A secure WordPress website is essential for any business. It protects your data and prevents malicious actors from accessing sensitive information. With the proper security measures, you can ensure your website will remain safe and secure. In this article, we will give you some tips on how to increase the security of your WordPress website account and protect it from potential threats.
Why WordPress security is so important?
Before we get into the WordPress security checklist, it’s essential to understand why WordPress security is so important. That way, you can rest easy knowing exactly why you’re investing time in securing your site or why you hired a WordPress security expert.
Overall, WordPress security is essential for several reasons:
- WordPress is widespread: The system works so well that over 43% of the Net uses WordPress. But that also means it’s a recognizable interface, even to hackers.
- They have a failsafe before problems occur: While unlikely, a compromised WordPress website could cause it to crash or go wrong. Fail-safes like storing offsite backups and restoring backups mean you can fix attacks even after they happen.
- WordPress has many moving parts: Third-party plugins, themes, hosting companies, and core software. Many elements combine to make WordPress one of the most customizable content management systems. But with all these moving parts, vulnerabilities can arise, such as when you install a plugin with questionable code or do not instantly update your WordPress style.
- It has a login section: To date, one of the most common kinds of hacking is the brute force attack, where a bot or person tries multiple usernames and passwords to break into your site. WordPress has a login module like any technology, so you must do everything possible to protect the login area and strengthen your credentials. The same goes for FTP and hosting credentials.
Part (a): Secure your WordPress website by ensuring your hosting is secure
Almost all hosting companies claim to offer an environment optimized for WordPress, but do they?
1. Work only with good hosters
Working only with reliable, high-quality, secure hosters would be best. This advice seems obvious.
More or less, everyone assumes their hosting is terrific until something breaks for the first time. Not all hosting companies and hosting plans are the same in the real world.
Please take a look at any of our hosting surveys. You’ll see how different people’s experiences are regarding overall hosting quality and individual aspects of their hosting configurations, such as security, reliability, speed, etc.
Some hosts are inferior and need to cope better under stress.
The trouble right here is that a lot of the moment, you need to know that your hoster needs to take the safety and security of your website seriously enough. Things like increased hacking, frequent downtime, and low performance can all result from inadequate security mechanisms.
The reality is that you can’t “fix” your hoster. The simplest and best solution is to switch to another, more secure hoster. The more you pay, the better your new hoster will be, but there are also some cheap options you can consider.
Here’s a quick recommendation if you’re in a hurry:
- Best power host. Kinsta. For $115/ per month, you can host up to 5 internet sites and receive ~100,000 visitors.
- Entry-level managed host. Flywheel. You can host one website for $13.00/month and receive ~5,000 visitors.
- Value-priced choice. SiteGround. You can host a website for as little as $1.99/month.
2. Protect the wp-config.php file
The wp-config.php file contains essential information about your WordPress installation and is the most critical file in your website’s root directory. Protecting it implies safeguarding the core of your WordPress blog.
This tactic makes it harder for hackers to penetrate your site’s security, as the wp-config.php file becomes inaccessible.
Another advantage is that the protection process is straightforward. Take your wp-config. Php documents and move them to a higher level than your root directory.
The configuration file settings are at the top of the priority list in the current WordPress architecture. So even if it is stored in a folder above the origin directory site, WordPress can still see it. The question is how the server can access the file if you store it in a different location.
3. Disallow file editing
Users with admin access to your WordPress dashboard can edit any files that become part of your setup. That includes all plugins and themes. If you disallow file editing, no one can change any files – even if a hacker gains admin access to your WordPress control panel.
To make this work, add the complying with to the wp-config. Php documents (at the actual end):
4. Set directory site permissions carefully
Incorrect directory permissions can be fatal, especially when working in a shared hosting environment.
In such a case, changing the file and directory permissions is a good step to secure the website at the hosting level. Setting directory permissions to “755” and file permissions to “644” will protect the entire file system – directories, subdirectories, and individual files.
That can be done either manually through the File Manager in your hosting control panel or through the incurable (connected with SSH) – use the “chmod” command.
5. Disabling directory site listing with. htaccess
If you create a new directory site as part of your site and don’t put an index.html file, you may be surprised that your visitors can get a complete directory listing of everything in that directory.
For example, if you create a directory named “data,” you can see whatever is in that directory site by simply typing http://www.example.com/data/ into your browser. No password or anything like that is required.
6. Block all hotlinks
Suppose you find an image on the Internet and want to publish it on your website. First, you need permission to pay for the image. Otherwise, it is most likely illegal to do so. However, if you get permission, you can directly take the URL of the image and use the photo in your post. The main problem is that the image will be shown on your website but hosted on another server.
From this perspective, you cannot control whether the photo stays on the server. However, knowing that this could happen on your website is also essential.
If you are trying to protect your WordPress website, hotlinking means someone else will take your photo and steal your server bandwidth to display the image on their website. The result is slower loading speeds and potentially high server costs.
