9 Simple WordPress Security Tricks to Keep Your Website Safe

Security continues to be a concern for all websites, especially the websites running on WordPress. Since a WordPress website you need to use a lot of third-party plugins and themes to give shape to the intended look, feel and functions, security will always be a crucial aspect that you cannot remove from your focus as a WordPress site owner. WordPress remains one of the most hacked CMS platforms to this date simply because of these security concerns.

There are various ways to protect your WordPress website from security risks and vulnerabilities. Here we are going to explain a few of them.

1. Make sure you have a website lockdown feature

Continuous brute force attempts by hackers to get through your website security is a common concern. Such an issue can be taken care of through a lockdown feature dealing with failed login attempts. This feature prevents unsolicited access whenever there is any hacking attempt that uses wrong passwords repeatedly. In case of such efforts, the website gets locked, and you get instant notification about such activities.

There are several credible plugins for the purpose. You can use a useful security plugin that comes with a lot of security features to protect a WordPress website. Apart from various other WordPress security features, after a certain number of failed login attempts, the plugin should ban the IP address of the attacker.

2. Using Two-Factor authentication

Using a two-factor authentication (2FA) module for the login page is a considerable security measure. With this measure, the user needs to furnish login details with two separate components. As the owner of your WordPress website, you can decide what those two components for the authentication purpose are. There can be several options including a regular password with a secret question, a secret code, a code sent to a phone number or email, a set of characters, or several other options.

3. Make sure you use a strong password

Gaining unauthorised access thanks to the weak password is such a common security vulnerability for WordPress websites. You not only should use a unique username, but you should also use a strong password combining numerical value and some characters.

When you use a password with a combination of different characters and with a length of at least 10 to 15 characters long, the chances of such unauthorised access gets minimum. There are also some Strong Password Generator tools that you can use. The last piece of advice is to change your website password frequently to keep hackers at a distance.

4. Customise the login URL

It is always advisable to change the URL address of the login page of your WordPress website if you want to safeguard it from hackers. The WordPress login page can easily be browsed through wp-login.php, and that can be easily seen by anyone in the main website URL.

This easy access to default login URL page makes it incredibly easy for the hackers to access the login page and use brute force attempts to gain access to the website. This is why you need to customise your login URL and safeguard the website login page from hackers.

5. Upgrade to HTTPS

When the SSL is installed on a website, you can ensure secure login even while travelling. There are many hosts and hosting plans provide this for free. You can also use a separate SSL plugin for the purpose and upgrade the site to HTTPS.

Having SSL certificate you can protect the website from untrustworthy hidden scripts running from the computer system and any script which is being run to steal data from the login forms. Moreover, by having an SSL certificate, you can enjoy better Google search results.

6. Safeguard WP-admin directory

Safeguarding the wp-admin directory is a crucial practice for boosting WordPress security. As the WordPress admin dashboard is commonly targeted by hackers, you need to strengthen its security. You can use a password to control access to the wp-admin directory. With this method in place, the owner of the WordPress website has to submit two separate passwords for getting access to the dashboard.

7. Ensure making regular backups for optimum security

However, secure you feel about your website data, there is no dearth of efforts for making improvements. Taking an off-site backup of the website is a considerable measure to keep your website data safe and secure from security vulnerabilities. When you have a backup, you can restore the WordPress website to an active state any time whenever you want. To make this possible, there is both help from your hosting providers and various third-party plugins.

8. Monitor the audit logs

In case you have WordPress multisite or a WordPress website having multiple authors, you need to keep a close watch on the user activity that is going on behind the scene. You should know whether your writers and contributors are changing passwords and whether other things are taking place in the background. All these things, you can keep track of by merely monitoring the audit logs.

There are several useful and credible plugins for the purpose. Some of these plugins can also send you to email notifications and reports about all the activities that are going on behind your back. Such an audit log can also inform in case any writer is facing trouble in logging in.

9. Choose a quality hosting solution

In case your hosting service provider is not up to the mark, most of your efforts and troubles are going to be in waste. Before using tricks and measures to boost the security of your website, you should make sure that you have a reliable hosting service provider onboard. No wonder, some surveys indicate that more than 40% of WordPress websites get hacked just because of the security vulnerabilities present in the hosting server.

The problem is notably bigger, with shared hosting service providers. Quality hosting providers such as SiteGround and BlueHost offer a lot of security-driven features for WordPress websites. In case you want a more robust and reliable security setting, you can always go for a dedicated hosting provider. Dedicated hosting providers are known for ensuring robust security features, unlimited bandwidth, huge disk space and a lot many features to make things easier from the security perspective.

Conclusion

WordPress, as the leading CMS platform, will continue to remain popular among websites of all niches. But the real value of WordPress gets lost when you fail to address the security issues adequately. The measures mentioned above and tips are tested and tried to make security better for WordPress websites across the niches.

About the author

Yakshit Bose is the Senior Developer at leading Custom WordPress Development Services Company CMARIX Technolabs Pvt. Ltd. He is an experienced WordPress developer. He likes to share his thoughts on Web development, CMS development, and Technology News.

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