Our servers logged 167,000 unauthorized login attempts

Globally, WordPress powers 42 out of every 100 websites. It is a vast ecosystem that offers a tool for every imaginable need; but it comes with a catch. The platform is incredibly heavy, and securing it has become a costly operational burden. Last month alone, our website faced 167,000 unauthorized login attempts—a relentless wave of automated cyberattacks. We decided we could no longer carry this weight. We packed up our digital assets and migrated to Ghost.

To put it simply, owning a home on the internet requires three basic elements:

• The Domain: Your digital address and deed (such as GoDaddy).
• The Hosting: Your site’s memory—the digital warehouse where your articles, videos, and photos live (such as Hostinger).
• The CMS (Content Management System): The steering wheel; the system that allows you to create content, store it in that warehouse, and link it directly to your address (such as WordPress or Ghost).

In short, when a reader clicks a link, the domain guides them to the property, and the CMS pulls the story from the warehouse and displays it on their screen.

Our decision to switch systems was not a matter of preference; it was an operational necessity. According to our security metrics, bad actors tried to force their way through our digital doors 167,000 times in just 30 days. This intense malicious traffic strained our infrastructure so severely that during our emergency migration, several of our archival photos were corrupted, and our English-language section temporarily crashed.

Yet, I have always believed that within every fall lies the opportunity to rise again. With the attacks intensifying, burning resources to defend an outdated system made no business sense. We needed to fundamentally change our infrastructure.

Ghost is a specialized system built from the ground up for independent journalists and publishers. Compared to WordPress, it is remarkably faster, far more secure against cyber threats, and crucially, it features a native audience network that doesn't rely on heavy, expensive third-party plugins. This significantly lowers our overhead while protecting our data.

This week, we began our work in an entirely new digital world. We manually onboarded 80 of our readers to the new system, while another 122 joined us on their own initiative. In our very first week, our direct subscriber community reached 202.

As I write these words, our wider readership has grown to 1256. We invite you to create an account on our new site and claim your place in this independent digital journey. Let us stay connected, so we never lose touch.