For these reasons, lots of users of any age work hard on website building. Today’s businessmen break their necks to manage a worthy site. In this highly competitive era, we face rising demands. In a sense, the present-day progress makes it even harder to launch an impressing site. It requires time, attention, money, and effort. And, before all else, it needs trust and comfort.
Unfortunately, progress influences not the good things only. So, hackers find more ways to get control over modern websites. Their techniques continue refining every month. Seeing that, we think it is time to handle the security risks. This post will show you how to protect your WordPress website from malefactors.
Updates
At the outset, you should keep your WordPress website updated. There is nothing complicated. All the user-friendly WordPress themes receive the updates automatically. One can easily find a business WP theme to fit their taste. Still, even if you don’t use a WordPress theme to build the site, updating your project won’t be a problem. Being user-friendly and open-source software, WordPress provides its users with minor updates. They are free and meant to fix all the bugs that were found in the older versions.
On the other hand, there are lots of useful third-party plugins you can download effortlessly. Same to the official WordPress products, they have regular updates. As you can see, this is a very simple step but keeping your website updated does handle many security risks. Thus, never forget to look for recent updates and your WordPress website will get stability.
Install Security Plugins
Another thing you should do to protect the website is looking for security plugins. Using such tools, you get a powerful system to monitor and audit site’s activity. For example, thanks to the plugin, one can see failed login attempts and check file integrity. What is more, there will be malware scanning and much more. Today the variety of security plugins for a WordPress-based site is extremely rich. Almost all of them are free and easy-to-install. You can do it from admin panel without a hitch. Don’t hesitate to go through this standard installation process to see everything and anything that happens inside your online project.
Backups
Next, you will need to install a backup plugin to handle WordPress security risks. As always, using Google, you can find multiple supporting tools. There will be both free and paid backup plugins for WordPress. Once again, the installation process is simple as well. There are no coding or special skills required. Now let’s see how it works. Why do you need backups? How often should you save them?
Truly speaking, even downloading all the existing security tools will not keep your WordPress website 100% safe. Actually, a critical amount of such items would rather bring you more risks but it is another topic. Anyway, each of us can be hacked one day. That is why it would be wise to use backups. Once you are through this, restoring your content becomes as easy as pie. Needless to say, using backups is helpful even if you don’t have security issues. You will be able to alive the website as soon as something went wrong.
Let’s imagine that you already installed a nice backup plugin. What should be the next step? Initially, the most significant point is saving the full-size files. You have to save them on a regular basis to get use from backups. Therefore, write this on a sticker and put in on the monitor or use your phone to set the notifications. In a word, do whatever you want to admonish yourself about backups saving until it becomes your habit. Also, you may want to look for an application that saves them mechanically. Still, we believe that it is better to save the files by hand.
When it comes to the location, it definitely should be a place in the sticks. Never use the locations that are somehow connected to the site. What is more important, do not use your main hosting account and the accounts it has access to. In this case, once your WordPress website is hacked, there will be no sense in the saved backups. To handle WordPress security risks, choose a remote location like Amazon or Google. As an alternative, you can choose a private cloud.
At last, how often your backups should be saved? Logically, it depends on 2 factors: the frequency of content updates and the level of their importance. Ideally, we recommend you to work with the real-time backups.
File Editing
Unfortunately, not every user knows that all the websites built in WordPress contain an integrated code editor. By default, it lets change the template and some of its elements including plugins. Entering your admin area would be enough to destroy the website. Honestly, this function has more minuses than pluses. On the whole, any intruder – even the inexperienced amateurs – will be able to control your site with ease. Seeing that, simply disable file editing feature to avoid hacking.
Luckily, all you have to do is to open wp-config.php file and copy these lines to it.
// Disallow file edit
define( ‘DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT’, true );
And More
As you can see, nowadays there are many ways to handle WordPress security risks. What else can help you to save a beloved online child? Sometimes people pay attention to the complicated tools and study pretty daedal books that require much time. Meanwhile, they forget about the easiest basic actions. Are you sure you checked all of them? Below you can see the list of 10 fast tips to keep your WordPress site secure.
- Change your default information (e.g. username).
- Set limits on login attempts.
- Use ‘security question’ function to pass login process.
- Make sure that idle users are logged out automatically.
- Edit the database prefix of your WordPress website.
- Also, turn off PHP file execution.
- Be sure to disable XML-RPC.
- Do the same with directory indexing and browsing.
- Add additional password to block any suspicious activity.
- Make sure that you fixed the old bug even if it looks like the security risks are gone.
At last, nobody can deny that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to handle security risks. Although WordPress is a progressive and top-grade platform, it still can’t know for sure what is inside a hacker’s head. It monitors new bugs all the time and expands to guard the week spots on your website. However, there is a plethora of hacking attracts being prepared. On average, every day Google blocks over 10, 000 sites for phishing and malware. Still, lots of intruders continue looking for the breaking points of both new and famous sites. Thus, find an hour to take care of your WordPress website. Who knows, maybe someone is looking closely at your site right now. Praemonitus, praemunitus!
