Securing Your WordPress Site
June 28th, 2016
Securing Your WordPress Site From Attack Is Only A Few Steps Away
In addition to being the most friendly CMS, WordPress comes with a few security glitches that should be fixed to handle any kind of cyber attacks. Listed below is a quick overview of few WordPress vulnerabilities which must be patched up immediately to lessen the future risks.
Update WordPress Themes and Plugins
Update! Update and Update! This is what you actually need to do on a continual basis. The presence of obsolete and anachronous plugins and themes installed on WordPress site is the major reason for sites being hacked on WordPress.
It is incredibly an important step to make your site updated with the latest plugins and themes. These updates have vital security patches and are meant to fix bugs. WordPress features some very serious security plugins like WordPress SEO Yoast that run on many sites.
Using 2-Factor Authentication (2FA)
Introducing 2-factor authentication to your login page adds a bit more to the reliability. This is one of the most significant developments in the realm of cyber-security. By asking you for more than just a password, 2 Factor Authentication requires users to provide login details for 2 unique components.
Apart from just the username and password, a unique code is generated for single time use and sent to your assigned phone number via SMS. This added layer of security can help make sure that any kind of unethical activity is not encouraged.
Securing wp-admin directory
The wp-admin directory contains all the crucial information and if this part of your site gets breached, then the entire site can get damaged. The only possible way to secure is password-protect the wp-admin directory.
By using such security measure, the site owner may access dashboard by submitting 2 passwords, of which one protects the login page and the wp-admin area. If the website users are required to get access to some particular parts of wp-admin, you may unblock those parts while locking the rest.
Changing admin username
An easy-to-guess or recognized username should not be used as a password during WordPress Installation. There are high chances that such type of passwords might be easily accessed and pull your entire site into the risk.
Security plugins as “iThemes Security” are specifically designed to eliminate such issues and stop such attempts by banning any IP address that attempts to log in with that specific username.
Implement Changes From The Default Database Tables Prefix
The default table prefix is wp_ for WordPress and it is very well-known to the hackers. With this knowledge, they are very well aware of all the table names in your WordPress installation. This makes SQL injection attacks so much easier. In order to prevent the situation, you will have to change the default database table prefix.
Securing WordPress File Permissions
There are different ways to do this. In case you are using IIS server, the best thing you can do is to install and allow URL authorization modules along with IIS forms authentication. Once the installation gets wrapped up, you shall configure its settings to secure WordPress IIS admin folder.
Thereafter, you should also limit the permissions for various files and folders which allow your site to be able to operate and function properly. You can very easily modify the permissions to read, execute, delete, write, and change your files/folders. Remember, the lesser the permissions you will allow, the more protected your site will be.
Keeping Up With The Updates
The updated version of WordPress is more focused to eradicate security bugs, introduce added and innovative features and eliminate the security holes in a better and precise way than the old one. WordPress updates override the security of your site and make it insensitive to malicious attempts.
Hackers, who always look for the ways to breach WordPress’s security, find a way to get into your site for their own benefits. This is why it becomes essential for you to remain updated with WordPress for avoiding and fixing errors and loopholes in the security.
Backing Up Your WordPress Site
No matter how secure your website is, but a space for improvement always exists. No matter what happens, keeping an off-site backup is perhaps the best security measure you can take. If you have a backup, you can always restore your WordPress site back to its normal state anytime you want.Â
Closing Words
The tips given above are more than enough to help you secure your website but before implementing, you need to follow the right direction. The more you care about your WordPress Security, the tougher it gets for a hacker to break in.
Author-Bio
Bryan Lazaris is an expert WordPress developer who is having immense knowledge working as a front-end developer and designer at HireWebDeveloper. Apart from working as a WordPress developer, his area of interests includes writing for technical websites. This blog is one from his outstanding collections which is meant solely to impart valuable knowledge to readers.
I am the owner at Tribulant Software and I have a great passion for WordPress, development, blogging and the Internet in general. Building useful plugins to improve WordPress’ functionality is my goal.
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Comments
Hide My WP does pretty much most of this. I bought it from CodeCanyon a little while ago and have yet to have any problems with it. Have you ever thought of using it or – better yet – is it any good to use? The price didn’t bother me but I would rather not use a plugin that is going to hurt my site.