WordPress is a very popular platform and introduced a lot of products, and all are beneficial for us. We use all the goods of WordPress easily and confidently, but it is vulnerable security platform. For your website security, you need to read these 10 quick tips about WordPress security and secure your blog from the hackers.
My friend launched a website about the fashion and style after few months of its launching it was hacked. She was worried about it, and thought what should do now?
After reading her story, you might be nervous about website security. Similar to you I’m shocked and thought security strategy is a necessary thing for any internet site. I searched about the security of WordPress sites because WordPress is the most famous open source software for blogging and it is the main target of many malicious attacks.
After a lot of searches, I found many different ways to secure the website and also apply on my friend website. All ideas are worked.
Luckily, as open source software, WordPress has many protective plugins, techniques, and functions to save your websites. When you used in a cumulative, these tools can protect you from malicious activity, spam, hacks, and other threats.
Let’s have a look.
10 quick tips about WordPress security.
1- Keep WordPress up-to-date
Always upgrade your WordPress version, plugin, and theme latest version update may fix any security bug in a new version. So it’s wise to be upgraded and secure your website.
When you log in to the dashboard and see “Update available” its mean WordPress launch a new version, immediately click on it and upgrade your site. Keep your website security secure.
If you are worried about something breaking, make a backup before upgrading it. The most vital thing is that you do it regularity. As I mentioned above, a new version may fix some security bug, which means an out of date site is all the more vulnerable. Similar to WordPress you can upgrade your theme and plugin regularly.
2- Cut Back on Plugin Use
Delete the plugins or themes that you are not using. Because if you’re getting rid of any plugins or themes, you don’t need you’ll reduce the probability of being hacked. If you are not using them surely, you won’t upgrade them, so it is much better you delete them.
This is not only necessary for your website security. It is good for speed and performance. Loading with a lot of plugins or themes can slow down your site speed affectedly.
So if your site performs better without a particular plugin, remove it.
The rarer plugins you’ve, the fewer chances you give hackers to access your information.
3- Hide your WordPress Version Number
Sometimes if you can’t update latest WordPress version, try hackers don’t let know your current WordPress version. As the bugs of the previous release, issues are known to all through WordPress.org. It’ll be easier for the hackers to attack your website.
If you don’t know how you can hide your WordPress version number, follow the below instructions and protect your version number.
- For the older theme, remove this line form your theme’s header.php file php bloginfo(‘version’); ?>” />.
- For the latest version, just add this line in your theme’s function.php file <?php remove_action(‘wp_head’ , ‘wp_generator’); ?>
4- Don’t Download Premium Plugins for Free
Be careful about plugins installation. Some plugins may have more buggy codes concluded which some other SQL queries or codes can be inserted, or some other unsafe activities can be done to harm your website and also affected its ranking.
Before installing the plugins, you must check its rating and popularity. It has a just bad idea try to download premium plugins from anyplace other than where they are authoritatively for sale.
It is lame to download pirated plugins anywhere.
Try to download the plugin on an official website and skip the illegal downloads and torrents.
Apart from that, read reviews or ask your friends about the plugin you are going to use. Make sure you upgrade plugins version is the correct.
5- Hide Author Usernames
In the older version of WordPress, the default WordPress fixing used to come with an administration account ‘admin’ as a username. This is not good. All hackers know it, and they’ll try this.
Make sure your administration name is not easily guessable like ‘sitename,’ ‘admin’ or ‘yourname’ etc.
If you have one of them, you need to change it immediately.
Hide author’s name is a good idea and ensures you are not making the hacker’s job easier.
To do this by adding some code to your site. Once you inserted, this code will make it tough so when someone inputs ?author=1 after your URL, they will not reach to the admin information and will be sent back to your website homepage.
If you want to hide author username by using coding, then just copy and past below mention code into your functions.php file.
add_action(‘template_redirect’, ‘bwp_template_redirect’);
function bwp_template_redirect()
{
if (is_author())
{
wp_redirect( home_url() ); exit;
}
}
6- Disable Directly Browsing
Direct browsing of your website means you always open your door and encourage the thief can easily see your wealth inside your house and can plan to steal. I’m sure you understand the effects of enables direct browsing in your website and keep your door closed.
A simple way to disable your direct browsing is to upload a blank index.php or index.html file in each directory and subdirectory expect the root.
7- Keep Track of Dashboard Activity
If you’ve more users on your website, it is a good idea to keep track of your dashboard activities. It is not for that, you suspect any of them doing wrong, but when you’ve many people involved in your website, have a lot of chances a simple mistake can source something to break.
That’s why logging dashboard movement is so useful and permits you to review user’s steps up to the point of website damage.
Also, perfect for website security and enables you to connect the dots between the particular action and reaction. If any uploaded file is harmful to your site, you can explore it extra if it has malicious code.
WordPress logs default has this information, but it is not easy to use. So better is that you can use a plugin that performs this work.
There are many plugins, but an excellent plugin is WP Security Audit Log. This is a free plugin that worked well to maintain a log of everything happens on your site’s backend. With this plugin, you can easy see what users and hackers are doing.
8- Pick the Best Hosting
You can dress up your website with all the current security hacks, but if you don’t have good hosting service, your effort is meaningless. Security experts WP White Security reported that:
“41% of WordPress sites were hacked due to security vulnerability on the host”
It is mean you need to do something about your hosting plan as soon as possible.
Recommended Hosting:
9- Keep your Computer Up-to-Date
Seldom hackers can obtain access to your site due to your computer’s security vulnerabilities. The best way to save your website from it is to keep your computer up-to-date. When any software is released a new version, install or upgrade it.
Especially when new OS system is released, update ASAP.
10 Prevention is better than Cure
There are some tricks never forget the following to do on a systematic basis.
- Make sure your site is virus free, and you use anti-virus software to keep clean it.
- Keep backups always.
- Use strong passwords and change them regular basis. Don’t save your password to FTP clients or in browser history.
- Try to use premium themes.
Wrapping Up
There are understated hints that fill out a complete strategy. Might be some of them you’ve known before, but I’m sure some were new findings to keep your websites secure.
What tips do you use for your WordPress website security? Or did you’ve more advice and I miss a detail here? Feel free and share with us in the comment box below.