Music for Hope is an international music initiative supporting children and young people in El Salvador. It is a dynamic community music project for young people from the Bajo Lempa of El Salvador, using participatory music as a tool for community development.

When their website was hacked they approached Mello Host technician, Mike Farley for help.
Mike had a look at the back end to assess the damage. The hosting setup was not intuitive and this made it more difficult to identify the problem. Nevertheless he discovered that the hackers had installed a virus that created 1300 extra files in the backend that contained malicious code. The backups also contained malicious code and more corrupted files were continually being added because the hackers had installed a “back-door.”
Mike noticed that obsolete software was running the webserver, and that some sections of the website was not fully covered by the SSL safety certificate.

Mike had to recreate the site from scratch and added the funcionality to sell CD’s and books utilising WooCommerce. He developed a completely new design and rebuilt the site on Mello Hosts’ up-to-date and secure server. As with all our clients we included a SSL security certificate free of charge. We set up custom email addresses for key volunteers and showed them how to use it. And because Music For Hope is a charity we gave them a discounted rate for their hosting.

“Mike did a great job with our website. Our old website had been hacked and completely destroyed. He redesigned and improved it on a secure server, and then gave us tutorials on how to do basic maintenance ourselves. He was patient with us and explained everything clearly. Our new website is easy to navigate, appealing to look at, and it is safe for people to visit, to use our online shop, and to make donations. We are very happy with it, and grateful for the excellent work!”