Potential Discussion Forum Problems

One reason I don't read as much as I'd like to, or should, is that most of my time is spent maintaining the website.  Over the last few days I'm been making a number of improvements to the site and dealing with a hack.

The first change is that I've set up AALBC.com to use a CDN, which is basically a set of globally distributed servers to help spend up the website.  During this transition there may have been some anomalous behavior on the website at least one user has reported that a problem they previously observed has gone away.

The site was also hacked.  Anytime you use third party software (like this discussion forum), or wordpress (used for my Blog), hackers will figure out ways to compromise the website.  This discussion forum was hacked.  The motivation seems to be just pure malice...  At any rate I'm changing password and deleted old accounts.  My web host deleted a ton a stuff it is possible a bug or two was introduced, but this I'm looking into.  The only problem is that I have not observed any problems so I relying on you all to describe to me was is happened.

I honestly believe, and I know this will sound like a conspiracy theory, that big corporations are behind all the spam email we get and all the hackers indie sites have to content with.  Why would they be behind this you might ask?

Well if email becomes so riddled with spam it becomes more of a pain to use and people will use instant messenger, whats app (both Facebook products)or twitter to send messages to each other.   If websites become to difficult to maintain people will use Facebook as their main platform instead of an indie website.  

Obviously, indie discussion forums are a prime target, because it drives people to social media -- I've already had to abandon one discussion forum, thumperscorner (which I just now discovered is down), due to hackers and Google banning me from delivering advertisements.  It is a real battle.