WordPress is a fantastic platform to run your websites on and is hugely popular these days for many very good reasons. While it‘s great for blogging, it‘s also the perfect platform for those creating their first website because it‘s so easy to setup and you don‘t need any costly software or any knowledge of html and the like.
Unfortunately though, with the huge number of WordPress sites now dominating the web, hackers now have a large “playground” to test their skills.
Repairing hacked sites can be very time-consuming and also lead to significant downtime and / or data loss. Databases can also be corrupted and you can even lose search engine ranking if your site is indexed before you’ve managed to repair the damage. And that doesn’t count the financial loses due to your site being out of action whilst repairs are completed.
Simple Steps You Can Take Right Now To Start Securing Your WordPress Sites
The great thing about WordPress is, that because it‘s so immensely popular, developers are extremely quick to react when a security flaw is uncovered. That means that new updates are regularly available and that in itself makes it more difficult for hackers.
The problem though, for many people, is that they do not keep their WordPress sites updated. Often they have too many WordPress powered sites and they just forget to keep them updated. Or they have too many and they just can‘t find the time to update them all. And of course, there are those who are simply too lazy to do it—even though it doesn’t take long to do.
So, the simplest step you can take today to ensure that your WordPress sites have a decent level of protection from hackers, is to keep them updated with the latest version of WordPress.
The next thing you can do very easily is make sure you use a very stong password to access your WordPress dashboard. I know this sounds really basic but you‘d be surprised how many people will use a simple word that can be found in the dictionary! Hackers will be able to “guess” your password if it‘s too basic so make it as difficult as you possibly can. I recommend a mix of numbers, letters and even special characters. If you are wanting to create a really secure random password, make it 10 characters or more. You can use the free tool on this site if you‘re stuck for ideas! If you want to check how secure your password is then you can check it via this free resource on the Microsoft website.
One other thing to remember (since we‘re on the subject of passwords) is also to make sure that your web hosting account itself has a strong username and password combination!
Another simple thing you can do is to make sure that you don’t use “admin” as your username for accessing your blog. Try using something else. This again will make your username and password combination very difficult for hackers to hack. If you already have a user setup called “admin” then you can simply create a new user under another username and give them administrator privileges, test it to make sure you can access your WordPress dashboard ok with it and that you have full administrative access and then delete the existing “admin” username!
Well—that‘s about all we have time to discuss within the scope of this article. I hope you’ve found it useful and more importantly, will put the information into ACTION if you are not already following the above methods to keep your WordPress sites secure.
If you would like more detailed information along with step-by-step procedures for securing your WordPress sites with almost bulletproof armour, then you might want to check out my WordPress Lockdown? Security Guide.
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