Plugin auto-deleting itself

Hi @robertolima,

The plugin doesn’t have the ability to delete itself (if you’d like to confirm this by yourself you can find the plugin’s source code here). Something else on your end is doing this (malware? GoDaddy?)

Since the GoDaddy team claims that it’s not them then either there’s some malware on your server that’s messing with your site or someone with access to your server is.

Things I’d do if I was in your position (in no particular order):

• Double check that there’s no malware on your site.
• Check that your WordPress setup is using safe file/folder permissions to prevent unauthorized file/folder changes.
• Review all credentials (WP, cPanel, etc.) and make sure that they’re not being misused by someone outside of your organization.
• Make sure that you downloaded the WP Popular Posts plugin from either its wordpress.org page or its Github repository.

If you have any other comments / questions please leave a comment below.

No, I don’t think that the PHP version you’re using has any relation with this issue. You can update to a newer version if you want or just keep using 7.4 if you don’t have any other reason to upgrade other than WordPress recommending to do so.

I tried scanning your site using Sucuri’s online malware scan tool and the scanner is reporting a 500 Internal Server error (see https://sitecheck.sucuri.net/results/dermatologia.net) so there’s definitely something wrong with your site. I highly recommend reaching out to the people who maintain / built your website (or consider hiring an experienced web developer) and have them help you debug your site.

Hey @alexsv1,

However, a day or two later GoDaddy removes it again, likely because it’s not recognized as secure (I assume due to the lack of updates).

Lack of updates may be one of the conditions for GoDaddy to remove a plugin automatically but in WPP’s case I believe it’s most likely because it’s a resource intensive plugin which when not using the right setup it can have an impact on performance (see Performance if you’re interested in learning more.)

Do you know if there’s any solution within WP Popular Posts to prevent GoDaddy’s security scans from disabling it? I really love this plugin and rely on it heavily, so losing it would be a big setback.

My advice here would be to reach out to GoDaddy’s support team and ask them what can be done to prevent this from happening. Maybe they’re doing this automatic plugin removal thing for specific hosting plans only? If so then switching to a hosting plan that allows you to manage your site however you like may be the best bet. Otherwise, if they’re in fact automatically removing specific plugins from all sites regardless of their hosting plan then I would consider switching to a different hosting provider.

Sorry for writing my message here, but it seems the option to open a new topic is disabled.

That’s strange. I can see the New Topic form just fine?

• This reply was modified 3 weeks, 2 days ago by Hector Cabrera. Reason: Added reply to comment about new topic for being disabled

Thanks for the report, @kweenbee123

I guess that this confirms that GoDaddy is deleting the plugin automatically for some reason (even though it’s not on GoDaddy’s banned plugins list).

As stated above, please reach out to GoDaddy’s support team and report the issue.