Easysite versus ESW Pro 7

[HeatherG]

I have my website created using the £5 per month package and had recently been developing a new one in the background using ESW Pro.  Shortly after Christmas the site I was working on was published at 08.15 in the morning when I was out doing the school run.  I am a sole trader and no-one has access to my PC or my passwords. There only appeared to be changes made to the first page - around what should have been the template/graphics used at the top of the page - they were subtle but I could see them. 

After spending a long time on Easy Chat (it is sooo frustrating not being able to lift the phone and talk to someone!!!) they advised me that it could not publish itself and I should run a Virus scan and change my password.  I also republished my original site sitting in Easysite and deleted all the files from ESW Pro.  Since I have done this I have not had any further problems.

However, I thought I would ask the following:

1.  Is there an increase in cost for using the ESW Pro - if so how is this upgrade requested as I did not ask for one, but the EWS Pro website had been published and was live on the web.

2.  How did someone get access to my account and manage to publish a site?

3.  When I asked if my Website had been compromised I was just told to run a virus scan and change my password - there was no offer of assistance, i.e. advise what files had been changed, etc. - is there not a dedicated department that can deal with this type of issue? 

4.  I had previously asked about how to get a copy of the files for my new website and was told I there was no cloning option but that I could revert back to pevious page copies if needed.  Can this cloning facility be added to ESW Pro as  I have had to delete all the files as I am unsure if they have been interfered with - I always have a cloned copy sitting in Easysite just in case there is a problem.

[duskjome · Accepted solution]

Unfortunately where in this case the issue was with a virus or spyware that originated on your PC and not on the server we are limited in how much we can do to correct the issue. You can actually check the files in the file manager to see which ones were most recently updated. This may not help as far as what changes were made but it will point you in the direction of what files were changed. I defintely suggest, as support did, that you run a full virus and spyware scan, especially for spyware as that is the most common way that an outside party would get your password. I would also suggest changing your control panel password as well, if you haven't already.

There is not an increase in cost to use Easy Site Wizard pro, it is included in all packages. If you did want to keep a backup, outside of getting support to revert the files, you can download the "private" directory from your ftp, this is where the editor files for ESW pro are. The only downside of this is if you reupload this backup it will overwrite any new changes made to Easy Site Wizard pro and will not react well to template changes. It is more of an advanced option, but it is an option. You cannot create a clone as yet, this is a functionality from the original Easy Site Wizard that we are interested in including in Easy Site Wizard pro but do not have a timeframe for it's release yet.

Hope this is helpful.