WordPress security tips are important, right? Rarely do we discuss WordPress security but the security of your site is very important, lest you put your valuable data at risk. So, WordPress security tips are important, right?
Imagine that you have created a website by putting all your energy and effort into it. You are logged in to pick a fantastic design and craft flawless content. But if you can’t ensure the security of your site’s data, all your efforts will be in vain. These days hackers are active online to steal your personal information.
Therefore, you must be well-informed about the nitty-gritty and technical aspects of your WordPress site. Also, you need to know how to lock down your site with foolproof security.
In this article, I will detail WordPress security tips so that you can protect it from hackers.
But before that, let me clarify the point of why you need to secure your WordPress website. This is because you will only be interested in implementing lock-down tips on your WordPress site if you are convinced of the usefulness of WordPress.
Why you need to secure your WordPress site:
While I won’t explain why you should secure your WordPress site, you can easily make it a necessity. But still, for your better understanding, let me list a few reasons why securing a WordPress site is important.
Data and Reputation Protection:
Your site contains a lot of data and information about your business and customers Hackers and attackers are always looking for loopholes to steal your valuable information. If you fall prey to their trap, you will suffer a security breach.
Security breaches can include the leaking of confidential public information, identity theft, ransomware attacks, DDOS attacks, server crashes, etc. So, to avoid these vulnerabilities, you need to go ahead and secure your WordPress site.
Acknowledgments from Google:
One factor that helps improve search rank in Google is the security of a website. Needless to say, there is more than one factor to ranking a particular website. When your website provides secure access to visitors and users, it not only builds their trust in you but also Google rates you well.
Google prioritizes your website because you are protecting the valuable data of your visitors and users and showing more promise.
Natural expectations from your audience:
Your visitors and clients always expect you to protect their personal information. Whether it’s related to contact information, payment information, or even your client’s responses to a survey, it’s your job to reassure them about data protection.
Failure to secure data will not only lead to security breaches but also to loss of credibility from your valued clients. This is something you don’t want, so you need to emphasize WordPress security to maintain your goodwill as well as gain credibility with your users.
WordPress Security Tips and Tricks:
Now, let’s take a look at the WordPress security tips and tricks that I have rounded up for you to secure your WordPress site.
Secure your WordPress site’s login method:
There are many techniques you can employ to keep your site’s login methods secure. But the most important thing to prevent a malicious attack is to secure your login methods.
- First and foremost, don’t hesitate to set a strong password to log into your site. Time flies but many people still prefer to stay old-fashioned and go for predictable passwords like “123456” or “abcdef”. It is nothing but a victim of attackers as they are also aware of these types of weak passwords. So, be careful about the password you set.
- You can use a 2-factor authentication method to secure your login process. To take advantage of this method, a user must verify sign-on through a second device.
- Limit your login attempts or in other words, put a cap on login attempts as this will limit a user’s wrong attempts and prevent him from making a brute-force login attempt.
- Another effective method you can use is to add a captcha. This is a very common method that website owners implement to secure their sites This method asks the user to type alphanumeric characters and verifies the user as a living person.
- Last but not least, there’s an auto-login feature that’s a pretty simple site-secure method. Normally, you’re supposed to log out of your account when you’re done. But if you forget to log out, the account can be logged out automatically after you exit the account by adding the auto-logout feature.
Always keep WordPress versions, themes and plugins updated:
There are countless people who continue to use older versions of WordPress and don’t bother to update. They think that updating the existing version will create additional errors such as site breaks, key changes disappearing, the functionality of certain plugins, etc.
In fact, they are not the right way to think as sites break due to bugs in older versions of WordPress. Second, key changes are not something recommended by WordPress experts and developer teams due to potential risks.
On top of that, when you update your WordPress version, it must include security patches and additional functionality needed to run the latest plugins. Likewise, you should update existing themes and plugins. Updated themes and plugins protect your site from vulnerabilities, bugs, and potential security breaches.
In fact, always be careful about installing trusted plugins and themes. The featured and popular sections of the WordPress repository might be the best place to start. ElementsKit is one of the top-rated WordPress plugins I can name that undergoes regular updates.
Benefits of Secure WordPress Hosting Services:
Security features include support for the latest versions of PHP, Apache, MySQL, and Firewall. On top of that, there should be 24/7 security monitoring to prevent fishing activities. Also, make sure the hosting company offers an SFTP or SSH connection instead of an FTP connection.
A good hosting company should have a ready-to-deploy disaster recovery system in place to protect your valuable data in the event of a sudden crash.
Always keep a backup of your site:
Site backup is something you can never override. You can take all necessary security measures but still, site data loss is normal. There are countless examples of highly-secured sites being hacked and then data being stolen. So, you may also face such incidents and hence you need to be careful.