7. Understand and Protect Yourself from DDoS Attacks
A DDoS attack is a standard attack on your web server bandwidth where the assaulter uses numerous programs and systems to overload your web server. Such an attack does not compromise your website’s files but can crash your website for a long time if not fixed. Cyber terrorists carry them out, and the motive might be simply to cause havoc. Usually, you just read about DDoS strikes when they affect big companies.
However, you don’t have to be a Fortune 500 company to be at risk.
If that worries you, we recommend signing up for Sucuri or Cloudflare’s premium plans. These solutions have web application firewalls that analyze the bandwidth and fully defend against DDoS attacks.
Part (b): Secure your WordPress website by protecting the login page and preventing brute force attacks
Everyone knows the default URL of the WordPress login page. The website’s backend is accessed from there, which is why people try to brute force their way in. Add/wp-login.php or /wp-admin/ to the end of your domain name, and you’re there.
We recommend customizing the URL of the login page and even the interaction on the page. That is the first thing I do when I start securing my website.
There are some responsibilities to take care of as a website owner. Protecting the login page and preventing brute-force attacks is one of the great things you can do. And why? Because it’s usually the user’s fault that their website was hacked. So the critical question is: what are you doing to protect your website from hacking?
Here are some suggestions for securing the login page of your WordPress website:
8. Setting up a lock function for the website and locking users
A lockout feature for failed login attempts can solve the central problem of constant brute-force attempts. Any hacking attempt with repeatedly incorrect passwords will lock the site and notify you of this unauthorized activity.
The iThemes Safety and security plugin is just one of its great plugins, and I have also been utilizing it for some time. The plugin has a great deal in this regard. You can set several failed login attempts among over 30 extraordinary WordPress security measures before the plugin blocks the attacker’s IP address.
9. Use two-factor authentication for WordPress security
Another good security measure is introducing two-factor authentication (2FA) module on the login page. In this case, the user provides credentials for two different components. Which ones are decided by the website owner? It can be around a password followed by a personal concern, a secret code, a series of characters, or, what is even more popular, the Google Authenticator app that sends a secret code to your phone. This way, only the person who has your phone (you) can log into your website.
10. Use your email to log in
By default, you must enter your username to log in to WordPress. Utilizing an email ID rather than a username is a more secure technique. The reasons for this are apparent. Usernames are easy to forecast, while email IDs are not. In addition, every WordPress user account is created with a particular email address, which makes it a legitimate identifier for logging in.
Several WordPress protection plugins allow you to establish login pages so all users can visit with their email addresses.
11. Relabel your login link to secure your WordPress website
Changing the login URL is a simple matter. By default, the WordPress login page is easily accessible via wp-login.php or wp-admin, which are added to the main website URL.
If hackers know the direct URL of your login page, they can try to brute force their way in. They try to log in using their GWDb (Guess Work Database, i.e., a database of guessed usernames and passwords; e.g., username: admin and password: p@ssword .with millions of such combinations).
At this point, we have already restricted user login attempts and replaced usernames with email IDs. We can replace the login URL and block 99% of direct brute-force attacks.
This little trick prevents an unauthorized person from accessing the login page. Only someone who knows the exact URL can do this.
The easiest way to change your login URL is by using the WPS Hide Login plugin. It is straightforward to use; enter the new URL of your login page and save the changes. You can set the URL to any value you want.
12. Adjust your passwords to increase WordPress security
Play around with your passwords and change them regularly to secure your WordPress website. Improve their strength by adding extra words and making your passwords longer.
Note that we don’t necessarily advise adding more and more upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters to your passwords. Many people opt for long passphrases instead, as they are hard for hackers to predict but more accessible to remember than a bunch of random numbers and letters.
13. Use a password manager
We all know that we should change our passwords frequently and that they should be hard to crack. We know what we “should” do but don’t always have the time.
That is where high-quality password managers come into play. They generate strong passwords for you and store them in a secure vault, so you don’t have to remember them.
14. Automatically log out idle users from your website
When users leave your website’s wp-admin panel open on their screen, it can pose a severe security risk to WordPress. Any passerby can change information on your site, alter a person’s user account, or even break your site altogether. You can avoid this by ensuring your site logs users out after a certain period of inactivity.
You can set this up with a plugin like BulletProof Security. With this plugin, you can set a custom time limit for inactive users, after which they will be automatically logged out.
Part (c): Secure your WordPress website from the admin dashboard
For a hacker, the most exciting part of a website is the admin dashboard, which is, in fact, the most protected area of all. So the real challenge is to attack the most protected area. If this is successful, the hacker has won a moral victory and can do much damage.
Here is what you can do to protect the admin dashboard of your WordPress website:
15. Protect the wp-admin directory
The wp-admin directory is the heart of any WordPress website. If this part of your website is attacked, the entire website can be damaged.
