Worried about your WordPress security? It is a clear fact that WordPress websites have become a most vulnerable platform for cyber criminals to intrude. Keeping the pages secure is always a challenging task for many. Don’t be concerned about it anymore. Here are some simple and easy ways which you can follow to keep your website absolutely free from hackers.
Keep Updating
This is one of the primary things you need to consider. Often people ignore this part, which ends up inviting third-party access. Never go wrong. Following are the things you need to consider for updating:
Website
Whenever you see a “Update Available” banner while logging in, click OK! Keep your WordPress updated. These updates are mainly aimed to fix bugs and vital security patches. If you are concerned about losing any data, take a backup of it for future use. Do this on a regular basis. Always remember, an outdated site is vulnerable to attack anytime. If you are not technical person then you can hire expert like WP FIX IT.
Plug-ins and Themes
Plugins and themes provide direct access to the admin section. Therefore, keep your plugins and themes updated regularly, so as to avoid opening doors to the hackers. Also, remember to delete any plugins or themes that you do not use. This will help you reduce the possibility of getting hacked. Always download plugins from reliable sources.
Switch Passwords and Usernames, and Manage Accounts
This is a crucial part which people generally avoid out of ignorance, or may be considering as a waste of time. In fact, if you spare some time to manage your accounts regularly, you can block one of the major loopholes for cyber criminals to hack your WordPress.
Usernames
Often the username ‘admin’ comes by default for WordPress users. This makes the job much easier for the hackers. Therefore, see if your username is admin or something simple that can be easily cracked by the hackers. If you have such a one, do change it now itself. It can be changed by inputting an SQL query in PHPMyAdmin.
Password
It is a fact that many of them are least interested in changing their passwords, once it is created. A strong password is mandatory for your account’s safety. A combination of alphanumeric terms is always recommended. If you are that lazy to find out one for yourself, pass the job to an automatic password generator that would accomplish the task for you within no time. Besides, keep changing these passwords often as an extra security for pages.
Accounts
As mentioned, a good username and strong password are advisable. Once you are ready with this, set up a two authentication. For this, apart from the password, authenticating code is required to login to your account. This login will be done through SMS. In which, this authentication code will be sent to your phone to login to your site. For this, you may add plugins such as Google Authenticator.
Restrict Access to Your Word Press
Another part related to your account is to limit the access. Brute Force Attack is the first attempt that hackers make to access any WordPress account. Once they get a chance to try as many passwords as they can for logins, they would easily crack any passwords and intrude into your account. To avoid this, restrict the number of times a person from a particular IP address could attempt to login within a given time. Such unauthorized activity can be controlled by website lockdown and ban user feature. Plugins such as iThemes Security are great options for this.
Limit Admin Access
Never grant permission to too many contributors to access your account as admin. This may end up in trouble. Instead, only give administrative permission to those who really need it and limit their permissions to accomplish their tasks.
Protect Your System
Give an extra layer of protection to your WordPress, by protecting your computer itself from the hackers. Install a firewall on your computer. There are numerous providers out there, from where you could get one for your system.
Delete WordPress Version #
WordPress version number is one of the important things that hackers consider to plan out their attack. If your WordPress version number is visible for others, it may be taken to create a custom-made attack to hack your WordPress. Therefore, remove or hide it at the earliest to avoid this.
Avoid the Theme Editor
If you are not a theme and plugin freak, this is for you. Disable those theme editor in the WordPress dashboard, if you don’t use those them on a regular basis. Authorized persons are automatically given access to this editor. So in case, an account gets hacked, the hacker may use the code found there too and modify the entire account. You can remove the editor by inserting another code in the wp-config.php file.
Carefully Set Directory Permission
According to WordPress, you should avoid configuring directories with 777 permission, instead consider 750 or 755. And files to 640 or 644, and wp-config.php to 600, which is the most secure means to protect your website at hosting level and keep all directories, sub-directories and files free from harm. You may get this done through the File Manager in the hosting Control Panel, or through the SSH connected terminal. (use the chmod command).
Use SSL Encryption
Last but not the least, secure your admin panel with SSL certificate. SSL or Secure Socket Layer certificate is meant to secure all your data transactions between your browser and the server. This makes it tough for any hackers to access your data. It is not so difficult to install one. There are many reliable providers out there who could help you get one. The thing is many of them come with limited warranty. In such cases, consider the ones that offer EV SSL certificate (Extended Validation SSL certificate). Additionally, apart from securing your WordPress site, the SSL certificate enables your page rank high on Google. Yes! Google now ranks websites with SSL higher than those without it.
