Build a Secure WordPress Website

Build a Secure WordPress Website

WordPress is the most popular CMS in the world, powering millions of websites and serving content to nearly every single internet user. WordPress has a complete ecosystem of plugins and themes that can handle everything from simple sites to complicated e-commerce systems. And Yes it has some downsides – and the number of WordPress sites on the internet are target for hackers that want to vandalize websites, upload malicious content, or hack into servers to steal private information.The following security tips will help you ensure that your WordPress site is protected from thieves and hackers.

Minimal Plugin Reliance

To begin with, every single plugin that you add to your WordPress installation produces a possible avenue for a hacker to take control of your site. While most plugins are perfectly safe, and written with relatively simple code, some plugins are intentionally malicious – or they haven’t been updated in a long time and are no longer secure. Most current WordPress attacks target websites with out-of-date plugins or plugins that have known security flaws – so keeping the total number of plugins on your website up to date.it will help to prevent produce number of “holes” in the overall inbuilt security of the WordPress Entire system.

Only download plugins from reliable sites that have already been recommend and good ratings by the WordPress community – and keep the plugins updated. If one of your plugins is no longer supported, and it is no longer receiving regular updates, it might be a good idea to deactivate and delete that plugin since it will only continue to get more and more out of date – and more and more likely to be compromised.

Creating Htaccess Rules

.htaccess is a directory level file that controls the configuration of your web server – and gives you the ability to create specific rules for the domain that your WordPress website is running on. Don’t ever overwrite these rules without checking with documentation to make sure that your formatting and logic is correct – but don’t be afraid to make security changes after you’ve done the proper research..
WordPress Security Plugin

One exception to the rule that WordPress plugins usually make your site secure. While there are certainly other plugins that are designed to increase your site’s security, such as iThemes Security(formerly Better Wp security) Wordfence Security, Sucuri Security, All In One WP Security & firewall and many more but Wordfence Security is one of the longest running and most trusted. it has automatically contains a live attack-response system that adds IP addresses to a blacklist that is maintained between every WordPress site that is running the plugin. This gives your site the benefit of a vast network of intelligence that keeps up to date on current attacks. Wordfence also allows you to set IP range blocking and other security rules directly from your WordPress dashboard without having to access the individual files – and it includes a few other security features as well, such as the ability to use two factor authentication for your log on.

Advanced Considerations

One of the most common attacks on a WordPress site is the attempt to “guess” the log on password by brute forcing with common passwords and usernames. A complex password can certainly help prevent this kind of attack – but so can using advanced methods like “hiding” the login files to the public, and only making it possible to log in to the dashboard of the site from an approved IP address that correlates to your home or office.