There are some amazingly creative people on the web!
Unfortunately, not all of them have chosen to channel their creativity in a positive direction. As a result, we all have to be aware of the potential hazards to our websites. One of the hazards is ending up with Hidden Injected Code on your pages and posts. This generally happens when passwords aren’t changed regularly or when plugins and themes are not updated regularly, leaving open doors for these “creative” people to do their work. (If you need help with keeping things updated, click here.)
Recently, I redesigned my website and changed my theme. In the process I ended up reviewing old posts and scanning my site for broken links.
To my surprise I found more than just broken links!
I also discovered several of my older posts had been injected with hidden code at some time in the past. (I suspect this happened several years ago, when I my site got hacked.)
It can happen to the best of us.
Even when we take all the proper precautions.
HOW? Why?
Because the internet never sleeps and the hackers have automated software that searches the internet relentlessly to find open doors.
So, we have to keep learning new ways to protect our sites, take all the recommended precautions and clean things up when we need to.
Anyway, this was definitely not what I wanted on my website and I am so grateful that this software found the links for me, so I could remove the bad code for good!
It only takes a few minutes to check your site…definitely worth it!
To help out, I put together a complimentary (no opt-in) tutorial for you. It will walk you through how to check your site and what to do if you find unwanted code.
Here is the where you can scan your website for free.
http://www.brokenlinkcheck.com/
Here is a Complimentary PDF tutorial at will show you how to how to remove the injected code if you find some.
Let me know how you make out!
I shudder whenever I remember the time that my website was hacked by some awful person who messed up everything! Fortunately the website was only 18 months old and my then web programmer cleaned it up for me for a fee. I was still worried if anything had been left behind because certain guest posts were being targeted and I finally hired a company that now looks after the more technical aspects for me to do a full review and give me a thumbs up.
I love the broken links checker, Shery and use it every now and then to make sure that all is well. More often than not I find that websites linked through comments may have been closed by the commentator and I have to go in and remove those website urls. For some reason, the tool does not recognize slideshare embeds and treats them as 404 errors. Any insights? Thanks!
So glad that you have your site monitors and protected! There are so many who don’t. Yup, I love broken links checker too. It is a wonderful too. The only suggestion I have that you could try for the slideshare issue is to use the Global Content Blocks plugin to paste the iframe code into. They put it on your page or post. The Global Content Blocks plugin is one of my all time favorites! It makes embedding any kind of code in WordPress much easier.