How To Secure Your

WordPress Website?

Security of the WordPress Site is a very important topic for every website owner. In today‟s
time, There are around 50,000 for phishing every week & Google is blacklisting around 10,000+
websites every day and the reason is malware.
In all open-source software, security is essential. And it is surprising but according to the leading
online security experts, Sucuri WordPress is the most hacked CMS platform. The main reason
behind this is with the so many WordPress installations out there, some of which are quite
poorly protected.

But WordPress is one of the CMS Platform that has gotten better with age and has become the
primary choice of marketers, bloggers, entrepreneurs who have something to sell online but
don‟t know where to begin.
There is a number of actionable steps that you can take to protect your website against security
vulnerabilities.
 1. Selection Of User Name.
In the previous time, The default username is “admin”. And so it is very easy for the hacker to
know this username. But thankfully, WordPress has since changed this and now it asks for the
custom username at the time of installing WordPress.
However, there are still some 1-click WordPress installers, set the default admin username to
“admin”. if you notice this case you can also switch your web hosting.
There are 3 methods you can use to change the username.
 Update UserName from phpMyAdmin
 Delete the old user and Create the new admin username.
 Or you can use username changer plugin

2. Install New Plugin Carefully

We all know that Plugins are one of the best things about WordPress that sets it apart from
other CMS platforms, but downloading any plugin without research is dangerous.
The best way to avoid downloading problematic plugins is to simply do a little research before
adding one to your own website.
Check reviews to see people‟s experience with it and look at its update log to make sure it‟s
being actively cared for. To check the performance of a plugin, it‟s also advisable to test new
plugins on a staging site first.

3. Use Of The Secure Hosting Is Important

Not all web hosting providers are responsible for the hacking of the site. Choose the right web
hosting is important for the secure WordPress website. Simply do not go for the cheapest you
can find. Firstly do your research, and make sure you use a well-established company with a
good track-record for strong security standards. Paying extra is ok if you are getting hosting that
ensures your website security.

4. Limit Login Attempt

It is very important to use Plugin that limits the number of failed login attempts from a single IP
address. This allows you to specify how many retries will be allowed, and how long an IP will be
locked out for after too many failed login attempts.
 5. Avoid Using Free Themes
Avoid using free themes, especially if they aren‟t built by a reputable developer it is better for the
security of your website. The main reason behind this is that free themes can often contain
things like base64 encoding, which may be used to insert spam links into your site, or other
malicious code that can cause problems like redirecting of the site and can be anything.
You can use free themes that are developed by trusted theme companies, or those available on
the official WordPress.org theme repository. And the same logic is applied with plugins.

Note: Do not download the plugins from the untrustworthy source. And this is very important for
the security of the website.

6. Update All Things

Wordpress release a new version update, time to time. If you don‟t keep your website updated
with the latest version of WordPress, then you could be leaving your website open to attacks.
Usually, hackers will target website that is using older versions of WordPress with known
security issues, So it is advisable to keep an eye on your Dashboard notification area and don‟t
ignore those „Please update now‟ messages.
The same applies to plugins and themes. Make sure you update to the latest versions both as
they are released. If you do these things and keep your site up-to-date than it is much less likely
to get hacked.

7. Move your Website to SSL/HTTPS

It is important to enabling SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), after this, your website will use HTTPS
instead of HTTP. This helps in encrypting the data transfer between your website and a user‟s
browser. And encryption makes it harder for a hacker to sniff around and steal information or
hack the website.

8. Customize Login URL

If you use the default login URL then it is easy for the hacker to access your website. If you
don‟t change the default login URL “wp-login.php” it will be easy for a hacker to try brute force
and gain access to your login credentials.
So it is important to change the default URL and make a new URL that is hard to guess. You
can either install the iThemes Security plugin to automatically change your login URLs and can
also change the URL manually.