WordPress is one of the most commonly used blogging CMS and because of this reason it is also a popular target for hackers. If you own a WordPress website, you have to put in some additional efforts to protect your website, to protect your data and your visitor’s data. This article provides summary about some best practices for securing a WordPress website.
Make Sure That Your WordPress Website And Plugins Are Up-To-Date
It is extremely important to update your integral WordPress files and all the plugins to their latest versions. Most of the new WordPress versions and the new plugin versions contain improved security patches. Even if the vulnerabilities cannot be exploited easily, it is still important to fix them.
Secure Your WordPress Admin Area
It is crucial to restrict access to the admin area of your WordPress website. Make sure that only the people who actually need to access the admin area are accessing it and everyone else does not have the admin login credentials. If your website does not consist of features like registration or front-end content creation, any of your website visitors should not get access to the ‘/wp-admin/’ folder or the ‘wp-login.php’ file of your website. The best thing that can be done is getting your home IP address and add the lines mentioned below to the ‘.htaccess’ file present in your WordPress admin folder and replace ‘xx.xxx.xxx.xxx’ with your IP address.
<Files wp-login.php>
order deny,allow
Deny from all
Allow from xx.xxx.xxx.xxx
</Files>
In case you wish to provide access to multiple computers like your home PC, office PC, laptop etc. all you have to do is add another allow command – ‘Allow from xx.xxx.xxx.xxx’ on a new line.
If you want to access your WordPress website’s admin area from multiple IP addresses, it can be inconvenient to restrict your admin area to a single IP address or to some few IPs. For this situation, it is recommended to restrict the number of incorrect login attempts to your website. This will help in protecting your website from the brute-force attacks and from the people who are trying to crack your website’s password. You can also utilize a plugin called ‘WP Limit’ for restricting the login attempts.
Avoid Using The ‘Admin’ Username
Most of the hackers and web attackers will assume that ‘Admin’ is your admin username because many people don’t pay attention at changing this username and work with it for a long time. It is possible to block a lot of web attacks and brute-force attacks by changing the admin username. If you are setting up a new WordPress website, you will be prompted for an admin username during the installation process.
Here’s how you can change the WordPress admin username.
Make Sure That You Are Using Strong Passwords
There are many people who use words like ‘password’ or ‘12345’ or their birth date etc. as the admin password. These people are extremely vulnerable to attacks as their passwords are easy to guess and they are at the top of dictionary attack list. Therefore, it is extremely important to use a strong and complicated password, there are many online password generators, you can use one of them or decide a password yourself; however, make sure that the password cannot be guessed easily. It is also important to change your password at regular time intervals.
Make Sure That Your Computer Is Free From Viruses And Malware
In case your computer is infected with viruses, malware or any other malicious software, it becomes easy for a potential attacker to get access to your login credentials and the attacker can login to your website. It is recommended to have a good anti-virus program installed on your computer and to maintain the complete security of all your computers before accessing your WordPress website through them.
