Ghost Admin Users

[Richard Yust]

Richard Yust

July 14, 2016 at 4:43 pm

I have been running a site utilizing the Virtue Theme for several years. During the last year, the site was evidently hacked and I had several new “administrator” users. After deleting them, the user tab still showed 2 administrators even though my user was the only one displayed in the list. I tried the suggestions in WordPress forums on removing ghost users but have not had any success. Several times during the last year, I would have these administrator users appear and would delete them. As additional security, I would change my password on my user. The hosting company, Alentus, was not able to help in this or in letting me know what or how a possible hack occurred.

So far, Alentus has moved the site to two, always more WordPress secure, servers. The site had crashed or had been brought down five or six times during the last year. I had to contact them to have their support staff apply any updates for the theme or the plugins. This was necessary because when I attempted an update, the site would crash. I have now removed almost all plugins as Alentus thought they might have caused the site to go down. Currently running Virtue Premium version 3.4.0.

There seem to be so many issues here that I am unsure what direction to take. I’m starting with the “ghost admin users” issue. Do you have any suggestions on removing them? The site is http://www.thermocoremo.com. I would be happy to supply login information if necessary.

Thanks