Do you have a Joomla virus? Need to get rid of it fast? Find out here how to do so, and how to secure your site for the future. How to remove a virus from Joomla

Do you have a Joomla virus? Need to get rid of it fast? Find out here how to do so, and how to secure your site for the future.

Joomla viruses are extremely common.

Every day I get inquiries from users asking how to remove a Joomla virus. Many systems are not secure. This is not because Joomla itself is particularly insecure. Joomla is very very secure as far as the CMS goes. But the prevalence of poor-quality third party extensions, low quality FTP security, insecure admin access (to name a few) mean that Joomla systems get hacked all the time.

Here's how to get rid of your Joomla viruses - fast.

Step 1: You need to take a full backup of your system.

Don't rely on Akeeba for this, which may itself now have a virus. Instead, go to your CPanel, and open the File Manager. Browse through until you find the main folder - often called public_html/ . Select this folder, right-click and select Compress. Your server will zip this folder entirely. Once it's zipped, download it.

Second, take a full backup of your database. Open PHPMyAdmin, select your database, and click Export. Select all tables, ensure compression is set to gzip, ensure DROP TABLES is selected, and then save the backup.

If you create backups - also ensure you have enough disk space to do so (at least 50% free space).