Wordpress Security Tips to Secure Your Website

Nearly on a daily basis, you hear about some new security breach on the net. Sensitive data is leaked, millions of dollars are lost, and websites go down. As a blogger, however upset must you be regarding security?

You might assume you don’t have much to worry regarding, however, an unpatched vulnerability on your pc, your hosting company’s server, your WordPress install or maybe a rogue advertisement may severely harm your business and your reputation.

Back Up Your Blog

Backups are like insurance: annoying to line up however you’ll be glad you probably did once disaster strikes.

Backups don’t simply defend against hacking. you would possibly accidentally delete a post or other content. It is a lifesaver in these things.

Backing Up WordPress – attempt one of these backup plugins or services - there are several free, nice choices available.

Wix bloggers don’t want backups -at least, according to Wix. They keep historic copies of your website. But, Wix will offer a handy way to duplicate your entire website to use as a backup.

Secure the login page and prevent brute force attacks

Everyone knows the standard WordPress login page URL. The backend of the website is accessed from there, which is that the reason why individuals attempt to brute force their way in. simply add /wp-login.php or /wp-admin/ at the top of your domain name and there you go.

What I like to recommend is to customise the login page URL and even the page’s interaction. That’s the primary factor I do once I begin securing my website.

Protect the wp-admin directory

The wp-admin directory is that the heart of any WordPress website. Therefore, if this a part of your site gets breached then the whole site will get broken.

One possible way to stop this is to password-protect the wp-admin directory. With such security measure, the website owner might access the dashboard by submitting 2 passwords. One protects the login page, and therefore the other the WordPress admin area. If the website users are needed to induce access to some specific parts of the wp-admin, you will unblock those parts whereas locking the rest.

You can use the AskApache password protect plugin for securing the admin area. It automatically generates a .htpasswd file, encrypts the password and configures the right security-enhanced file permissions.

Use SSL to encrypt data

Implementing an SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificate is one good move to secure the admin panel. SSL ensures secure data transfer between user browsers and therefore the server, creating it troublesome for hackers to breach the connection or spoof your information.

Getting an SSL certificate for your WordPress website isn't an issue. you'll be able to purchase one from some dedicated companies or alternatively ask your hosting firm to hook you up with one (it’s typically a choice with their hosting packages).

I use the Let’s encrypt free open source SSL certificate on most of my sites. Any smart hosting company like SiteGround offers free Let’s encrypt with their hosting packages.

The SSL certificate also affects your website’s rankings at Google. Google ranks sites with SSL above those without it.

Change the WordPress database table prefix

If you have ever installed WordPress then you are familiar with the wp- table prefix that is used by the WordPress database. I recommend you change it to something unique.

Using the default prefix makes your site database prone to SQL injection attacks. Such attack can be prevented by changing up- to some other term, e.g. you can make it mywp-, wpnew-, etc.

If you have already installed your WordPress website with the default prefix, then you can use a few plugins to change it. Plugins like WP-DBManager or iThemes Security can help you do the job with just a click of a button. (Make sure you back up your site before doing anything to the database).

Update regularly

Every good software product is supported by its developers and gets updated currently and then, however, WordPress is updated very frequently. These updates are meant to fix bugs and generally have vital security patches.

Not updating your themes and plugins will mean serious trouble. several hackers believe the mere fact that folks can’t be bothered to update their plugins and themes. more typically than not, those hackers exploit bugs that have already been fastened.

So, if you’re using WordPress products then update them frequently. Plugins, themes, everything.