Wonky Site Goblins

So, you may have noticed as of late the site has been… uhh, let’s go with erratic. The basic story is this, and I’m typing this now under the assumption it may return to wonky goblin-fed shitmess in the next few hours —

So, a few months ago, the site went down a couple times. Just down. Gone. Erased. Brought from back up, fine. Updated everything, that stopped happening. Then it was replaced by a Chinese search engine. Replaced from backup, fixed again. Then, a couple week ago — ads started showing up on the site. Google ads.

First, found the ad code in widgets.

Deleted the code.

Ads went away.

Then, two days later, ads came back up, this time found that plugins had been installed without my permission — !! — and those plugins were creating widgets and using the code. Deleted plugins, shored up security.

Ads went away.

Two days later — ads were back. Took forever to find where they were — it was code in my theme. So I disabled that theme, went to the default theme annnd —

Ads went away.

Six hours later, they came back. And this time they were cascading through the backend of the site, and it became largely unusable. So, we shut down the site and applied new security protocols and here we are, once again, no ads.

No idea how long it lasts! So, I’m sending out this message in a bottle to update you. Still chasing down goblins in case. More as I know it! Apologies for chaos!