Post 7522
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I was so excited to see a huge spike in visitors only to find it was for a post that I didn’t make and in fact doesn’t exist. I want to get it off and stop it from happening again. I installed Wordfence but it didn’t catch it. What do I do?
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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That sounds really odd, especially seeing traffic go to a post you didn’t create. I’ve flagged the topic so staff can look at the account directly.
In the meantime, a couple of things worth checking. Go to Users in your dashboard and see if any accounts are there that shouldn’t be. Then change your WordPress.com password and turn on two-step authentication if it isn’t already on. Also check your Posts list including Drafts and Trash, just to confirm the post really isn’t sitting somewhere unexpected.
Wordfence is more about blocking malware and login attacks, so it wouldn’t really catch something like this. Staff will be able to see what’s actually going on with the account.
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Thanks so much. I will certainly start with your suggestions. I’d hate to give up my blog after 14 years.
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Good news, and I think this is far less alarming than it looks.
The post you were seeing traffic to is not a post someone else created. It is your own homepage.
Post 7522 is the front page of bethwarstadt.com. In your stats it appears with an ID rather than under a title you would recognise, which is why it looked like something unfamiliar. The visitors were going to your site’s front page, which is exactly where you would want them.
So there is no unknown content on your site, and nothing has been added by anyone else.
On the spike itself, sudden jumps in visits to a homepage are usually one of a few ordinary things. A link shared somewhere that took off, a search engine crawling your site, or automated traffic, which every site on the internet receives. None of those mean your site has been accessed by anyone who should not have it.
The advice you were given in the forum was sensible and worth doing regardless, particularly turning on two-step authentication if you have not already. Good habits either way.
One thing worth mentioning. Wordfence is built for self-hosted WordPress sites and duplicates protections that are already running on your site here, so it may not be doing much for you. Nothing urgent, but worth knowing.
Please do not give up a blog you have kept for fourteen years over this. Nothing has gone wrong with it.
If anything still looks odd to you, tell me what you are seeing in your stats and I will take another look.
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You’re welcome!
I also wanted to mention that you might want to add a title to your homepage so it will make it easier for you to recognize your homepage in the Pages list and the Stats.
I’m guessing you didn’t add a title because you don’t want “Home” showing at the top of your homepage when visitors view your site, but there’s another way to take care of that. You can create a separate Page template without a title to use for the homepage.
If you’re interested in doing that, let me know and we can email you specific steps for your website.
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