspended. Some of the Common Policy Violations include: Invalid Traffic It has become a common practice of using Bots and invalid traffic sources to increase ad revenue. If Google finds that your website gets invalid traffic, then you might get suspended Some of the Invalid Traffic Sources include NOTE: Google is more stringent about invalid traffic, and if your account gets disabled due to invalid traffic, then you can no longer create any new account. Other Reasons How to Avoid such suspensions in the future? Fixed your Account Suspension and got back your account? Great! But, the chances of your account getting suspended again are not zero. It is wise to take proactive measures to avoid such suspensions in the future. Here is a list of tips that you should follow to avoid such suspensions in the future. Use a Firewall and Security plugin – It is always better to address a problem at its root cause before it is too late. Use a Security Plugin like malcare and defender to avoid malware, viruses, and other malicious programs from your computer. Watch your google AdSense

Are you tired of waiting for your site to load? The online world has become a lot faster over the past few years, but most sites don’t feel it. Even though the internet has made it so easy now to post content online, many of us still struggle with how our sites impact user experience and performance. A poor website can slow down your site or even cause it to stall altogether. This is especially true if the other pages on your site are also slow. Loading speed is an essential part of the user experience. Your site can feel unresponsive or even crash if your loading speed is poor. To keep your users and the Search engine happy, you need to ensure that their pages load as fast as possible. Here are some ways to do just that. Use Next-gen Image formats Most websites use images in either JPG or PNG formats. WebP and AVIF are the next-gen image formats. These formats offer larger compression and a huge amount of reduction in file size. Use these file formats for faster load speed and image rendition. Also, large images take more time to load. To optimize for page load speed, compress and optimize your images. As you can see, two images of the same resolution can have drastic differences in their file size when different image formats are used. The one in jpeg format occupies 129Kb of storage whereas the same file in WebP format occupies just 95Kb of storage. This significant difference can improve the loading speed of a website. Remove the Unnecessary Code You can’t just optimize a few pages on your site and hope for the best. Your theme or the code that runs on the backend must also be optimized for speed. This means that you need to make sure that the files are small enough to load quickly. If your website uses a theme or plugin that has a lot of stuff and unwanted code, then it can definitely slow down your website. Pre-made templates and themes come with lots of unnecessary plugins and additional code installed. If you are a tech expert then you can try removing this unwanted code by yourself. Else seek professional help or optimization software. There are many software and tools that can reduce/minimize server-side code by removing duplicate files, and reducing unused CSS, JS, and HTML files. Use Cache Reduce the server response time. In the case of WordPress or other CMS, use the cache plugins, that can reduce your initial load time. Serve static assets with an efficient cache policy. If your website has so much static content, caching can save a lot of loading speed, instead of trying to render your website fresh every time, use an effective cache policy. Some of the popular Cache plugins for wordpress include: Use CDN Use Content Delivery Networks like Cloudflare to render webpages. A CDN has a network of computers located in different parts of the globe and they host the static CSS, HTML, and JS files of your website. Whenever any request comes, the static files are rendered from the servers that are nearest to the visitor’s location. This reduces the overall rendering time and latency and provides a fast user experience to website visitors. Here is a list of some of the popular CDN networks: Optimize for Various Devices Remember, your site isn’t just destined to be viewed on desktop devices. Even if you have a responsive site, you want your visitors to be able to experience it fully on any device they choose to view your content on. This means that your desktop and mobile experience should be optimal, too. This includes navigation, content, and the look and feel of your site. If your visitors feel like they’re in a different environment when they’re on your site, then they probably won’t stick around very long .This could be a problem if you’re selling products or providing services. You want your visitors to feel at home when they first land on your site. Don’t just optimize your website only for desktop or mobile view. Make sure that the website is responsive and loads fast on every device no matter what and that the images are rendered at the right resolution and quality. Upgrade your Hosting If you have tried all the above methods and still have a significantly slower loading speed, then try upgrading your current hosting plan or service. If you are in shared hosting and your website gets a lot of traffic, then your website might experience a delay in loading. Try hosting your website in a cloud hosting or VPS hosting service or allocating more hardware and CPU resources. Conclusion It’s important to keep your website’s loading speed up for your users. This not only helps them to get the full experience from your site but also ensures that search engine spiders love your content. To make sure your site is always up to date, and loading fast, you can use the tips that we’ve provided here. These techniques should help increase your site speed and make your users happy. When all is said and done, your site will load much faster and look much better. This will ensure that your visitors are happy and that you’ve gained some valuable new visitors!

