As a WordPress user, you must protect your WordPress blog from hackers. Unfortunately, this task often overlooked by a lot of bloggers. After having my website hacked years ago, and blacklisted (yes blacklisted) by Google, I had to learn the hard way the importance of securing my site.
The blogging tips I’m sharing with you will help keep your WordPress blog safe from hackers.
If you didn’t already know, WordPress is one of the most hacked blogging platforms out there.
If your blog hasn’t already been hacked, there’s a good chance that your blog has at least experienced an attempted brute force attack. I’ll take more about brute force attacks later in this post.
Having your site hacked is no laughing matter. When my website was hacked, I had to delete my entire WordPress installation and start from scratch.
To make matters worst, I didn’t have a backup of my site (yeah, crazy I know). It was a nightmare.
My design, blog posts, pages, everything was gone.
Don’t let what happened to me, happen to you.
Protect Your WordPress Blog From Hackers
Here are the points we’ll be going over in the post to help you protect your blog from hackers:
- Keeping your blog updated.
- Having a secure password.
- Installing a security plugin.
- Backing up your blog.
1. Stay Updated
It’s so important that you keep your WordPress version and plugins up to date.
As a blog designer for WordPress, it’s shocking to see how many people don’t perform updates on their blog. While updates are created to enhance the functionality of WordPress and your plugins, updates are also there to patch any security holes within your installation.
A significant number of blogs have been hacked simply because the site owner did not keep their WordPress installation and plugins up to date.
2. Change Your Password
I’ve come across a lot of insecure passwords in my years as a blog designer.
I’m telling you right now if your password is “love123” or something equally as insecure, there’s a good chance your blog will eventually be hacked. When you hear about hacking, I think a lot of people picture a person sitting at their computer typing in password after password.
Hacking has evolved to so much more than that. Nowadays, hackers use a method called brute force hacking. During brute force attacks, hackers use software that tries every username and password possible until it gets in.
Brute force attacks can be extremely successful for sites that use insecure passwords like “love123” and usernames like “admin.” The best way to protect your blog from brute force hacking is by using long, secure passwords. I love using HostGator’s password generator to generate passwords for my online accounts.
Aside from changing your password, you also want to make sure you’re not using “admin” as your username. “Admin” is the fist username brute force hacking software will use when attempting to get into your blog. If your username is “admin,” I highly recommend changing it now.
In order to create a new username, you will have to create a new user, and delete the admin user. However, before you delete the admin user, please make sure you’ve assigned all of your content to the new user. You can find a great tutorial on how change your WordPress username at WPBeginner.
3. Install A Security Plugin
To keep your blog secure, I recommend installing the iThemes Securty plugin. iThemes security not only protects your entire WordPress database, but you also have the option to limit login attempts to our blog.
I recommend taking advantage of this feature. With login security enabled, you can limit the number of incorrect login attempts for your blog. Once the limit has been reached, the user will be banned from logging in.
4. Backup
While all of these tips will help reduce your chances of being hacked, there is no guaranteed way to prevent your site from being hacked. This is why I recommend always having a recent backup of your WordPress blog.
When you have a backup, if something happens with your blog, you will be able to restore your site using your recent backup.
I use the BackUpWordPress plugin to automatically schedule backups of my entire WordPress database.
If you want to quickly backup your content, in your wp-admin, go to tools > export and choose the content you want to export. After you click export, WordPress will create an XML file for you to save. Keep all of your backups in a safe place.
I hope this post has inspired you to protect your website from hackers. Please be sure to share this post, and leave any feedback below.
Another Helpful Post:
The Best WordPress Plugins – My Top 5 Must-Have Plugins