kaityf

I missed one of your responses. I didn’t mean to suggest that I did everything in the guide. I just meant to indicate that I was familiar with some of what’s listed there. I also used one of the other plugins listed there.

You can think of the WordPress and theme files as just instructions to what is in the database and render it for the viewer.

THANK YOU for that. Now it makes sense. Perfect sense.

As soon as I get access to my admin area, I’m going to do more of what’s in that guide. I already did some of it, like updating everything. I never thought about DUO for security. I really like that. I have to use it for where I teach a couple classes. I probably won’t be able to get to do anything until tomorrow night since tomorrow is one of two days I go in to teach.

I’ll come back to keep you posted on my progress so you know what’s working for me.

Thank you again. I feel like I *might* be able to get this fixed myself.

Sorry to be pesty, but I just reread your message, and see I misread part of it. You were saying that the info for how the theme is customized is all in the database, correct? You weren’t saying that files are not stored in the database (files like your blog entries, etc.), right?

It’s that the customizing info is not stored in the files, but in the database. I still don’t understand that, though. And if that’s right, then something in the database must be infected.

For example, I use Google AdSense. The ads are (when the site is up) all for that Canadian casino site. I have AdSense matched content, too. That’s really a mess. It should display an equal number of my articles and ads. The ads are all to the casino site while the pictures from articles on my site are accompanied by titles and links for the casino site. Not to by titles and links to my articles.

All of this stuff would have to be in the database if it’s not in any of the theme files. That’s disturbing.

Heh. I did see that guide before. I used Wordfence – which is how I discovered the eval base64 code. It was in some php theme files. I was actually running another scan with that plugin when the site went poof and I learned that the database was gone. I’m not saying one caused the other. Just noting that I know about Wordfence. I had also used a cleaner that had been recommended. You install it on your site and then run a scan from the browser. Maybe that’s what I was doing when the site went poof. I know I did more than one scan with Wordfence and one with the cleaner. It might even have been when I tried to start a scan with Malcare, but I didn’t try to fix anything with that.

I also do have Google Console and do my best to correct issues it finds.

I’m not sure I can do too much else right now until my site has been restored with the backup.

Wait….I’m confused. What is stored in the database? The “instructions”for what you want the theme to do? I thought that how you customize the theme is stored in the themes files. No? I thought it was the content that was in the database. Ugh. I’m confused.

I had a couple backups but could use them because I couldn’t get access to my Admin area. My host company helped get it back by changing the theme. That’s when I deleted the theme. I installed a plugin that checks for malicious code and it did find some. But next thing I know my site was down again. This time it was because the entire database got wiped out. My host company is going to install the backup they have, but I don’t think it goes back far enough to miss the infection.

The problem before had been with the eval base64 malicious code. My site was accessible, but connected to some Canadian casino gamboling site. And if you searched for my site on Google, you’d get lots of results for that gamboling site.

Anyway, thanks for the guide. I’ll take a look at it and see what I can do.

Thank you. That is exactly what I did. This is bizarre! I managed to reach the developers of the theme and their suggestion broke the site even more! I had to contact my host company in order to get back into the admin area, and what they did to help was to change the theme, which allowed me to get back into the admin area, but as soon as I changed the them back, whole thing totally broke again! Then the host company advisor suggested I change the code back in the cPanel. D’oh!

Wish I had thought about that before. You do know what happens to all your pretty arrangements when you change themes, right? Ugh. Took me hours to get it all back to normal. Still don’t know if I fixed everything. And this is what the developers told me to do!!!

Honestly, I don’t know why a theme developer wouldn’t make that a really simple option. Oh well. I tried looking for a plugin to do this. No luck.

Thanks for your help. I truly do appreciate it.

Thanks for the idea. I tried it and it “broke” the page. It ended up returning a blank screen, so I had to change it back. I’m going to try to send the magpress people an email. They don’t seem terribly friendly, though. Lol.

Maybe I can find some kind of plugin to deal with this.

I really do appreciate your help. This is crazy. I never had such a problem with anything on my WordPress site before.

I don’t recall paying for that theme, so I wouldn’t have thought it was a commercial product. But yeah… I went there, and couldn’t find a way to post on the forum there. I’m not a member. I can’t find anywhere to become a member either. I can’t log on because I’m not a member. And I don’t see anywhere to sign up for the forums. That’s how I arrived here. I’m getting rather desperate for help here. I’m at the end of the 2nd day of searching. Oh well. I guess I’ll just have to live without category descriptions on my category pages. Thanks, though, for the help.

Oh… I see. The problem is that I don’t know exactly where to put the code. Maybe I’m just making a bigger deal out of this than is necessary, but when someone tells me to put the code where I want the description to be displayed, I’m going to think that there is a specific spot in the archive.php file to put it. I posted below what is in my archive.php file. If you can tell me where in that php file I should add the code, I’d be grateful. Then I will do as you suggested and create a child theme to do it. That was excellent advice – that no one had mentioned before. Thank you.

Archive.php file contents:

<?php get_header(); ?>
<?php do_action( 'mp_before_container' ); ?>
<main id="container">
<?php do_action( 'mp_inside_container' ); ?>
<div class="content">
<?php do_action( 'mp_before_content_inner' ); ?>
<div class="content-inner">
<?php do_action( 'mp_before_content_area' ); ?>
<div id="entries" class="content-area">
<?php do_action( 'mp_before_content_area_inner' ); ?>
<div class="content-area-inner">
<?php do_action( 'mp_inside_content_area_inner' ); ?>
<?php
$postcount = 1;
$oddpost = '';
if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post();
get_template_part( 'content', get_post_format() );
($oddpost == "alt-post") ? $oddpost="" : $oddpost="alt-post"; $postcount++;
endwhile;
else :
get_template_part( 'content', 'none' );
endif;
?>
</div>
<?php do_action( 'mp_after_content_area_inner' ); ?>
</div>
<?php do_action( 'mp_after_content_area' ); ?>
<?php comments_template(); ?>
</div>
<?php do_action( 'mp_after_content_inner' ); ?> 
</div>
<?php do_action( 'mp_after_content' ); ?>
</main>
<?php do_action( 'mp_after_container' ); ?>

Okay. I can understand that. But I didn’t see anything in that article that explains how to make the category descriptions visible. Did I just miss it?

Pages and posts display the same way in terms of layout, etc. By looking at them, you wouldn’t know which is a page and which is a post.

In some cases – when I discovered I had posts with similar topics, I have redirected one post to the other post. That makes sense since they both already existed.

But that’s not the case here. Does Google actually know the difference between a WordPress post and a WordPress page? Does it consider more than the content and the URL? So if the URL https://www.mysite.com/existing-article was indexed already by Google (which the URL in question is), Google would need to re-index the exact same URL simply because it now leads to a page rather than a post?

I’m trying to understand the need to re-direct in this case rather than just create a post with the same URL and then delete the page and remove it from the trash.

I’ll check out the plugin for switching post types. Thanks.

Nevermind. I found some.

I’m so sorry! It’s been so long since I got that theme that I didn’t remember it was a commercial one!