Squarespace has Squarespace scheduling that allows you to create Scheduling websites to manage appointments.You can easily add or integrate scheduling to your existing Squarespace website. It has all the features that are necessary to create an online appointment. In this article, we have covered all the information that will help you create an appointment booking site in Squarespace. How to setup Squarespace scheduling Step 1: Visit Squarespace Scheduling Step 2: Click on Try Scheduling. Sign in with your Google Account or Email. Step 3: In the Setup Wizard, Enter your Business name, a custom URL for your scheduling page, and the Time Zone. Click Next Step 4: In the next screen, enter your Appointment Name, Appointment duration, and Price. Step 5: In the next screen, set your availability. Select at what times of the day you offer your service. For every day you select, enter the time that you will be available. You can select multiple days. If you are done, Click Next. Step 6: On this page, you are asked to connect your payment method. You can Click on Connect to connect with your stripe account. Or click Later to complete the process later. The Payment Settings is available under the Business Settings options. Here you can connect your Stripe, Paypal, and Square Payment options. Features of Squarespace Scheduling With Squarespace scheduling, you can create any type of service. Classes, Consultations, Meetings, Events, Doctor appointments, and a lot more. You can integrate Squarespace scheduling future not just in a Squarespace website but with any website. Clients can book their appointments using the scheduling calendar. You can either embed the calendar within a website or just share the link of it with the required people. Booking Types Squarespace scheduling offers two types of booking. The Appointment Types Setting is available under the Business Settings options. You can create the type of booking service you want. Appearance There are two types of Calendar views. A Monthly View and a Daily View Calendar to book appointments. You can edit all the information related to your online service in this section. Change the title, Scheduling Instructions, Button Color, Logo, Time Format, Language, Time Zone, and other details. The Preview of the Changes is visible on the right side. Under the Page Options Settings, you can customize the appearance of your scheduling page. Some of the options include disabling recurring appointments, Hiding Duration, Prices, and other settings. Calendar This Calendar will give the admin an overview of all the appointments booked along with information like Date of booking, Client Name, Timing, and Duration. You can easily change or reschedule any appointments here by just drag and dropping. Generate Invoices Here you can generate invoices for your clients. Create invoices and send them to the client’s email in a single Click. No need to use any additional software or tool for invoice generation. Reports You will get analytics and reports about clients, bookings, payments, and more. Remainder & Scheduling Whenever an appointment is booked, you will get notified about it along with appointment-related details. You can also set the exact times before which you need to be reminded about the appointment. You can Send email notifications for initial confirmation, reminders, cancellations, rescheduling, follow-ups, and subscription details. Not just that, you can also customize or edit the email template that you send to your client before and after the appointment. A feature to send SMS notifications is also available. Sync The booking details can be synced with Google Calendar, iCloud, Office 365, Office exchange, or Outlook. Clients Here you can Add new clients and get an overview of all the booked clients and their information. Intake Form You can create a form that clients need to fill out before booking your appointment. This acts as a lead magnet and also helps you know better about your clients to serve them better in the future. How to Embed Scheduler into your Website To embed your scheduling booking system into your website, Squarespace offers different methods. Integrate with Squarespace – In Squarespace, you have an appointment Scheduling Block. You can integrate your scheduling system using this block. Direct Link – A Direct link is used to share your booking system with your clients. Also share it on other platforms. Booking Button – If you want to just integrate or embed just the appointment booking button into your website. Copy the HTML code of the booking button and paste it into your website’s code. Booking Bar – A booking bar similar to a booking button, helps you book appointments. Copy the HTML code and embed it inside your webpage. Embed Other – Use this option to embed the complete booking system into your website. Conclusion The features in Squarespace Scheduling aren’t just limited to the ones mentioned in this post. There are lots more for you to explore. Also, Squarespace is frequently updating its platform and bringing in new features. Squarespace Scheduling without a doubt is one of the most robust and secure appointment booking systems that you can integrate not just with your Squarespace website but with any type of website in general. If you are looking for a tool to create an online appointment booking system, then Squarespace Scheduling is definitely a choice to consider.

