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WP Twin Just Saved My Bum!

by Local Banned
17 replies
Boy, you learn something everyday!

For those of you that do not know me, I am a nurse anesthetist by trade, but I started a local consulting business about 18-19 months ago after a friend from college showed me how he created a multi-million dollar offline business in Florida, 3,000 miles away.

Well my first year I made every mistake you could possibly make and I still made some pretty decent money.

The last 6 months though, have been incredible though.

I have been killing it helping businesses with their Google Places.

One of the big "take aways" for the last 6 months was the fact that almost every business that had a website, even a pretty one, could not track a single customer/sale from their website.

So, I went to work and began studying everything I could related to online lead generation and direct response websites.

Then, I finally hit across a combination of design elements, coding, plugins, etc., that seemed to work well across the board for all of my clients. It was a WordPress website, using the Thesis theme and a whole bunch of tweaks, fine tuning, plugins, etc. until each site was converting at around 30-60%.

Once I got the website "Mother Ship" exactly where I wanted it, I used WP Twin to clone the site and now, I can create a new client a website in about 30 seconds, plus maybe 60-90 minutes of customizing graphics, copy, autoresponder, etc.

Well, today, the "Mother Ship" was hacked!

Some punk gained access via WP and placed his calling card on the front of my site.

Not sure what damage he actually did or didn't do, I immediately deleted the entire domain and moved it to another server.

I reinstalled WordPress, then I used WP Twin to totally reinstall the entire website with all tweaks, plugins, images, etc., etc.

All in less than a few minutes.

Of course now my passwords are over 40 characters, including the alphabet, numbers and symbols.

I am thanking God I had used WP Twin.

For those of you that are not aware, here is their website:

Wp Twin

This is NOT an affiliate link and I have never even spoken to WP Twin, yet they saved me a ton of grief and heartache.

Evie
#bum #saved #twin
  • Profile picture of the author TimD
    Evie, this is a terrific post. Thanks for all the insight into what you're doing and how you used WPTwin.
    Tim
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    • Profile picture of the author Roaddog
      Local

      Congrats on doing so much work and finding your niche,as it were.

      I too own wptwin and it's great.

      As far as security goes, I don't know if you do this, so...

      I'll just tell you what I do. (So I don't sound preachy)

      There are a couple of security plugins that I use one called Secure Wordpress and the other WP Security Scan. There are others but I haven't used them yet.

      Both free, both available at Wordpress.
      Which will help you locate some of the issues with wp.
      Also when I build the wordpress I do NOT use Fantastico.
      When I build it manually I can change the wp_ prefix to something random, because it is a security issue apparently. Now there may be a way to change this in Fantastico, but alas I have yet to find it.
      There is a way to change it thru WP security scan, but I don't get a permission I need, and I am not going to chase down a reason , I have better things to do, well, most of the time.

      Plus my sites are not worth hacking, so I am lucky there.
      Fortunately you do not have this luxury.

      I hate to see anyone's hard work go down because of "a punk",
      well put, by the way.

      Peace

      Jim
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      • Profile picture of the author CraigX
        Its kind of funny that I ran into this thread because of lately I been thinking of getting Wp Twin but after reading about your experience I will be buying WP Twin.
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      • Profile picture of the author Local
        Banned
        Originally Posted by Roaddog View Post

        Local

        Congrats on doing so much work and finding your niche,as it were.

        I too own wptwin and it's great.

        As far as security goes, I don't know if you do this, so...

        I'll just tell you what I do. (So I don't sound preachy)

        There are a couple of security plugins that I use one called Secure Wordpress and the other WP Security Scan. There are others but I haven't used them yet.

        Both free, both available at Wordpress.
        Which will help you locate some of the issues with wp.
        Also when I build the wordpress I do NOT use Fantastico.
        When I build it manually I can change the wp_ prefix to something random, because it is a security issue apparently. Now there may be a way to change this in Fantastico, but alas I have yet to find it.
        There is a way to change it thru WP security scan, but I don't get a permission I need, and I am not going to chase down a reason , I have better things to do, well, most of the time.

        Plus my sites are not worth hacking, so I am lucky there.
        Fortunately you do not have this luxury.

        I hate to see anyone's hard work go down because of "a punk",
        well put, by the way.

        Peace

        Jim
        Thanks Jim!

