When making a website in WordPress, you will typically add a ton of modifications to improve its design, functionalities, and ease of use. Security matters, albeit an important factor, are often ignored.
As a rule of thumb, “Prevention is better than Cure”. Imagine after spending a lot of time and effort put into the design and contents, your website is hacked in a single day. How would you feel? It’s much better if you take essential actions to avoid such a scenario in the first place.
One of the biggest security issues is that WordPress exposes numerous yet unnecessary information to potential hackers. In this article, we will discuss 7 tips to protect your WordPress site against hackers and unauthorized users.
- Choose a unique username
- Create strong passwords
- Use genuine themes and plugins
- Keep your plugins and themes updated periodically
- Backup your website regularly
- Limit login attempts
- Protect your email server
#1 Choose a unique username
It might appear to be extremely self-evident, however, you might be shocked at the number of sites that are still gotten to with the typical administrator users.
You need to refrain from using standard usernames such as Admin, Adimuser, admin1, and such. Similarly, abstain from utilizing your name or any reference to the website name. All in all, you ought to stay away from any username that might be guessable.
Remember that tools used to hack your WordPress are run by smart automated bots and those kinds of usernames will be the first to be tried.
#2 Create strong passwords
It’s worth noticing that some people still use the easiest and common passwords like 12345, abc123 or their date of birth. Hence, it’s quite straightforward for hackers to guess and obtain their passwords. To avoid such scenarios, you need to set up a strong password. Follow these tips to create unique and strong passwords for your WordPress accounts:
- Set your passwords with more than or at least eight characters. Avoid long passwords, for instance, a 50-character long password otherwise you couldn’t recall it later
- Combine alphabets, special characters such as “@, !, and #”, numbers, upper case, and lower case for your passwords
- Avoid using personal information in passwords including your date of birth, phone number, or names of you and your family members, for example, “johnsmith150387”.
- Passphrase your passwords like using “@” for “a”, or “0” for “o.”
#3 Use premium themes and plugins
People are attracted to giveaways since they bring value freely without any payment. Plugins and themes are no exemption.
There are thousands of plugins and themes available on WordPress repository and we’re sure which is safe and which can become harmful to your site. Several plugins might inject malicious code and destroy your website in a moment or two.
Our recommendation is to utilize just and solely unique themes and plugins downloaded either from the official archive or from the Developer’s website. You will at least receive support from plugin or theme contributors when any issue arises.
#4 Keep your plugins and themes updated frequently
You need to keep updating your WordPress themes and plugins with the latest versions available. Frequently, you would like to find different bugs and flaws which need to be reported such as error 502 bad gateway.
Developers keep an eye on bugs or error reports and release a new version to fix these bugs. That’s the main reason you need to update your WordPress plugins and themes to the latest version just like an operating system of your PC.
#5 Backup your website regularly
A website backup refers to a copy of all your website data. It is quite essential to keep backups of your site which is running on CMS like WordPress from time to time. When you don’t back up your site, you might lose all the customizations you’ve done to it. As a consequence, you will lose revenue during the site recovery.
Website backups should be done automatically on a regular basis, at least once a week. The easiest way to take backups is through plugins such as UpdraftPlus and BackWPup.
#6 Limit login attempts
Limit the number of unsuccessful attempts to 3, for instance. In the event that somebody typed the wrong login information for 3 times, they won’t be able to try again until after a predefined time.
This is as simple as installing a brute force attack plugin. You will be able to block bots and unauthorized users from keep trying usernames and passwords to log in to your site. By constraining login attempts, you’re shielding yourselves from such attacks.
#7 Protect your email server
The email servers which are associated with your website can also be affected by the hacker’s attack. Cybercriminals can also try to access your SMTP servers from which all your emails are going through. This can only be achieved by breaking down your website authentication with some sophisticated methods. The use of TLS or SSL security can be a helpful approach to strengthen overall security.
It’s time to Secure Your WordPress Site
WordPress, thanks to its popularity, is a favorite target for hackers. They can break your website, steal customer information, or delete all pages and posts. Luckily, there are numerous methods you can take to protect your WordPress files and content.
Apart from using unique usernames and passwords, you should also update themes and plugins on your site frequently. Additionally, WordPress backups are also highly recommended to save your site from losing all important data. You can limit the login attempts to stop brute force attacks as well.
If you follow the tips above closely, you’ll be well on your way to have a secure WordPress website. Please leave a comment if you have any questions on how to secure your WordPress.