Images are everywhere. From social media to advertisements, images circulate everywhere, resulting in an endless stream of visual content. And with the amount of image content on the web growing at a rapid pace, it’s no surprise that image compression is becoming a key focus for designers and developers alike. To reduce your site’s file size while still maintaining visual quality and readability, you need to compress your images. This will not only reduce how much storage space they take up but also make web pages load faster. In this article, we explain how you can compress and optimize images without losing quality. What is Image Compression? Image compression is the process of reducing the size of an image by removing unnecessary detail or replacing it with a smaller but similar image. One of the most common uses for image compression is reducing the size of an image so that it can be sent over the internet without consuming too much data and storage. While compression can reduce the file size of your images, it doesn’t reduce their visual quality. When you compress an image, you’re “shrinking” it. This process doesn’t change the dimensions of the image, but it can make the image file smaller. If you’re using Photoshop or another image editing program, you can change the dimensions of the image to suit your needs. The resulting image is the same dimensions as the original but has a smaller file size. Different Types of Image Compression There are two main types of image compression techniques that are commonly used by all compression tools and software. They are lossy and lossless. Lossless Image Compression Lossy Image Compression How to Compress and Optimize Images There are many image compression and optimization programs available. In fact, many of them are completely free. But which one is best for you? The first thing to keep in mind is that there is no one best method or tool to compress images. Different programs have different strengths and weaknesses, and you should use the method that works best for you. To help you find the best image compression program for your needs, there are two main steps that are involved. They are: i. Finding the right image format There are many image formats and every format suits a particular type of image. First, select the file format for your image. Some of the popular image formats are: ii. Finding the right resolution Whenever using images, it is important to know the right resolution of that image. Because with an increase in the resolution of the image, the file size also increases. So, have a clear-cut idea about the resolution that you need. There is no one size fits all resolution. The resolution depends on the use case of the image and the type of the image as well. With people using different types of devices with varied screen sizes, it is important to use the right resolution for a better user experience. Now depending on these two factors, you can use various image resizing, compression, and conversion tools. What is the Best tool for image compression? There is no one size fits all rule when selecting a tool for image compression. It depends on the features you require. If you are looking for the best free tool for image compression, then nothing really can beat adobe photoshop. But not everyone has got a paid plan in photoshop or the skills required to compress and optimize images using photoshop. That is why there are multiple free and high-quality paid image optimization tools that you can make use of. These tools are easy to use and offer multiple features that can make image compression easy. One tool that I personally use for image compression is shortpixels. Other highly recommended ones are tinypng and iloveimg. Shortpixel offers a bulk optimization feature to optimize multiple images all at once. And three main types of compression methods, namely lossless, lossy, and glossy. If you are using WordPress, then you can make use of Shortpixel’s plugin to optimize your images. Here is the same image compressed using three different compression formats. The percentage of reduction in file size in each of these formats is: In Lossy format, the image was made 28% smaller, and lossless compression made the image 2% smaller and 24% smaller file size with the glossy format. This shows that the lossy compression method offers the largest amount of reduction in file size. How can uncompressed images affect your website? If you think, what possible damage can any uncompressed image cause to your website? Well, think again. An uncompressed image not just occupies much storage but also makes your website speed low and also affects the SEO of your website. If you think that an image occupying a few extra bytes, doesn’t cause any harm. That’s not the case. If you have 10 images on your website, and each of those images occupies 100Kb of extra memory, you need 1Mb of additional storage. If you have opted for shared hosting this can not only affect the speed of your website but can also cost you extra money for additional storage. And if you have opted for cloud hosting then the cost of it is going to be very high. That is why people make so much effort in optimizing images. Which Images Should Be Compressed? To determine if you should compress your image, you need to consider how valuable it is to your visitors. The purpose of the image is the most important factor to consider when deciding if your image is worth compressing. Decorative images that don’t convey any meaning and are used just for visual attraction can be compressed by a huge size. Because these images need not have pixel-perfect precision, sacrificing some image quality, in this case, is acceptable. But if the images play an important role in the content. Eg: A portfolio of images of a photographer, infographics, Diagrams, Graphs, or any images

