Site got hacked mid-campaign. No dev available.

We were right in the middle of a major SEO campaign for a dropshipping ad-intelligence platform when the worst-case scenario hit: the site got hacked.

Traffic was at risk, the brand's reputation was on the line, and the entire campaign was about to be wiped out.

The client's own development team was completely tied up on their core B2B product. They were unavailable and, frankly, not equipped to drop everything to fix a WordPress security breach.

The crisis

I tried to bring in an external developer, but I couldn't find anyone qualified who was available to jump in immediately. Every hour the site remained compromised, we were bleeding trust and rankings.

So, I had to step in.

I'm not a developer. I'm a self-taught "vibe coder." But I couldn't let a technical crisis destroy the marketing results we had worked so hard to build.

The recovery

I dove into the backend and diagnosed the leak myself: the breach was in the WordPress database.

• Backed up the site's content safely mid-campaign so we wouldn't lose a single article
• Disinfected the site to flush out the malicious code
• Restored the environment and plugged the vulnerability

It took a brutal week of 14 to 16-hour days. I barely slept. But by the end of it, the site was clean, the campaign was back on track, and our rankings survived the hit.

The results

The SEO campaign continued its upward trajectory without a hitch.