WordPress Security is becoming increasingly important to us all. As a WordPress website owner, it is your responsibility to ensure that your website does not have any security flaws which could be exploited by the hackers. Read on for some useful WordPress Security tips.
Security improvements can be applied to almost anything that you do online which requires securing, be it a password, login page, folder location or just a username. There are many ways in which you can change your default WordPress security set up, such that bots and other unauthorised users can’t access your website assets.
Why is WordPress Security important?
Because of the fact that more than 25% of all websites now being created are built on the WordPress CMS platform, it is fast becoming a target for hackers, DDOS and other malicious attacks.
In addition to this, bots and crawlers are rife amongst the everyday traffic we see on the internet, on the whole these are programmed with set instructions to approach the known security weaknesses and loopholes of whatever they are trying to attack. Filtering out this base-bot traffic can be of huge benefit to your WordPress security and even your pocket!
How can this save money?
Other than the obvious potential loss of revenue due to hacking or other cyber security related website downtime. Unwanted bot traffic to your website can massively increase server load; meaning that your web hosting server resources need upgrading to support the traffic and excessive resource usage. This can be a costly game, with most web hosting companies recommending their VPS hosting packages as the best solution. This may not resolve the issue and could end up just costing more.
So what security actions can you take?
There are some obvious changes and some less obvious ones; either way they will be a step in the right direction for increasing your WordPress security. Focusing on your WordPress installation, here are some simple steps you can take to improve its security by obscurity:
Make WordPress More Secure
With a fresh install, WordPress has some limited security features built-in which should indeed be enabled and made use of. In addition to these you can use several other security plugins and methods to further protect your WordPress website from unethical attacker.
Top WordPress Security Tips
See below a few pointers and ideas from White Rabbit to help you make sure your WordPress website is more secure for free. Closed off to the loopholes and back-doors that hackers use to gain access to your website or even take it down!
1. Use Strong Passwords
At least 8 characters, a mix of numbers and letters, at least 1 capital letter and a special character for good measure. If you have to created multiple passwords, try and find a formula that works with just a minor adjustment for each variation.
2. Keep Passwords Secret!
It may sound obvious but many people fail at this basic step. If you need to give others access to your WordPress dashboard… create a new user for them, this way you can also track changes if you want.
3. Limit Login Attempts
This can help prevent snoopers from attempting to guess your passwords. You can use a default plugin when you install WordPress or a 3rd party security plugin like the one mentioned below.
4. Further WordPress Security Settings
As touched on above, within the configuration of your WordPress CMS there are a few settings that can be tweaked to improve the general security of your website. Go through the general settings pages and make sure you’ve covered everything you can find that’s relevant.
5. Additional Plugins
Other free security plugins are available for WordPress. A particularly good one is iThemes Security this holds a wealth of security features and tweaks. Another useful free security plugin is WordFence for its Firewall capabilities.
6. HTTPS & SSL Certificates
This will ensure that traffic to and from your website is encrypted. Google also sees the SSL certificate as a ranking factor as well. Follow this link to read a blog post and find out how to get a free green padlock for WordPress websites.
7. Keep Website Backups
Not so much a security measure, more of a disaster recovery technique, be sure to have a good backup of the files and databases from your website. Keep the backup in a location separate to your web hosting, just in case that goes down.
8. Tidy Up!
An often overlooked and simple method to help keep your WordPress website secure is to keep the back-end tidy, uninstall unused plugins and removed expired users.
9. WordPress Admin Area Security Tips
- Change the default WordPress login URL everyone knows ‘wp-admin’
- Change the WordPress database prefix from the default ‘wp’
- Use a different username to your publicly displayed name
Do I Really Need This?
Attacks on the login page of WordPress websites is now completely common place, for any website that is receiving any real exposure and traffic. Tagged as DDOS attacks these bots will attempt hundreds of logins to your WordPress back-end on the default address e.g. www.yourdomain/wp-admin with the known default username “admin”.
This is where our WordPress Security Tips can really help you. By changing your default username and login URL (to something obscure to the bots), you can eliminate many of these DDOS attacks immediately… this is a perfect example of how Security By Obscurity can be used.
More WordPress Security Tips
These are just a few WordPress security tips and techniques to help you on your way to securing your WordPress website for free. The main thing to focus on is staying ahead of the hackers. Keep your WordPress installation and plugins up to date, to ensure you have all the latest security features and fixes available and above all be vigilant – if you think something suspicious is going on… check it out!
Let White Rabbit take away the hassle of securing your WordPress website, we’ll make sure all of the above is done and more, to give your website and customer’s data the protection and safety it deserves. Contact White Rabbit today to get your website secured.
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Founder and strategic mind behind White Rabbit. Associate Member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, focused on serving clients with a creative and ethical business model. Digital philanthropist giving time to support charitable groups, projects and organisations; that revolve around the arts, wildlife conservation, local community and heritage crafts.