Logging in into your website’s admin panel to find it hacked is the worst nightmare for anyone running a website. Most of the time people are not even aware of the fact that their site has been hacked. In this article, we have discussed in detail the steps to find out if your website is really hacked and if so how you can fix it and the tips and tricks to avoid getting hacked in the future. So, what are you waiting for? How to find out if your website is hacked? Before fixing your hacked site. It’s important to understand if your website has really been hacked. Here are some of the common behavior of a hacked website: A website hack is not just limited to these general categories. There is more to it. Perform a deep site analysis Conduct a deep site analysis to see if your website has been hacked or affected by malware, viruses, or other malicious software. Use Malware Scanners You can use the paid version of tools like malcare. Even if you don’t have the paid, the free version is equally good. You can also use other premium malware scanners to identify the type of malware and also avoid false positives. There are several online site security scanners like Sucuri. But these aren’t as efficient as a premium malware scanner or other plugins.Because these scanners can only scan the publicly available part of your website, not the database, files, and other data. Inform the Hosting Providers Inform your web hosting provider that your website has been hacked with all details of your website and ask them to block access to your website to avoid further damage to your brand and users. If needed, you can also ask them to change the password of your wordpress account to prevent the hacker from stealing your data. How to clean your website? If you’re sure your website has really been hacked, now’s the time to clean it up! Wrap your sleeves and get ready folks! You can either use malware removal tools or you can also perform manual malware cleaning, but you have to be technically strong to do any manual changes to your site especially when it comes to a hacked site. a) Remove the Malware To clean up your website, you need to use an excellent malware removal tool. Malcare comes to the rescue again. The pro version of this plugin has an instant malware removal feature that will help you get back your site to normal. Run a Scan to find any malware within your site, any unusual file changes, account access, or other malicious activities. Remove the malware using the removal tool. If you have some technical knowledge, you can manually remove the malware from your site. Find the affected files and data of your system and remove them. If you have tried to manually remove the malicious program, then run the scanner to double-check if the site is completely clean and free of malware after manual file and data removal. b) Clean Up the Website Also uninstall all the unused plugins or new themes, plugins, or third-party code that you recently added. But make sure you have enough technical knowledge before taking up this task because it involves many risks and can even get your site and all its data deleted if not done properly. c) Seek Expert Help You can even hire a cybersecurity expert who specializes in cleaning hacked WordPress sites to get them back on track. Worry not, it is not that difficult to find one. You can easily hire them at affordable prices from Fiverr, Upwork, or other cybersecurity service providers. d) Ask the Hosting Providers Once you are damn sure that the site is clean and clear. Inform your hosting providers about the situation and ask them to rescan your site from their end to double-check if the site is completely free of malware of any form. If so then regain access to your site. Most of the time, Hosting providers will also provide you additional help in removing the malware and also help you further in the process. How to Remove your Website from Blacklist Google can easily detect websites that are spammy and will blocklist them. If your site has been blacklisted while it was hacked. Ask google to remove your site from the blacklist. How to Protect to site in Future Unable to install any plugins Sometimes a hacker gains access to your website and you may not have had a security plugin, to begin with. If you try to install a security plugin now, it doesn’t allow you to do that. The following steps will help you install a security plugin and clean up your site. If your website has been hacked and you cannot install a plugin, you can manually do it using your file editor. You don’t have to be a tech wizard to do it, the process is quite simple. Effects of a hacked website How can a hack possibly affect your website in present as well as the future? Even though it is hard to face such a situation, it is not impossible to recover. You have learned a lesson and an experience. If you have fixed the issues, cleaned your site, and have all the security measures in place, within 2 to 3 months, your website will be back to normal. All you need is some patience.