If you look at your full stats page on WordPress, you will see a section on the bottom right marked ‘Clicks’. This shows you what some readers of your site will have clicked on. In most cases, this is a click to enlarge a photograph, to read a link, or perhaps to investigate the blog of one of your followers.
That is all to be encouraged of course.

I check this section regularly, mostly to see if anyone has followed links I may have added to a post, or which photos are popular enough for readers to want to enlarge them for detail.

To my surprise, and slight concern, the last week or so has shown a few clicks on my own WordPress login. This would show if someone other than me tried to access my admin page. This could have been a mistake of course. Somebody may have wanted to look at a category or post, and clicked in the wrong place. But the other possibility is that someone has been trying to access my admin page, even perhaps attempting to change the password. Fortunately, it would seem that they have been unsuccessful, but there was another attempt this morning.

My first thought was that there would be little purpose in them doing this, but then I thought again. If they managed to hack in, and change my password, then I would have no access to both my WP sites. The hacker could publish posts that might be rude or offensive, and everyone would obviously believe it was me. They could access the lists of my followers, and followed sites, many of which display email addresses. If they so wished, they could spend my money by upgrading the site, and buying expensive themes. This could happen, because WP have my details, after I upgraded recently.

With just a few clicks, a malicious hacker could totally disrupt both my WP sites, cause offence, upset all the years of hard work building a community, and then presumably move on to do the same thing to someone else. I can only imagine the hassle of trying to contact WP to report this. It’s hard enough to get your comments out of Spam, let alone this.

Let’s hope it is nothing at all. But it’s better to be aware, so I thought I would tell everyone.