One way to prevent this is to password-protect the wp-admin directory. With such WordPress security measures, the website owner can access the dashboard by entering two passwords. One protects the login page, and the other protects the WordPress admin area.
16. Use SSL to encrypt data and improve WordPress security
Implementing a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate is a smart move to secure the administration area. SSL ensures secure data transfer between the user’s browser and the server, making it difficult for hackers to break the connection or forge your data.
It is easy to purchase an SSL certificate for your WordPress website. You can purchase one from a third-party provider or check if your hosting company provides one for free.
17. Add user accounts with care
If you run a WordPress blog or a blog with multiple authors, you must expect multiple people to access your admin panel. That could make your site more vulnerable to WordPress security threats.
You can use a plugin like a Password Policy Manager to ensure that the passwords set by users are secure. That is a precautionary measure, but it’s better than having multiple users with weak passwords.
18. Change the administrator username
When installing WordPress, you should never choose “admin” as the username for your main administrator account. Such an easy-to-guess username is easy for hackers to find. They must determine the password; your entire website is in the wrong hands.
19. Monitor your files
To increase WordPress security, monitor changes to your website files with plugins like Wordfence or iThemes Security. These two plugins can scan WordPress for security vulnerabilities and notify you if they find any.
Part (d): Secure your WordPress website via the database
All the data and information on your website are stored in the database. It is vital to take care of them.
Here are a couple of points you can do to make it more secure:
20. Change the WordPress database table prefix
If you’ve installed WordPress before, you know the wp table prefix used by the WordPress database. We recommend you change it to something unique.
Using the default prefix makes your website’s database vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. You can prevent such attacks by changing up to something else. For example, you can make it my wp- or new.
If you have already installed your WordPress website with the default prefix, you can use some plugins to change it. Plugins like WP-DBManager or iThemes Security can help you do this task with just one click. (Make sure you back up your website before changing anything on the database).
21. Make regular backups to secure your WordPress website
No matter how secure your WordPress website is, there is always room for improvement. But at the end of the day, maintaining an external backup is the best antidote. If you have a backup, you can return your WordPress website anytime. Some plugins can help you in this regard. For example, there are all of these.
Some more significant sites do hourly backups, but that’s complete overkill for most businesses. You need to ensure that most of those backups are deleted after you create a new one since each backup file takes up space on your hard drive. Therefore, we recommend weekly or monthly backups for most businesses.
22. Set strong passwords for your database
A strong password for the primary database user is a must, as WordPress uses this password to access the database.
Use uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters for the password. Passphrases are also excellent. A free and quick tool for creating secure passwords is Secure Password Generator.
23. Monitor your audit logs
If you run a WordPress multisite or a website with multiple authors, you must know what user activity is happening. Your authors and contributors may be changing their passwords, but there are other things you want to avoid happening. For example, changes to themes and widgets are restricted to administrators only. By checking the audit log, you can ensure administrators and contributors aren’t trying to change anything on your site without permission.
Part (e): Secure your WordPress website with themes and plugins
Themes and plugins are essential components of any WordPress website. Unfortunately, they can also pose serious security threats.
Let’s find out how to secure your WordPress themes and plugins the right way:
24. Regular updates for WordPress security
Any good software product is supported by its developers and updated occasionally. These updates are meant to fix bugs and sometimes contain essential security patches. WordPress and its plugins are no different.
If you don’t update your themes and plugins, it can lead to problems. Many hackers take advantage of the fact that people don’t bother to update their plugins and themes. Most of the time, these hackers exploit bugs that have already been fixed.
If you use a WordPress product, you should update it regularly. Plugins, themes, everything. The good news is that WordPress automatically provides updates for its users. So you will receive an email notifying you of the update and information about the fixes in your dashboard.
25. Remove your WordPress version number
You can easily find out your current WordPress version number. It is located directly in the source view of your website. You can also see it at the bottom of your dashboard (but it doesn’t matter if you’re trying to back up your WordPress website).
The point is this: If hackers know what version of WordPress you’re using, it’s easier for them to craft the perfect attack. You can hide your version number with almost any of the WordPress security plugins mentioned above.
Final thoughts on tightening up the security of your WordPress website account
If you’re a beginner, this was a lot to take in. The great news is that you don’t have to be a WordPress security expert to use it.
Everything we’ve mentioned in this article is a step in the right direction and something you should consider doing to secure your WordPress website account. Think of it as a 25-step WordPress security checklist, and go through each step individually until you’re done. Remember, the more you take care of your WordPress website security, the harder it will be for hackers to break in.
Just as important as security, however, is website performance. With a website that loads quickly, your visitors will have a chance to consume your content. The average website visitor waits only 2 seconds before leaving in frustration.
Is Your WordPress Site Hacked?– Contact us to fix your hacked WordPress website.
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