Kuhipaat discusses how to remove malware - WP-VCD

#WordPress How to remove WP-VCD Malware?

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WordPress is an free online tool that helps us to make websites. It is easier to make websites on the WordPress platform. We use WordPress to make blogs and websites for our clients.

Few days back we had a big issue with all our WordPress websites and blogs. All of them had refused to open. Even the admin panel that helps us to administer the websites didn’t open. In a few hours, even our email servers were blocked. The server team decided to block all outbound ports to prevent the spread of the virus.

Immediately, we started scanning the server using the virus scanner available in the cpanel for possible malware attack. The virus scan returned over 100 infected files. Few of the files were not known to us. One such file was wp-vcd.php. On searching about this file on Google, we discovered that we are hacked by this very dangerous malware called WP-VCD.

WP-VCD is a WordPress malware injected by wp-vcd.php into WordPress core files. It creates a secret admin user and password to rewrite a few important files functions.php and post.php to put the malicious code. Worse is the fact that the host server team will block all outbound ports upon discovering this malware, leaving us no option to get into the admin of the WordPress websites.

How to remove WP-VCD virus

  1. Login to your cpanel and open file manager to access all the WordPress folders.
  2. Visit wp-includes folder of all your WordPress blogs / websites and delete wp-tmp.php, wp-vcd.php and wp-cd.php files.
  3. Visit wp-content/themes of all the WordPress installation and delete themes that you are not using. Be careful not to delete themes that are active. Both these 2nd and 3rd steps will reduce the number of infected file count.
  4. Try to unblock the ports by going to the Port Block Check. After a few minutes, check if you can login to any of the WordPress websites. If you can login to any of the blogs, please update the WordPress, themes and the plugins. This will clean the files because the infected files will be over-written by core files.
  5. You may also ask the server support team to unblock the ports for 15 minutes with the reason that you have found the reason of the malware attack and that you need access to clean the files.
  6. If you cannot login to the admin panels, the next option is to clean the files manually. You need to edit the wp-content/themes/{theme-name}/functions.php. This is where the malware starts spreading from. You should delete the top part of the codes till the code line as in shown in the image below. Remember that in the original code of functions.php, the theme name functions and definitions is written as a comment right after <?php
  7. After cleaning the functions.php, you should go to wp-includes and search for a file post.php. You may have a line of code right in the beginning that looks like the second image enclosed below. You must delete that line of code.
  8. There might be a few plugins which will also have this malware. Updating the plugin is the best way to get rid of it.
Functions.php inside wp-includes

If you are unable to get rid of the malware after reading the above, you may contact us for support. We will try to help you.

After all the struggles, there was this silver lining that we all learnt a lot about WordPress and its code structure. We will be confident now to customize WordPress websites with much more features and extra functionalities.

Kuhipaat is a digital marketing company specializing in making websites that deliver business objectives. We are based in Duliajan, Assam. Contact us for a free discussion of ideas about how your website can drive business for you.

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kuhipaat-brand-character for Protech - Protech Guru

Protech Guru: Use of a Brand Character to create consumer engagement.

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Introduction

Loyalty to a brand depends primarily on the consumer experience with the brand. Brand identity, which provides direction, purpose and meaning for a brand, is also linked to consumer experience and engagement.

Protech Group is a well known real estate brand in Assam and the Northeast of India. Kuhipaat was assigned the responsibilities for digital branding and marketing for the brand. The team of Kuhipaat has designed the website and the social media strategy for the brand.

Brand Problem

The team of Kuhipaat wanted to increase brand engagement for Protech Group in the digital space. Also, we wanted to increase page views for our website and our social media pages. In order to do the same, we thought of building a ‘Brand Character’ that interacts with the prospect customers on a regular basis, in a meaningful way.

Example

A great example is set by the Amul Brand. Likewise, Amul has created the character of a pleasantly plump girl in a polka dot dress with a big smile to promote Amul butter. As a result, the ‘utterly butterly girl’ has become a part of our lives as very real as any other person in our families.

Brand Character Strategy

The brand character to be designed had to fulfill the following objectives for the brand:

  1. The brand character has to be credible and trust worthy.
  2. It has to have reasons to interact with the customers consistently.
  3. Consumers need to see value in what the character has to say or offer.

The Kuhipaat team observed that consumers in general have a lot of questions regarding real estate and buying of properties. It is primarily because of the fact that home purchase is a once in a lifetime decision. Also, there were no credible websites that concentrated on the real estate problems and questions in Guwahati and the northeast of India. We arrived at a decision to fill that marketing and information gap by creating a brand character who answers questions about various aspects of real estate.

kuhipaat-brand-character for Protech - Protech Guru
OUR BRAND CHARACTER – PROTECH GURU

Hence, Protech Guru was designed as a 2D character who would help customers in taking decisions related to buying their homes. We designed the character to gain a brand image in the minds of customer when they remember about the Protech brand. It has to bring the brand to life representing the personality of the Protech brand in terms of visual identity.

The name of the brand character, ‘Protech Guru’ was meant to imply an expert, leader or a teacher. Protech Guru is the expert, who answers all the queries put forward by customers on real estate. Consequently, we have strategically defined the brand character by including the following elements into the character:

  1. A visiting card – to imply a professional of Protech Group
  2. A suitcase – to imply a experienced professional with a bag full of knowledge
  3. Formal dress with tie – to bring in maturity and formality to the character
  4. Eyeglasses – to make the character look intelligent.

Protech Guru also needed to have a defined space in the website and in the social media pages. It increases familiarity, popularity and credibility of the character. So we decided the following strategy:

  1. In the website, the FAQ page belongs to Protech Guru. He writes the FAQs. All the answers present in the FAQ page are written by him. On the FAQ page, there is a online form for visitors to ask questions to Protech Guru.
  2. On the social media pages, Protech Guru has the Thursday booked for him. Every Thursday, Protech Guru answers a question related to real estate on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages of Protech Group.

Website banner of FAQ page of ProtechGroup website
FAQ page Website Banner – Kuhipaat.

Conclusion

The main focus of the Kuhipaat team was to successfully create a brand character, promote it well and create brand and website engagement for our client, Protech Group. It gave us opportunity to create interesting content for the brand as well. As a result, the page views, and social media engagement of Protech increased, leading to successful conversion of website and Google ad leads.

What’s more, to our knowledge, Protech Guru is the first ever brand character built in Assam by a communication agency in Assam.

Kuhipaat is a digital marketing service provider with a focus on website design and development. We believe we can add significant value to our clients’ businesses through our website and online marketing strategies.

Contact us for a free consultancy by clicking here, or by writing to us at info@kuhipaat.in

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