Samridhi Bhatia | You all must have learned that WordPress is one of the most popular CMS and blogging system. This is why the hackers mainly target on it.
If you own a website on WordPress, you often look out for the ways to secure a WordPress website. The method of securing your WordPress website is referred to as “Hardening.”
Ways to Secure WordPress Website
The security of WordPress is an essential subject for every website owner. Nobody wants their website to be attacked by the attackers.
When this happens, this results in a number of serious consequences. Some of the consequences include blacklisting of a website from search engines, a decrease in traffic, and loss of clients, which are valuable.
Here, in this article, you’re provided with some preventive measures that you need to take to safeguard your website. Scroll down to read!
1. Installation of a Security Plugin
When it arrives to secure WordPress website, you need to ensure that you understand all the configuration settings correctly and read all the documentation carefully.
If you install a plugin following all the steps correctly, it will reduce the risk of your website being hacked.
There are a number of plugins that provide security to your websites such as iTheme Security, Wordfence Security, All in One Security & Firewall, and many others. You can install these plugins easily on your WordPress website.
iTheme security is a plugin that prevents attacks from stopping the illegal attempts to log in your site. In addition to this, it runs system scans and conceals vulnerabilities.
Wordfence Security is a plugin that helps you identify the attackers. For this reason, make sure that you install such plugins for running your website safely.
Also Read: 5 MUST-HAVE WORDPRESS PLUGINS YOU CAN’T DO WITHOUT!
2. Don’t use “admin” as your Username
Well, it’s easy to keep the username of your WordPress site as “admin.” However, do you know that by doing this you’re allowing the attackers to hack your website with ease?
Yes, many attackers will use this username because they think that you would use the default name “admin” as your username.
For this reason, go ahead and change it by creating a new user. To do this, go to Users > New User, and then give a new login. Then, sign in with a new administrative account you’ve created, and delete the older one.
3. Try to use Complex Passwords
You’d be surprised to learn that there are a number of people who use the passwords which can be guessed easily such as “password.”
When it comes to login security, passwords shouldn’t be a sequential character. Such passwords can figured-out easily by the software used for cracking passwords. For this reason, make sure that your password is a combination of alphabets (A, B, a, b…) numbers (0, 1, 2, 3…) and symbols (-,@, !,?, and others).
4. Two-factor authentication is a must
Setting up two-factor authentication is also one of the measures that would help your secure WordPress website. If you enable 2FA, this will prevent access to an intruder and your login details would be safe.
If you are wondering about how to enable 2FA, don’t worry! All you need to do is install plugins like Keyy, Authy, and many others to set up this essential feature on your website.
5. Assigning least privileged principles
Whenever you give access to your website to a new person, don’t hand over your login ID and password. Yes, always set up a new login which would help him/her to do their job efficiently. If you do so, it won’t require any security privileges.
6. File Editing should be turned off
Once you’re done with your work, don’t forget to take a backup of your wp-congfig.php. After taking the backup, amend the original file by adding the below-mentioned text.”
Define (‘DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT’, true); If you added this code, this code would protect your website from hackers. This would safeguard your site from attackers to make any changes in WordPress.
7. Never keep the version number public
WordPress always look to learn the count of websites active at a particular and this it does by checking the version numbers. However, this might cause several issues because some of its versions are endangered to harmful attacks.
For this reason, make sure that you hide the version number you’re using. In addition to this, modify the file of functions.php by adding the code given below:
add_filter(‘the_generator’, ‘__return_null’);
8. Usage of top themes
Make sure you don’t download the premium plugins for free. Not only this, always keep in mind to purchase plugins from reputable websites.
You will have to face many consequences if you download the plugins for free. Such plugins could be infected with viruses, which might cause serious problems.
So, always keep a check of plugins or themes before you download them by having a look at their ratings and reviews. In addition to this, check the date when it was updated last.
If you found that it hasn’t been updated since long, and then it could an outdated version, so don’t install them. Uninstall plugins you’ve already installed on your WordPress website.
9. Limit Login Attempts
While WordPress allows multiple login attempts, you can limit it by installing a WordPress limit login plugin and activating it via settings. This will limit the login attempt by hackers and make sure that they cannot proceed to hamper your site.
Final Words
If you don’t have to worry about the attacks on your website, it will become easy for you to handle and manage your website.
However, these days, no matter whether you own a small or big website, there could be a number of automated hacks that would harm your website.
This is why, it’s mandatory for you to secure a WordPress website, which you can do it by following the above ways.