The best measure you can take is to back up your site data to an off-site location. This will allow you to restore your site whenever you want without any hassle. There are many ways you can back up your site, including downloading files and databases, deploying hosting provider tools, and installing WordPress backup plugins.
You can schedule automatic backups of your site at regular intervals. For most websites, running weekly or monthly backups is perfect unless it’s a huge organization. However, don’t forget to delete a new back up once it’s created because they take up space on your drive.
Install a firewall:
A firewall is something between your network and other networks that prevents unauthorized traffic from the outside. The specialty of a firewall is that it keeps malicious activity out of your network by excluding direct connections between your network and other networks.
Installing a firewall has many benefits. You can set up rules such as who can access your site and who should be blocked. It monitors and controls network traffic such that you can block users, IPs, and even an entire country that has blacklisted or tried to harm you in the past.
Enable HTTPS/SSL:
Even if you don’t know what HTTPS means, you should at least be familiar with the term because it often appears in URLs. If your site is SSL-enabled, your site URL will display with HTTPS instead of HTTP. If a user notes “HTTPS” in front of a website’s URL, their browser is establishing a secure connection to the hosting server and therefore to your site.
Enabling SSL is important for e-commerce sites and others that deal with sensitive data such as credit card information. SSL is a protocol that makes it difficult for anyone to sniff your site’s confidential information. SSL also comes in handy on public networks and when many people try to log into your site. When HTTPS and SSL are enabled, information between a browser and a site is encrypted. And encryption of traffic data not only protects your site but also streamlines your site’s search engine rank. Note that Google Chrome shows all sites that do not have “HTTPS” in the browser bar as not secure
Block Hotlinking All Tips:
The term hotlinking may be new to many of you. Let me clarify the concept of hotlinking. Let’s say there’s an image you’ve spotted on a certain website. Now, if you’re going to display this image on your website via the image URL, you’re just hotlinking the image. What’s wrong with that?
There are 2 main problems with hotlinking. First, displaying someone else’s assets on your website is illegal. In other words, it is nothing but stealing another’s property. Even if you get permission, hotlinking is not part of a profitable business.
This is because when you share an image from another website with your website, the content is hosted from that site. So, when people visit websites hotlinked to your content, it uses up your bandwidth. Fortunately, there are ways to prevent these hotlinks using a security plugin, a CDN, an FTP client, and control panel settings.
Disable Directory Listing with .htaccess:
Directory listings are another way to publish your data. If you create a new directory on your website but don’t add an index.html file to it, your visitors can access everything in the directory.
For example, if you have a directory called “details”, it can be accessed by simply typing – http://www.example.com/details. You do not need a password to access it. But you can prevent access by adding a code to your .htaccess file – options all-index. htaccess file secures the site in addition to ensuring that the links on your site work properly. It blocks access from specific IPs or disables PHP execution in specific folders.
But before making any changes, don’t forget to back up your old .htaccess files so you can restore your site in case of a disaster.
Secure your wp-config.php file, wp-admin, and login page:
Hackers request a wp-admin folder and login page. This allows them to try all the hacking tricks and techniques. But you can nullify their evil attempts just by adding an extra layer of security.
What you can do is set an additional password at the server side level and protect your admin area whether your site is on an Apache or NGINX server.
Another file you should protect is the wp-config.php file. This is a very important file on your WordPress site and contains valuable information about your WordPress installation. If something goes wrong with this file, your blog can be badly affected.
You can implement a simple trick to protect the wp-config.php file. What you can do is move the wp-config.php file one step up into your WordPress root directory. This way, you can better protect the file from hackers as they won’t be able to locate it easily.
Don’t ignore regular scanning to check for malware:
Last but not least, you must focus on regular scanning to check for malware. You may want to be careful before installing any plugins or themes on your website. However, this does not guarantee that your website is free from all types of viruses, spyware, and ransomware. We are human and have the potential to screw things up at times. So, you need to use a website security checker and scan periodically. Fortunately, there are plenty of security plugins at your disposal to run scans. Not surprisingly, these scanners can only scan your website and won’t clean your website if malware is found. However, cleaning your website is a completely different task.
Conclusion
The security of a website is a big concern these days. Cybercriminals are active 24/7 to steal your credentials and valuables. And for this, they develop strategies and look for flaws. Maintain and secure your WordPress site to outshine them. A mere nominal website security check will not help prevent cyber attacks. You need to come up with proven and concrete website security measures. This is exactly what I have listed in this article. Go through each of the WordPress security tips, understand the technicalities, and finally execute.
After that be largely assured of your site’s security. All the above tips are useful to keep your WordPress website secure. Some of them can be a bit complicated to follow but some of them are a cakewalk like using updated WordPress versions, themes, and plugins. A plugin I mentioned above. Another plugin that undergoes regular updates is ShopEngine, an all-in-one WooCommerce builder. Buy SSL Certificate From Oudel Inc.
