Hi – thank you both of you for the quick repsonses
David_m: Im afraid I dont understand what timthumb.php vulnerability is… how do i find that out?
Secondly… Kmessinger: I have read most of these articles already and have found them daunting. i dont really know where to start. i have contacted my webhosting people to ask if the site can be restored to a previous point in time – would that fix the problem?
Also… how do i back up my site? i have no idea how to do this and no idea how to then reinstall wordpress without losing my site completely.
again – all help appreciated… thank you!