Some people don’t care much about their WordPress website security. Unfortunately, they won’t realize the importance until it’s too late. WordPress is on the list of most user-friendly and popular content management systems that you can find these days. At the same time, it is still a common target for spammers and hackers.
We understand this, and are going to share with you a few important actions that we take to help secure your WordPress website.
1. Don’t Go for Premium Plugins that are offered for Free
If you are running your online business on a tight budget, you may be looking for ways to save money. This is completely understandable. However, it is not a good idea to download your desired premium plugins from any website they are sold on. What you need to do is go to the official website of the plugin whenever you need to reinstall that plugin.
What happens is that free plugins contain malicious software such as Malware. Therefore, we always buy the plugins you need from the official website of the service provider.
2. Hide Author Usernames
It is not a good idea to use WordPress defaults. The reason is that almost every WordPress user knows the default username that WordPress uses for each website. Often, the default author username of a WordPress website is administrator. Therefore, you have to change it. If you don’t change it, it will be easier for hackers to access your website and use its contents and other features.
If your website has more than one author and no one of them is the administrators, you are good to go. However, if you have a small website and you are the only administrator and Arthur, you may want to create a separate user for your post. Don’t forget to assign the author role to the user. This is important because you cannot allow that user you have all the rights to make necessary changes to your website. In other words, the user should have a limited access.
3. Hide Your Site Login Page
If your security strategy involves hiding login pages and files, it won’t be enough. After all, all these elements of your WordPress website are not going to prevent hackers from getting access to them. But it will at least make it more difficult for them to hack your website. Hiding your site longin page won’t require more than a few seconds if you opt for the right method, such as a plugin.
If you move or rename your WordPress login page, it will make it much harder for a hacker to get unauthorized access. Actually, most types of attacks are programmed. Therefore, if you have a different login page, they will have to invest in much more effort to attack your website.
You can choose from a lot of plugins that can make this job easier for you. For example, you can try out WPS Hide Login for this purpose.
4. Go With a Reliable Hosting Company
According to statistics, 4 out of 10 websites are hacked just because they were more vulnerable. This vulnerability is due to the hosting platform. Therefore, it is a great idea to choose a host that has a high-security level. Given below are a few features of a good hosting service:
- Malware scanning and detection of suspicious files
- Automatic theme updates
- Firewall protection
- Optimized for word WordPress
- Support for the most recent version of mySQL and PHP
These are just a few important things that can help you choose the right hosting company. Choosing the most popular and reliable provider is a great idea if you want to be on the safe side. We recommend Siteground for all of our clients.
About WebWorks LA
Are you a business owner that needs help with your WordPress website security? If yes, then WebWorks LA can help you get started. We are based in Los Angeles and have helped many clients build successful secure websites. If you’re interested in starting a new project, submit your project details here. If you have any queries, you can fill out our online contact form here, and we will get in touch.