Secure Your WordPress Website With These 8 Tips

Security of the WordPress Site is a very important topic for every website owner. In today’s time, There are around 50,000 for phishing every week & Google is blacklisting around 10,000+ websites every day and the reason is malware.

In all open-source software, security is essential. And it is surprising but according to the leading online security experts, WordPress is the most hacked CMS platform. The main reason behind this is with the so many WordPress installations out there, some of which are quite poorly protected.

But WordPress is one of the CMS Platform that has gotten better with age and has become the primary choice of marketers, bloggers, entrepreneurs who have something to sell online but don’t know where to begin.

8 Valuable Tips to Secure WordPress Website

There is a number of actionable steps that you can take to secure WordPress website against security vulnerabilities

1. Selection Of User Name.

In the previous time, The default username is “admin”. And so it is very easy for the hacker to know this username. But thankfully, WordPress has since changed this and now it asks for the custom username at the time of installing WordPress. However, there are still some 1-click WordPress installers, set the default admin username to “admin”. if you notice this case you can also switch your web hosting. This is the first steps toward secure WordPress website that you must know.

 

There are 3 methods you can use to change the username.

·         Update UserName from phpMyAdmin

·         Delete the old user and Create the new admin username.

·         Or you can use username changer plugin

 

2. Install New Plugin Carefully

We all know that Plugins are one of the best things about WordPress that sets it apart from other CMS platforms, but downloading any plugin without research is dangerous.

The best way to avoid downloading problematic plugins is to simply do a little research before adding one to your own website.

Check reviews to see people’s experience with it and look at its update log to make sure it’s being actively cared for. To check the performance of a plugin, it’s also advisable to test new plugins on a staging site first.

 

3. Use Of The Secure Hosting Is Important

Not all web hosting providers are responsible for the hacking of the site. Choose the right web hosting is important for the secure WordPress website. Simply do not go for the cheapest you can find. Firstly do your research, and make sure you use a well-established company with a good track-record for strong security standards. Paying extra is ok if you are getting hosting that ensures your website security.

 

4. Limit Login Attempt

It is very important to use Plugin that limits the number of failed login attempts from a single IP address. This allows you to specify how many retries will be allowed, and how long an IP will be locked out for after too many failed login attempts. WordPress Web Developer must take care of website security.

 

5. Avoid Using Free Themes

Avoid using free themes, especially if they aren’t built by a reputable developer it is better for the security of your website. The main reason behind this is that free themes can often contain things like base64 encoding, which may be used to insert spam links into your site, or other malicious code that can cause problems like redirecting of the site and can be anything.

 

You can use free themes that are developed by trusted theme companies, or those available on the official WordPress.org theme repository. And the same logic is applied with plugins.

 

Note: Do not download the plugins from the untrustworthy source. And this is very important to secure WordPress website.

 

6. Update All Things

WordPress release a new version update, time to time. If you don’t keep your website updated with the latest version of WordPress, then you could be leaving your website open to attacks. Usually, hackers will target website that is using older versions of WordPress with known security issues, So it is advisable to keep an eye on your Dashboard notification area and don’t ignore those ‘Please update now’ messages.

 

The same applies to plugins and themes. Make sure you update to the latest versions both as they are released. If you do these things and keep your site up-to-date than it is much less likely to get hacked.

 

7. Move your Website to SSL/HTTPS

It is important to enabling SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), after this, your website will use HTTPS instead of HTTP. This helps in encrypting the data transfer between your website and a user’s browser. And encryption makes it harder for a hacker to sniff around and steal information or hack the website.

 

8. Customize Login URL

If you use the default login URL then it is easy for the hacker to access your website. If you don’t change the default login URL “wp-login.php” it will be easy for a hacker to try brute force and gain access to your login credentials.

So it is important to change the default URL and make a new URL that is hard to guess.  You can either install the iThemes Security plugin to automatically change your login URLs and can also change the URL manually.

 

Conclusion

Secure WordPress website is one of the critical parts of a website. If you don’t maintain your WordPress security, hackers can easily attack your site. Maintaining your website security isn’t hard and can be done without spending a penny.