Are you worried that someone could hack your WordPress website? And delete everything from your site; change all the passwords, write malicious things that could destroy your reputation in the market. If yes, then you need to take some strict actions that can help you prevent your website against the spammers and hackers.
If you want to strengthen your website’s security, then you need to follow some easy tips that will for sure improve the security of your WordPress website. In this blogs post, we will look at 10 easy-to-follow tips to make your website protected and secure from various malicious activities.
Tips to strengthen the WordPress administration interface
The main area where hackers target to get into your website is the WP administration interface. If an attacker is able to login into the admin panel, then he could harm your website by writing bad codes or malicious things into your website.
In fact, many hackers will try to login by using a brute force attack by setting up a botnet (where multiple computers are used by the attackers) to continuously attempting to login to your website, using multiple combinations of username and password.
Here are some modifications that you can make to protect your WordPress admin interface against the malicious user:
1. Choose a secure, strong, unique Username and Password
Never use the default “admin” username because hackers can easily guess this username and could gain access to your website. In fact, you can choose your own username when creating a new WordPress site. In case, you are on an older installation or you have already selected your username as “admin”, then you can install a WordPress plugin called Username Changer to change the existing username to something more strong and secure.
Furthermore, you can also create a new user with admin rights and delete the existing “admin” username. Try to avoid obvious or common usernames, such as your name or your website’s name.
Similarly, it is necessary for you to select a strong and complicated password that contains a random arrangement of characters, letters and numbers. It is better for you to avoid a password that is similar to your username, an easy word or a website’s name. In fact, you can also use a password management tool that will help you securely create, store and use such types of complicated passwords.
2. Password Protect wp-login.php
Password protecting your wp-login.php file can insert an additional layer of security to your server. It is because password protecting wp-admin can break any plugin that utilizes AJAX on the front-end, and it is enough to just protect wp-login. So, if you are an expert WordPress developer or an experienced WP user, and comfortable with some server-side modifications, you may require a server-side login before the WP login screen is represented.
3. You can use the Two-factor Authentication
Two-factor authentication is basically a security process where the user provides two means of identification from separate types of credentials, on is a physical token like a card, and other is something memorized like a security code. In simple terms, Two-factor authentication needs a user to login with their username and password along with a unique code that is created for one-time-use and sent to phone through a SMS or an Android/iOS app.
4. Use of reCAPTCHA forms
If you want to stop botnets from attempting to brute force login to your WP website, you can generate a reCAPTCHA forms into your website to verify the user is a human or a bot. It usually asks the user to enter what they view in an image as a text. Actually, botnets cannot execute this type of login process.
Tips to secure the code of the WordPress website
If you are creating your own plugin or theme for your site or using a third-party plugin or theme, it is extremely important for you to ensure that the code you use is secure, and doesn’t harm the security of your website.
It has been seen that insecure code or bad practices allow the hackers to gain access to your website. So, it will be better for you to use well-coded themes and plugins into your WP website.
Well, there are few tips that can help you ensure the security of the code:
5. Update your WordPress site
A new version of the WordPress always comes with relevant security fixes and other solutions that will help you protect your site against the malicious activities. When a new version of WP releases, you will get an update notification in your WP admin screens.
Since WordPress 3.7+, you don’t need to apply minor security updates by yourself as it will automatically apply the same into a website. Although, you can extend this by automatically install the major WordPress releases by inserting the following line of code to your site’s wp-config.php file:
define( ‘WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE’, true );
However, there is also a possibility of incompatibility between the newly installed WordPress version and the existing plugins and themes. So, it will be good to sustain a testing environment for this kind of situations.
If you are using third party tools to your WordPress website, then you can easily manage all your WordPress installations from a single interface.
6. Develop Themes and Plugins by following the best WP security practices
If you are new to the WordPress development, or have been into the process of developing themes and plugins, it is extremely important for you to follow the main WP security best practices if you want to create a well-coded and secure plugins and themes.
From cleaning data, using nonces to WordPress roles and capabilities, it is imperative to keep yourself rejuvenated with the WP development best practices.
7. Carefully choose your theme and plugins
It is imperative for you to carefully choose the themes and plugins for your website that are maintained and updated on the regular basis. With the use of latest WordPress version of themes and plugins you can easily detect the security vulnerabilities and also update it quickly.
Tips to ensure a secure hosting
It is always important to choose a reliable and trusted web hosting provider who can offer you the hosting plan with the strong security measures. So, let’s explore the tips that will ensure the reliable and secure hosting.
8. Choose managed hosting
Today, most of the hosting companies are offering managed WordPress hosting, including WP Engine, Media Temple, SiteGround and more. Although, many people give much more attention to the traditional shared or unmanaged hosting, but the managed host will help you in strengthening your website’s security.
For instance, WP Engine automatically updates the WordPress site and commonly used plugins, if there are undetected security exposures and disables the plugins that are causing the security issues.
And most of the managed WordPress hosts offer hardware based firewalls and configuration to confirm that Distributed Denial of Service attacks don’t affect your WordPress.
9. Server Hardening
It is an essential job for experienced or advanced users to strengthen the security of a server. In fact, you can also:
• Make sure your database user has access to SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE authority only.
• Try to utilize strong and secure database usernames and passwords
• Don’t allow server-side file editing within your WordPress by inserting this line of code to your wp-config.php file:
(‘DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT’, true);
10. Make sure all the file and folder permissions are correct
In case, you are not using a managed web host, then it is important for you to make sure that WP files and folders have the correct permissions. It not only updates the WordPress to its latest version, but also protects your data from attackers and hackers.
As per the basic guide, WordPress folders should always have 0755 permissions, and WP files should have 0644 permission. But it can vary from hosting provider to hosing provider.
If you are detecting errors while trying to install plugins, or upload new media, don’t try to set any folder permissions to 0777. Instead of this, you can sit with your host to make sure that PHP is running with the correct user.
In case, you have got access, you can also use some commands to confirm WordPress is secure or not:
find /path/to/your/wordpress/install/ -type d -exec chmod 755 {} ;
find /path/to/your/wordpress/install/ -type f -exec chmod 644 {} ;
Conclusion
In this blog post, we have explored 10 tips that will help you secure your WordPress website, ranging from core WP admin interface to coding practices and hosting security. If you really want to prevent your site from hackers and attackers, follow these tips and improve your site’s security. [dropcap][/dropcap]