The most common query I come across every day is “ how can I make my WordPress website more secure? Or “ how can I protect my WordPress site”?
Yes, you can make your website secure with little tips and tricks. As Google penalizes many pages daily for malware and phishing so to be serious about website security is important.
Today I will share some of the tips and tricks that can help secure your WordPress website without much hassle.
WordPress is a secure CMS as hundreds of developers check its core security on a daily basis. Still, you can do a lot more things to maximize its security.
I will discuss a complete guide for its importance, how you can secure your website, and security steps for DIY users, so stick around.
Importance of Website Security
People may think about why they should keep their website secure? Who is going to hack, and for what purpose? But let me explain to you a little bit of security importance in detail.
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Hackers may harm your business, money, and reputation if your website is not secure. They can not only steal useful and confidential information but also leave malware on your website. If your website is hacked, you need to pay a massive amount of money as ransomware to get the access back.
Moreover, the users visiting your website may also get malicious malware from it.
It is reported that in 2016, Google warned 20000 users that the sites they might be visiting have malware in them. So that is why it is a prime responsibility of a website owner to optimize the maximum security to protect its business and users from any malicious activities.
Following must-haves can save a lot of time and energy while securing your website.
- Keep the WordPress updated.
WordPress is open-source software. It means a lot of developers and IT experts look after the software daily with continuous changes and updates. The minor updates are automatically done on your website, but the significant changes need manual action.
Moreover, WordPress is updated with thousands of themes and plugins to increase security. Developers develop these themes and make sure that they provide optimum security to the sites. Your only responsibility is to keep your themes and plugins updated with the latest versions.
- Use strong passwords
A search shows that most hackers use the stolen passwords for hacking the website. You can overcome this security gap by choosing a strong password. Choose a difficult password to make your website secure. A strong password is not only recommended for the admin area. Your site must have difficult passwords on FTP accounts, hosting accounts, email addresses, and for the database.
If you don’t like using difficult passwords and are afraid of forgetting them. Don’t worry and use password managers instead.
Another way to protect your account is not to give access to any other person.
If you have guest authors or other users, then understand and use the user roles of WordPress to have a secure way of logins and passwords.
Tips and Tricks to improve WordPress site security
Although website security is a vast topic and you might need to wade through the reams of knowledge before you take some actions. I have written some basic steps for non-techy people.
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By installing simple plugins and taking small security steps, you can protect your website from malicious activities or malware.
1.Backing up your website
While protecting your website, the most important thing is to take the backup of your website. You can install any free backup plugin and take a complete backup of your website. As no security solution is 100% guaranteed, having a backup can save your data and information in case of any mishap.
2.Use the best WordPress security plugin
After backing up your site, another security step is to install the best WordPress security plugins. Many free and paid security plugins monitor and everything that happens to your website. This record keeps you aware of your site security health and you get to know any malicious activity before time.
3.Enabling Web application firewall
You can feel more confident and secure if you use a web application firewall (WAF) on your website. Thie firewall not only protects the website but also filters the traffic by blocking any malicious traffic coming to your website.
4.Integration of SSL/HTTPS on your website
Another important security action can be taken by installing SSL on your website. It is a protocol that shows a padlock to the site’s address and your site shows HTTPS instead of HTTP. Moreover, it was paid but now nonprofit organizations have developed it for free. A clear example is to use Cloudflare on your websites, as it provides free SSL and many other security checks to the website.
5.Trick the default admin user name
Previously people used to name the username just by one click name “admin” and it became much easier for hackers to use the credentials for hacking. Today when you install WordPress, it asks for a custom-made username and you have to create a unique username.
But many one-click installers still use admin as a username and you can’t change these by default settings. So you must change the username either by creating a new username and deleting the old one. Or you can use any username change plugin if 1st method does not appeal to you. You can also use phpMyadmin to change the username.
6.Adding Two Factor authentication
Another foolproof security layer is the addition of two-factor authentication to your website. The first step is to log in using your username and password and the second is to use another device or app. Big websites like Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc use this method to protect your account and you can integrate the same process to protect your website.
Final words
There are many technical and non-technical ways to protect your website. You can weather install free or paid plugins or can have full-stack developers to make your website more secure. It is up to you which one you choose, depending upon the type and size of your business.