CMS Made Simple Forums

Hello, my site was hacked recently. The front end is blank but I can access the admin panel.

I have looked around the admin and notice that under the Content tab all I see is File Manager - Content Manager, News etc have disappeared. Also The Layout tab is missing entirely.

I have looked in the DB (i’m no expert so go easy!). The templates still appear to exist in cms_templates, and the pages are still listed in the cms_content table.

Ive tried updating to the latest CMS version hoping that might help but no luck.

Any advice on next steps would be appreciated.

I wouldn't necessarily assume a hack,. A white screen will generally result in an entry added to your php error log, so that's always the best place to start.
We may be able to offer more advice but would need to know what version the site was when it was down (before you upgraded), what php version is currently active, what modules you're using, etc.

There are a lot of problems that can cause the problem you have. Wrong code in the template for example. Even wrong code in an (old) module. As DIGI3 is saying, it doesn't have to be a hack.

What you can try is :

• Check if your php version on the server did not change (for expl. to php 8.0)

• Deactive page by page and each time test if your side is working again

• Rename module folder one by one (not the default installed modules) and each time test if your side is working again

Sometime a bad code in a page / module can cause this problem.

Thanks for the replies everyone. My assumptions of hack are because some rogue files appeared in the site root - wp-comments.php and a folder wp-content. The site has never been Wordpress.

I’m currently working through your suggestions on modules, will report back the results.

That's a legit red flag for sure. If you have a backup from before those files appeared I would revert to that, then make upgrading a priority. We still don't know what version you were using though, so advice will be limited.