Tried to log into the blogsite yesterday morning to post some further stuff, and couldn’t get in at all – this was disconcerting since I’d been logged in for the previous post less than 6 hours earlier. My efforts produced nothing, and since I couldn’t log in I couldn’t update anything on the program end, and so spent waaaayyyy too much time with the hosting service’s AI troubleshooter, pretty much just making things worse. I’m trying to be objective here and not jump to conclusions, but objectively, when I finally got a real human on the line, they corrected most of what the AI fucked up within minutes.
I still can’t log in properly, but I can now get in through the backend and post a little, and do some routine maintenance stuff. We’ll see how long it takes to get things back in order.
So if you came here and got, well, anything but a proper website, I apologize – I have no idea what failed, and if I did anything, it was completely without trying or even knowledge. Which is to say, I doubt I did anything.
Right now I’m rebuilding the three posts that got wiped out when I restored from a backup that had taken place before they posted, so bear with me. I even did the Latest Images updates, and they got wiped too. Insert a plethora of the choicest cuss words in here, and make up a few while you’re at it, because I certainly did.
EDIT, 21 HOURS LATER: I believe I found the culprit, and think this deserves attention, since there was a folder in my Plugins directory named, “Jetpack.” I didn’t recall ever downloading any plugin by that name, but waited until I could check it out better (some plugins bear odd names that aren’t self-evident,) and after finding the description of this, I knew that I hadn’t downloaded it myself. While troubleshooting, all plugins had been disabled by renaming their folders, including the master folder itself, but this never fixed the issue. Deleting this particular folder, however, restored all working order to WordPress.
Note also that no entry for it existed within the plugin menu within WordPress, unlike all other plugins. To all appearances, this thing (whatever it was) was active regardless of the structure within WordPress.
Therefore, I consider ‘Jetpack’ to be malware and strongly suggest never installing it, and removing it immediately should you find it present. Note that you will have to find it in the folder structure, because it does not show from the normal WordPress interface.
Also note that it was causing significant delays on the very login screen before producing an error message – not the best of signs. I changed my password following the deletion of the folder.
I have no e-commerce or woo-commerce stuff active on my site, so there’s little that it had access to; I would suggest anyone that does be doubly vigilant. Now it remains to be determined how it actually ended up within my folder structure.
And yes, I am aware that the folder being named “Jetpack” does not confirm that it is related to the plugin of the same name, but enough reviews pegged said plugin as “phoning home” constantly (sending information from one’s computer directly to the creators’ website.) Regardless, it was this way on my system – it can be this way on others. Delete any unrecognized folders from your Plugins directory, and it doesn’t hurt to maintain a list (or duplicate local directory) of what you do have, so you know what belongs and what doesn’t.
Good luck!