        Evie
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  • Profile picture of the author HiAbby
    Yeah, great thread. Thanks for posting this!
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  • Profile picture of the author DPWeb
    I am buying WP Twin in the very near future. I install WordPress for my clients with premium themes and extra plugins. I would love to have a skeletal install to use automatically.
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  • Profile picture of the author Dr Dan
    Thanks for the post and I am about to buy it. I found a fellow warrior here at is offering it with a few bonuses for $20 less than the main site: http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-...win-bonus.html
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    • Profile picture of the author TheMGMProject
      Hi Evie,

      Wptwin is just great, I've tried a number of backups including backupbuddy, and ezclone or something like that but wpt is head and shoulders above them all!

      What i should add is that you shouldnt have let the hackers in to your site in the first place. My new website i have just set up offers a security script for wordpress if you want to make sure it doesnt happen again.

      I dont want to blatently push my site but if you pm me I'll give you the url, i could do with someone to test it out for me ;-)

      Mick
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      • Profile picture of the author Local
        Banned
        Originally Posted by Mickswebsites View Post

        Hi Evie,

        Wptwin is just great, I've tried a number of backups including backupbuddy, and ezclone or something like that but wpt is head and shoulders above them all!

        What i should add is that you shouldnt have let the hackers in to your site in the first place. My new website i have just set up offers a security script for wordpress if you want to make sure it doesnt happen again.

        I dont want to blatently push my site but if you pm me I'll give you the url, i could do with someone to test it out for me ;-)

        Mick
        Yeah, I was pretty green when it came to WP security, but my hubby works at Google and I got an education from a group of security and IT folks he works.

        A real eye opener.

        It is amazing to me that just naming your user "admin" is a risk!

        They pulled the logs and the hacker gained access as a result of my host. I have since moved and now I have a full-time IT guy taking care of patches, security, etc.

        But thanks!

        Evie
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        • Profile picture of the author Andy Hart
          Originally Posted by Local View Post

          but my hubby works at Google and I got an education from a group of security and IT folks he works.

          Evie
          Lets forget about you being hacked and the WPtwin stuff lol, I wanna know more about your hubby, any pearls of wisdom he may have passed on??
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  • Profile picture of the author Torreylee
    Getting hacked is the Ultimate feeling of Violation:confused:, I will look into possibly buying this. Nice share.
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    • Profile picture of the author TheMGMProject
      No worries Evie.

      I should add about wptwin is that it works best if you use fantastico on the new server that you are transfering your files to. I just did a transfer for a client who didnt and although we got there in the end it took some manual adjustments of the config.php file as it wouldnt overwrite.

      Regarding security, yes you are right when you say change the default user name from admin to something else, thats the first thing a hacker will try. My new site (www.wordpresspadlock.com) is nearly complete now so hopefully i can offer help to other bloggers who dont have the benefit of being married to someone at Google :-)

      Bck to the grind, have a great weekend.

      Mick
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  • Profile picture of the author ChrisMoon
    Ya WPTwin is brilliant.

    Initially had a few hiccups which proved to be something with my Hosting, but Wptwin’s support got me sorted out and it’s a fantastic tool.
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  • Profile picture of the author askloz
    You don't need to use WP Twin.

    Just back up your database via myphpadmin (export it) that has say, one post or none at all, and re-import it back into your myphpadmin, get it done in less than 10 seconds

    All the best

    Loz
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  • Profile picture of the author kissyourweb
    Evie, have you ever thought of packaging your WP settings/basic website for resale to designers? I, too, have a WordPress web design business and am always researching how to improve websites for traffic generation. Just a thought to get you more income from web designers/internet marketers!

    Thanks for all the posts. I have been toying with the idea of buying WP Twin and am a true believer now. I have had a lot of issues with Backup Buddy that seem to be related to some of the hosting accounts that DON'T have a quick fix!

    Thanks, again.

    Sandi
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  • Profile picture of the author cypherslock
    Another idea, is a free plugin called Duplicator. You can use it to just backup the skeleton of your blog or everything, meaning all plugins, themes, posts, pages, settings. It works flawlessly.
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    • Profile picture of the author RobinInTexas
      Originally Posted by cypherslock View Post

      Another idea, is a free plugin called Duplicator. You can use it to just backup the skeleton of your blog or everything, meaning all plugins, themes, posts, pages, settings. It works flawlessly.
      I'm not sure why this thread promoting a paid plugin was raised from the dead, I can come up with a few likely possibilities, but that's just idle speculation.

      There are several free plugins that do the same thing.

      Duplicator seems to do the job very well by all reports:

      WordPress › Support » Duplicator

      and the author is actively supporting it.

      WordPress › Support » Duplicator
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      Robin



      ...Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just set there.
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