A massive denial-of-service attack on WordPress recently caused problems for the site’s users. There were days when users could not access the WordPress home Page. There were days when accessing the login page was as easy as typing Google.com, but accessing the WordPress Dashboard to publish a post and view your current site stats was virtually impossible.WordPress’ downtime is a major hassle to all its subscribers. Entrepreneurs who were unable to access their WordPress accounts experienced traffic declines and revenue loss. For a serious business blogger, losing track of site statistics for a week could mean losing a week’s worth of profit.
What can WordPress do to resolve all these problems?
Even the executives behind WordPress have no definite solutions to this issue. The first thing you can do is make sure you find good WordPress backup solutions. The site’s services resumed after a day but continued to intermittently have loading and Dashboard accessibility problems. Bloggers and business owners around the globe never stopped complaining. This could be good news for WordPress competitor Blogger. I heard and read some alarming statements from WordPress users that they will not hesitate to switch to Blogger (and even Tumblr) if these accessibility problems persist.Reports said that WordPress management did not mention the origin of the denial-of-service attack. WordPress executives were honest enough to admit that the problem was hard to resolve given the wide range of its effect. Satisfying the needs of 30 million users is no easy feat, after all.
The attack has subsided, but users outside the USA are still experiencing some service problems. I received some news from friends that they put up new blogs on other blogging platforms just to continue their service. Some of them extended their service through Facebook and Twitter, but losing access to their Dashboard remains to be a major problem. It wasn’t WordPress’ fault, but I guess this sends a signal to large companies who have been with them for a long time. WordPress is still one of top blogging platforms in terms of service and features, but these problems could very well lead to WordPress’ decline in popularity. Does WordPress have the technology needed to secure their service and users against these denial-of-service attacks? I hope they do, because if this happens again, I may have to leave WordPress behind and use Blogger instead.