WordPress is one of the finest Content Management Systems (CMS) available on the Internet. It was launched back in 2003 bringing a revolution in the field of web development. Starting from a non-tech guy to an expert developer, everyone can use it to make a WordPress website.
According to Renne Shupe, more than 60% of websites that uses a CMS works on WordPress. These figures reveal the importance and the scope of WordPress in today’s market.
The world is cruel and every hacker is looking for such vulnerable sites. Getting a website hacked is a serious issue as you lose access to your website. Someone can put up the data they want on your site and can display any information that they want.
All the databases of yours are then open for the hackers to be accessed. They might steal your user’s data, your inventory data, your account details, etc. Thus, it becomes highly important to protect your website from hacking.
Stats about the WordPress sites are shocking! According to WP White Security, more than 70% of the WordPress sites are vulnerable to get hacked. Your website could be one among these 70% sites. So, here are seven tips to protect your WordPress websites from getting hacked.
7 Tips to protect your WordPress Website from getting hacked.
1. Keep your username and password safe
It is advised never to share your site admin’s username and password to anyone. Moreover, one of the major mistakes done by a lot of people is using ‘admin’ as username and password. While in the development stage, in the local environment, developers have a habit of using ‘admin’ as username and password. This has to be changed when you deploy the site to your live servers.
Moreover, using a unique and non-obvious word as a username is advisable. While in the password make use of small and capital letters and also use some special characters to make it more secure.
2. Beware of plugins!
Install only those plugins that you trust. Also, it is advised to install only those plugins which are available on the WordPress.org. The plugins may affect your site badly and can make it vulnerable to get hacked.
Update your plugins regularly to keep your site working smoothly and also this helps you making your WP site more secure.
3. Backup your site often
There a lot of pugins available for your WordPress website to backup your site regularly. One of the finest free WordPress plugins to take automatic backups is UpDraft Plus. Once, you take regular backups; it becomes easy to restore your whole site at any time.
Moreover, if your site gets hacked and the hackers manipulate your site or database, you have the last working copy of your site.
4. Change your WordPress login URL
By default the WordPress login URL is yoursite.com/wp-login.php. You can set up any URL for your login page and thus it makes your site more secure. It becomes a bit difficult for the hackers to locate your login URL. However, it is not impossible!
This can be done manually if you are a WordPress expert and if not, you can use a free plugin for the same.
5. Limit login attempts
After changing the login URL, you can make your site more secure by limiting your login attempts. This way you can prevent people trying the guessing method. Once someone reaches the threshold value of login attempts, it automatically restricts a user for further attempts.
6. Limit IP address
WordPress has a provision where you can limit the IP addresses that can access the admin panel. This will secure your site in the best way possible. Blocking the access by IP address is very simple by creating a .htaccess file. Put the below-given code in your .htaccess file and it will work.
# Block access to wp-admin. order deny,allow allow from x.x.x.x deny from all
Now, replace x.x.x.x by your IP address. This will allow only your IP address to access the admin panel and for the rest of the IP addresses, it will be blocked. Most of the Interconnections have a dynamic IP i.e. it keeps on changing. Thus you need to get a static IP address to use this functionality.
7. Block modification of files
The major breach in the security can be done by modifying some crucial files of your website. To make your site more secure, WordPress provides you room to add a single line of code, and you can block everyone to edit your file.
In the root directory, edit the config.php file. Add the below-given line of code to block the modification of the files.
define(‘DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT’, true);
8. WordPress website Plugin: Sucuri Security
Sucuri is a globally recognized Internet security authority. To help WordPress users protecting their site Sucuri provides a complete WordPress security plugin. Instead of managing a lot of small plugins for every aspect, it is easy to use it in your WordPress website. Moreover, the plugin is designed in a manner that can help any type of WordPress website, whether it is a simple blog or it is a giant Woo-Commerce site.
This free plugin has the following features in it.
- Security Activity Audit Logging
- File Integrity Monitoring
- Remote Malware Scanning
- Blacklist Monitoring
- Effective Security Hardening
- Post-Hack Security Actions
- Security Notifications
Taking care of these eight points, you can make your WordPress site more secure.
