Backup Restore Redirects

I can’t access the site to view the page source, so without any specific clues I have to take a guess that may or may not be relevant.

Did you also change the URL to access the site? If so, your database contains references to the URL you accessed the site at on the old server, so you need to update these. My preferred way to do this is to use the interconnect/it serialized search and replace tool which you can find along with its documentation at https://interconnectit.com/products/search-and-replace-for-wordpress-databases/

Hello Cube,

Appreciate your honest desire to help. Let me know what specific clues you need to help me resolve this issue quickly. I shall be glad to provide them. Appreciate!

I tried following your link but I really dont understand how it will resolve my WP site. I shall be glad to provide necesary clues you need to help me troubleshoot and resolve the problem.

Many thanks!

Hi Sam, thanks for your reply. The script I linked to is very useful when you want to move a site from one domain to another, to update all instances of the old URL to the new one including paths to images in page/post content and any instances stored in serialized data such as plugin options. In your initial post it sounded like you were trying to move your site from one URL to another, but if that is not the case can you describe the issue in a little more detail. What URL was the site accessed at previously and if you access it at a different URL now, what is it now?

Your first sentence says:

I nottice that wordpress redirects to another site completely before I did a backup and move to another server.

Can you elaborate on that please? Do you mean that all of a sudden, without you making any changes, your site started redirecting elsewhere? If so where did it start redirecting to.

Thanks,

My site -cotonousedcars.com was working perfectly for a longtime, no issues until I discover that an hacker redirected my site to another webpage. But till then, i still get access to the backend. This affected all other WP sites on the reseller server.

So I decided to get another hosting with another company. So I did entire backup of the site and moved to the new server. I created a fresh Database on PHPMYADMIN and I imported database into it and changed same in WPConfig. I equally changed the table prefix I used for the old server but now the site seems loading, it will flash the homepage and it will not load, it equally shows other pages if you google search the domain from Google.

I think this clue will be of help in troubleshooting and resolving. Thanks for your time!

Do you have a backup of the site taken before the hack occurred? Or did you restore the database from the hacked site?

How did you change the db prefix? The full process is outlined at https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-change-the-wordpress-database-prefix-to-improve-security/ If you didn’t complete all of the steps, you need to correct it.

To clean up after a hack, you need to start working your way through these resources:

• https://codex.www.ads-software.com/FAQ_My_site_was_hacked
• https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/268083#post-1065779
• https://smackdown.blogsblogsblogs.com/2008/06/24/how-to-completely-clean-your-hacked-wordpress-installation/
• https://ottopress.com/2009/hacked-wordpress-backdoors/

Additional Resources:

• https://sitecheck.sucuri.net/scanner/
• https://www.unmaskparasites.com/
• https://blog.sucuri.net/2012/03/wordpress-understanding-its-true-vulnerability.html

Appreciate Cubecolor,

The backup images (especially) was very small compared to the recent backup. If I make use of the recent images upload with a fresh WP installation will it work?