In 2013, more than 70% of the WordPress websites were termed vulnerable to all sorts of attacks. While the situation has improved 
considerably since, you’ll still find many people nagging about the security of their WordPress website. Easy to use, a WordPress website is loaded with great features and is good for SEO. This makes it a popular website choice. But, that popularity brings forth an element of risk. WordPress attracts a lot of hackers who are constantly looking for ways to exploit your website. Surely, you don’t want your website hacked or suspended for sending phishing emails or hosting malware. So, how can you Secure Your WordPress Website? Let’s find out.
Generally, when a site gets hacked, it is the fault of the website owner. For this reason, you must do everything you possibly can to save your site from being hacked. This include taking help from professionals to set up secure gateways. Following are some of the other things that you can do to secure your WordPress website.
Implement Two Factor Authentication Login
One of the simplest but most effective ways to secure your WordPress website from hackers and other miscreants is implementing a two-factor authentication (2FA) login. By requesting additional proof of ID, 2FA login adds an extra layer of login security to your website. A useful security practice, two- factor authentication helps prevent your WordPress site from being compromised.
By requiring a second form of authentication, you ask would-be attackers to not only provide the user’s password, but also their physical USB or mobile phone key. This makes an attack less likely. By exclusively offering login information to accounts and personal devices registered with your 2FA system, two-factor authentication prevents ‘outsiders’ from accessing your website even if basic login information is available to them.
Two-factor authentication is one of the easiest ways to secure your WordPress website against stolen passwords. Even if someone stole your password, they’ll still need to provide a security code sent to you phone to gain access. Now, in WordPress, you can set up 2FA in two different ways including:
SMS Verification: you receive the verification code via SMS/text message
Google Authenticator App: You receive the verification code in an app
Avoid Using Admin as a Username
If you want to secure your website from hackers and other miscreants, then you mustn’t use admin as a username. This measure to beef up the security of your website costs nothing so you shouldn’t think twice about implementing it. To make the life of hackers a little more difficult, choose any username other than ‘admin’, preferably one with capital letters. Assuming that already have a WordPress Website, you should:
- Create a new user with admin privileges
- In case your previous ‘admin’ user was your only user, assign all pages and blog post to the new admin user you just created
- Remove the old ‘admin’ user from your WordPress site
The above will make it extremely difficult for hackers to log into your website. However, this won’t work in isolation and you’ll have to ensure a few other things.
Secure your Passwords
You can have the most unique password in the world but if your password is weak, then it would be easy for a hacker to gain access to your site and destroy its online visibility. Something that’s been emphasized time and again, securing your passwords is an easy yet effective way of making your website more secure. To ensure this, you must use less common passwords. This means that your password should be a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and special characters.
Okay, let me guess your password. Is it “123456”, “password”, “12345678”, “qwerty” or “123456789”? Got it right? No, I’m not Nostradamus! I got your password right because your password is among the most common passwords in 2016. A recent study that gathered ten million passwords from the web in 2017 revealed that the aforementioned- passwords were the passwords people used the most. And they are a major reason many WordPress sites get compromised.
Passwords are vital for the security of your WordPress site. For this reason, you need to have passwords that adhere to the following rules:
- Don’t have any words that invite a dictionary attack
- Is at least 15 characters long
- Includes symbols and numbers
If you’re finding it difficult to come up with a strong password, then you can try sites such as Phonetic Password Generator and Strong password generator to generate a password that’s less likely to be compromised.
Change Your Login URL
If you want to secure your site from hackers then, you must change the URL address of your login page. The default settings of the WordPress login page allow the page to be accessed easily through wp-admin or wp-login.php, which is visible in the site’s main URL. This makes it extremely easy for hackers to gain access to your login page, which ultimately allows them to gain access to your site. For this reason, it’s crucial that you change your default login URL to make it more secure and infrangible. Now, you can either use the iThemes Security plugin or create a custom URL like my_custom_login to change your login URLs.
Take Help from a Professional
The final tip to secure your WordPress website is taking help from a company that offers managed services. As they see your website differently, the managed services can help you to optimize your WordPress Security.
There you have it—5 tips to secure your WordPress website. By using the aforementioned-tips, you can increase the security of your WordPress site and make it less vulnerable to attacks.
by Bobby J Davidson
We design and develop amazing WordPress websites while helping you be SEO ready, also giving you a dashboard so you can do those simple content adds or modifications on your own. Call me to discuss more.
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