I heard from many website owners complaining about WordPress security. So the question is how to keep your WordPress website safe and secure. They thought WordPress is an open source script and is vulnerable to all sorts of attacks. Is that possible? So, how do we secure our WordPress website?
If you are serious about WordPress security, then you need to pay attention in this guide, we will share all the top WordPress security steps to protect your website against hackers and other security issues.
If you want to hire a team of professionals to manage your website security. Try our WordPress Maintenance Service. In case your website already have been hacked we can also help you restore website.
Why WordPress websites are really insecure?
As you know WordPress currently supports or is used in more than total 52% of all websites. That means there are million of websites which use WordPress. This popularity and continuous increase in usage also makes it favorite choice for hackers to crack or hack. Reason is simple if they can enter in 1 website they can enter in millions. As WordPress is open source, the code is available this makes professional attackers continuously reading WordPress code and finding ways to crack them.
WordPress Vulnerability increase when we install 3rd party plugins and WordPress themes. That’s why its always recommended to get WordPress themes and WordPress plugins from trusted resources. As WordPress continuously release new updates to eliminate the risk of new threats coming on internet. Its always important to keep your WordPress website updated cause every update reduce the risk of security issues.
Similarly the plugins if the coder of a plugin or WordPress theme wasn’t very much aware for security and left some door open for hackers to enter. This can increase the risk so while you can take various steps down. But to simple it the main steps you can take care.
- Always keep your WordPress Updated every update is important for security as old code maybe already been cracked.
- Always keep your WordPress themes and plugins updated.
- Make sure you are not using pirated or cracked Plugins or themes.
Along above all the other things you can consider are listed below. There are few steps which you really need to know for securing your WordPress website.
1- Use Two-Factor Authentication
The Two-factor authentication technique requires users to log in by using a two-step authentication method. The first is the username and password, and the second step requires you to authenticate using separate device/ app.
Most sites like Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc allow you to enable it for your accounts. You can add the same functionality to your WordPress site.
First, you need to install and activate the Two Factor Authentication plugin. Upon activation, you need to click on the ‘Two Factor Auth’ link in WordPress admin sidebar. Now, you need to install and open an authenticator app on your phone. There is several of them available like Google Authenticator, LastPass Authenticator etc. Connect it with your site.
Its really help you to secure your site. Also stay brute force attack away.
2- Site Updating regularly
Site Updating regularly is really necessary as we all know that WordPress is a source which millions of people use and as same hackers are finding different ways to crack your code whatever the code they get from any of your plugin, Themes or WordPress. Your site always must be updated so you feel free for any security issue. Every update is important for security as old code maybe already been cracked. Make sure you are not using pirated or cracked Plugins or themes.
Keep an eye on your WordPress, Plugins, Themes, PHP if any of them need update you must do it. It may protect your site from different errors allover help to secure your website.
I suggest you to delete inactive plugins and themes as they became the main source of cracking codes etc.
3- Work only with good Hosting Company
Hosting companies are all good until something breaks for the first time. As, every hosting is not same their are many excellent Hosting companies which works for their quality. They are quite expensive but after connecting with them we feel free for hosting security issues.
We recommend you to go for Hostgator. They are really fast to reply and secure also their servers kept your site speed around 2S to 3S which is really good for google to share your data with users. They keep your website backup, anytime you need they are available for you.
4- Create a Strong Password
If your password is not strong enough, you might want to change it now to make your site more secure. Easy passwords may the cause of 12% of all WordPress security breaches. With hackers finding clever and creative ways to bypass passwords, this is not the time that you use your birthday or pet’s name, cell numbers as a password. They are begging to hacked.
So the best way to makes a strong password is? while creating a password, make sure to use a combination of lowercase, uppercase, special characters, and numbers they will help a lot to generate a strong password. You can also use a phrase that you can easily remember. But the best ways to create a password is to use a random password generator and save it in notepad so you remember always.
5- Limit Login Attempts
The biggest mistakes most WordPress site owners do is having unlimited login attempts. Yes it might help you when remembering your password, it also gives hacker more chances to succeed with a brute force attack. If he have unlimited attempts, it is only a matter of time until they figure out your login credentials. That is the reason why it is important to limit the number of login attempts.
The method people do this is by using WordPress security plugins that limit the number of logging in attempts. One of the most popular ones is WP Limit Login Attempts. Also the plugin is free to install.
On a side note, changing your password on a regular basis also helps protect the website from brute force attacks.
6- Limit the Numbmer of User Accounts
As we all know users accounts have ability to use our WordPress Generally, the more users accounts you get, the more exposed your site is to being hacked. A best thing to do would be to make sure that not much people have the permission to login into your WordPress site. Also you should only create user accounts for those who need access and in-touch with you.
This is specially for admin accounts cause they have more power to enter anything. Always keep active admin accounts and the people who cannot care or keep their logins secure shouldn’t be given admin rights.
If your site have a-lot of users it not mean that you start deleting all, You just need to telly their roles like if someone does write blogs, there is no need to give them full access.
7- Protect the wp-admin directory
The wp-admin directory is the heart of any WordPress website. As your site logins save in wp-admin directory so its really necessary to keep your wp-admin directory save Therefore, if this part of your site gets breached, then the entire site can get damaged.
You can protect it with the help of password protection on wp-admin directory, by such security measures that admin can login to dashboard while entering two passwords From which one of them protects the login page, and other one secures our WordPress owner area.
8- Disallow file editing
If any one have admin access to you dashboard. Its very easy for him to edit any file which can be a part of your site installation. This may added your theme data all plugins data and much more.
If you disable file editing, no one will be able to add any files even if a hacker get your admin access to your WordPress dashboard.
To make this work, you need to add the following info to wp-config.php file (at the very end):
define(‘DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT’, true);
9 . Make backups regularly to secure your WordPress website
If you have a great hosting like Hostgator, Godaddy etc then you don’t need to worry about your hosting they include your backup package in your hosting charges.
If you feel that there is no way your hosting is not giving any kind of backup. So don’t worry you can do it yourself while you go to your cPanel find wp-content folder then there you see sub-directories download Uploads, Plugins, Themes directories and that’s it. Now if you get any kind of trouble you can simply add you backup to site cPanel. To get database backup please go to phpmyadmin and select your database going in Export section you can export and save your database file.
Best solution is to use Updraft WordPress plugin which you can setup with your Google drive or Dropbox and give it the sequence on which you want to take backups. UpDraft Plus plugin would take backups on your given sequence and this would be automatically.
NOTE: its good to take backup after every 2 months. And if you include content into your website regularly then it should be taken every week.