It’s easy to argue that WordPress is the most popular CMS globally. Whether you are a web design professional or a blogger looking for your first CMS, WordPress can provide many customization and growth possibilities. Check out the best practices guide & tutorial, tips, and ideas to secure your WordPress web site to be safe.
However, WordPress is prone to malware, cybersecurity risks, and brute force attacks, as with any digital technology. Let’s look at several tips and guidelines that can help you secure your current or future WordPress website from potential security risks and breaches.
Benefits of Secure Your WordPress Website
While original content, well-established visual design, and customer servicing play an important role, so does the general security of your WordPress platform. The safety of your WordPress site is essential for several reasons, including but not limited to the following:
- Provide a sense of security, safety, and trust to your B2C/B2B stakeholders
- Attract collaborators, influencers, and networking opportunities
- A greater understanding of the control of your website and easier data management
- Up-to-date knowledge of current security threats and cybersecurity risks
- High RoI of allocated time and resources into WordPress site security
What’s the Reason for the Importance of Website Security?
A hacked WordPress website can hurt your company’s revenue and reputation. Hackers can take user data and passwords, install malicious software and distribute malware to their victims. In the worst-case scenario, hackers may demand ransom to re-acquire access to your website.
In March 2016, Google reported that more than 50 million website users had been warned that a website they’re visiting might contain malware or steal information.
Additionally, Google deems around 20,000 websites to be malware-infected and around 50,000 to be phishing websites each week. If your website is considered a business, you should pay more attention to your WordPress security.
Similar to the fact that the owners of a physical store must safeguard their building, as an online business owner, you must safeguard your website. Check out the best practices guide & tutorial, tips, and ideas to secure your WordPress web site to be safe.
Use Premium Hosting
One of the best ways to ensure your WordPress website’s safety is to opt for premium hosting from the get-go. Avoid free hosting solutions such as WordPress’s free blogging domain to retain complete control of your website.
Premium hosting also brings numerous customization options for premium plugins, widgets, theme compatibility, and other quality-of-life additions. It will also make it far more difficult for third-party software or hackers to gain access to your back-end file repositories due to the protection provided by the premium hosting service.
Make Login URL Unique Tips Secure WordPress Site
Once a WordPress site is generated, a list of files and file names can be found in its folders. These files refer to different activities, login details, and commands typical for a fresh WordPress installation.
To keep outside parties from gaining access to your website, you should rename your default WordPress file names. You can refer to a platform like Paper to write up a naming system suitable for your existing data infrastructure. Make your file names unique, and only share the login URL details with people you trust with your site management activities.
Choose Quality Themes
WordPress themes come packed with additional features and customization options depending on their price points. Your WordPress site’s theme will generally be your company’s and brand’s identifying factor for outside stakeholders.
To make a good and lasting impression, you should use premium quality themes for your WordPress site, especially regarding security. The more well-made and curated a theme is, the better safety your site will have against potential malware or third-party intrusions. Check out the best practices guide & tutorial, tips, and ideas to secure your WordPress web site to be safe.
Keep Data Under Control Tips Secure WordPress Site
To keep things under control regarding content publishing and website optimization, you will need to monitor changes to your WordPress website’s data. You should frequently check your files, published content, comments, subscription prompts, and other data.
This will allow you to constantly know who comes to your website, in what capacity, and their interests in your business, content, and products.
Any changes from third-party sources or make you unsure who made them should be addressed immediately. Don’t leave things to chance; keep your back-end files under surveillance and control.
Enable Two-Step Authorization
Two-step authentication methods are commonplace in the modern internet sphere. It would help if you considered the option depending on the capacity at which you allow users to create accounts, log in, order products, or post content.
Enable two-step authorization on the front-end user’s side and back-end administrative login attempts. This will ensure that you are notified of any access attempts made by legitimate users and malicious software.
Update WordPress & Plugins Tips Secure WordPress Site
WordPress development moves quickly in terms of new features, updates, bug fixes, and malware protection. Ensure that your website is always up-to-date on the current WordPress iteration and that your plugins support that version of your CMS to make it all secure.
Incompatible plugins which are unaware of the latest security leaks and malware will likely lead to massive safety failures on your website. Check your CMS and any plugins you might have acted on regarding new versions and patches.
Make Frequent Backups Tips Secure WordPress Site
For whatever reason, your WordPress website can go offline at any given moment. Whether because of malware or a power outage, you want your site back online and available for public access as soon as possible.
To do that, you should always keep an offline or off-site backup of your WordPress site for unforeseen events. Failing to back your site up and facing malicious software issues or other problems might be disastrous for your company’s online presence. Take time to back your place up and have a copy available frequently, just in case.
Transfer your WordPress website to have it use SSL or HTTPS
SSL is a protocol that protects the transmission of information between your website and the user’s browser. This security measure makes it more challenging to snoop and take the lead. Once SSL is enabled, your website will use HTTPS instead of HTTP, and a padlock will appear next to your website’s address in browsers.
Certificate authorities typically purchase SSL certificates. Their cost typically ranged from $80 to $200 per year. Because of the extra expense, most website owners continued using the insecure protocol.
To remedy the situation, a nonprofit organization called Let’s Encrypt offered website owners free SSL certificates. Google Chrome, Facebook, Mozilla, and other organizations fund their endeavor.
Now, it’s simpler than ever to utilize SSL on all your WordPress sites. Many hosts directly provide a complimentary SSL certificate for $0.00-$1.00.
In Summary
WordPress website security is all about maintaining control over your back-end files, how people can interact with your site, and in what capacity. Don’t install unnecessary plugins or overly elegant themes to keep your site’s load times and search ranking.
Most importantly, don’t fall for social engineering traps of following comment links, malicious emails, and other suspicious content aimed at compromising the security of your WordPress site.
