I Was Totally Hacked!!

You might have noticed a little downtime from my site. I was hacked and it got all spammy! In an attempt to find the solution I ended up deleting my ENTIRE website and tried to re-install it with new software. Guess what, it didn’t work.
Despite a ton of info online (it seems thousands, if not tens of thousands of websites were affected in the same way mine was) I couldn’t figure out how to solve the problem. Most websites assume a level of computer proficeny that I just don’t have. For instance, it would say “re-install wordpress.” Sounds easy, right? Only I had no idea how to do that manually. (When I started this site the web hosting company did it for me automatically with just one click.)
I went down a rabbit hole of more minute and minute directions but kept coming up against roadblocks. Finally, I begged for mercy from my hosting company and they totally came through, both re-installing wordpress fro me, then later helping me activate my backup.
So despite the web hosting company doing most of the heavy lifting I feel like a crazy genius who fixed one of the most complex computer problems the world has ever known. (Yes people, it felt that difficult.)
Now of course there are all sorts of broken links and small problems with the website (most have to do with re-installing wordpress which erased all my plugins and I haven’t reinstalled them yet) so please just be patient with me. Unfortunately this problem got fixed in the beginning of the week when I am busiest with class and other things. So,  I will be tinkering around with it for the next few days (okay, weeks) and if you find something that doesn’t work right now, please check back. I will get it to work (fingers crossed.)
This whole thing couldn’t have happened at a worse time either. My relaxing “break time” from going INSANE trying to fix my website was to do my taxes. And on top of both of those nightmares I think I have bronchitis that is just not going away.  So, not exactly the funnest, most relaxing weekend I’ve ever had.
And I would like to give a shout out to Dreamhost, my web hosting company, for helping me out. Technically, according to most people on the internet it looks like the hack might have originated on their end of things, but no matter what happened, they did help me out in a (semi) prompt manner. So kudos to them.
And please bear with me as I attempt to find, and fix the problems on my blog. Also, while I’m at it, I might be making a few changes. Well see what happens!