Projects Recovering a WordPress site under active security risk
Recovering a WordPress site under active security risk
A degraded, exposed WordPress site: security holes closed, performance fixed, moved to a stable server.
- How long
- 2024
- My role
- Emergency SupportSecurity Analysis, Server Optimization, Plugin Management
- Kind of project
- RescueMedium project
The problem.
iLearn’s WordPress site was both slow and exposed: a security plugin had been discontinued and left in place, malware scans were blocked by low server resources, plugins were out of date, and the server itself had CPU limits too low to keep up.
What I did.
I removed the dead security plugin and installed Wordfence Premium with manual IP blocking, set up Cloudflare for DNS and firewall protection, updated every plugin and WordPress core (including a fresh reinstall where needed), added Varnish and object caching, and migrated the whole site to an upgraded server. The migration itself needed five attempts before every file and image transferred cleanly.
What they got.
A site that’s faster, actively defended, and no longer sitting on infrastructure that couldn’t keep up with it.
For your technical person
Security: Wordfence Premium with manual IP blocking, Cloudflare DNS and firewall. Performance: Varnish cache and object cache, HTML/CSS minification, database optimisation (transients and table overhead cleanup). Platform: WordPress on PHP 8.1 and MySQL. Deployment: staged on a test server before going live, with migration to an upgraded host after five attempts to get a clean file and image transfer. Once the server had enough resources, malware scans were switched back on, and I recommended continued server-level malware monitoring going forward. 2024.
Related work.
The service behind this project
Rescue a fragile or failing systemGet a non-destructive WooCommerce diagnosisRunning into the same problem? Tell me about yours.
+27 87 150 9305Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 20:00 SAST. Or email info@antondevilliers.com.