WordPress is the most popular Content Management System (CMS), powering more than 30% of the websites. However, with its growth, hackers have taken notes and have started to target WordPress sites especially. Regardless of your site’s content, you won’t be an exception. If you don’t take individual precautions, you could get easily hacked. Like everything else technology related, you need to check your website security.
Following are 8 ways to secure a WordPress site easily.
1. Choose a Good Hosting Company
The easiest way to keep your site safe and secure is to opt for a hosting provider who provides various layers of security. It may be tempting to go with an inexpensive hosting provider, as saving money on your website hosting will help you spend it somewhere else for your organisation. However, you shouldn’t be tempted by this idea. It will, and often does, cause nightmares in the long run. Your information could be erased completely, and your URL could start redirecting somewhere else.
Paying a tiny bit more for a good hosting company would mean additional levels of security are undoubtedly attributed to your website. An extra benefit of using a good WordPress hosting, you can remarkably speed up your WordPress site. While there are many hosting companies out there, you should also check out the best SEO company in Singapore. They offer many safety features, including daily malicious software scans and access to support any time, any day. They also offer reasonable prices. When you hire the best SEO company in Singapore, they will help you set up your WordPress website. You don’t have to go into the nitty-gritty of WordPress by yourself.
2. Install a WordPress Security Plugin
It’s a time-consuming task to regularly inspect your website security for malware, and unless you daily upgrade your knowledge of coding you might not even realise you’re looking at a malware written into code. Fortunately, other’s have realised that not everyone is a web developer and have formed WordPress security plugins to help. A security plugin takes care of the safety of your site, scans for malware and monitors your site 24/7 to check what is happening on your site regularly. You can seek assistance from the best SEO company in Singapore to help you install a WordPress security plugin.
3. Use a Strong Password
Passwords are an extremely important part of website security and, unfortunately, are often overlooked. If you are using a basic plain password, i.e. ‘12345, abc0123, password’, you need to change your password immediately. While these passwords can be easy to remember, they are also very easy to guess. An advanced user or a hacker can easily guess or crack your password and get in easily.
It’s important to use a complicated password, or better yet, one that is auto-generated with multiple numbers, and nonsensical letter combinations including special characters like % or ^.
4. Install SSL Certificate
These days, Single Sockets Layer, SSL, is advantageous for all types of websites. Earlier, SSL was required in order to make a site secure for particular transactions, like to process payments. Today, however, Google has acknowledged its significance and supplies sites with an SSL certificate, a more weighted place within its search results.
SSL is necessary for any sites that contain sensitive information, i.e. credit card details or passwords. Without an SSL certificate, all of the information between the user’s web browser and your server is delivered in plain basic text. This can be easily read by the hackers. By utilising an SSL, the sensitive data is encrypted before it is transferred between the browser and your server, making it harder to read and making your site safer and more secure. Hire the best SEO company in Singapore to install the SSL certificate for you.
5. Change your WP-login URL
To login into WordPress, the by default address is “yoursite.com/wp-admin”. By leaving it as default, you can be easily targeted for a brutal force attack to crack your username/password combination. If you allow users to register for subscription accounts, you may also receive a lot of spam registrations. To avoid this, add a security question to the registration and login page, or you can change the admin login URL. Get the best SEO company in Singapore to do all the tiresome work for you while you can focus on main events of your organisations.
Pro Tip 1: You can also protect your login page by including a 2-factor authentication plugin in your WordPress. When you attempt to login, you will be required to provide an additional authentication in order to obtain access to your site.
Pro Tip 2: You can also assess which IPs have the most unsuccessful login attempts, then you can easily block those IP addresses.
6. Limit Login Attempts
WordPress allows users to try to login by default as many times as they want. While this feature may come in handy if you frequently forget what letters are capitalised in your passwords, it also opens your site to possible brute force attacks.
By restricting the number of login attempts, users can only try a limited number of times until they are blocked temporarily. This reduces your chance of a brute force attempt as the hacker will get locked out before they can complete their attack. You can enable this easily after you’ve installed the plugin, you can limit the number of login attempts via Settings- Login Limit Attempts. Hire the best SEO company in Singapore and forget all your worries regarding the security of your site.
7. Hide wp-config.php and .htaccess files
This is an additional advanced process to enhance your site’s security, if you’re serious about your safety, it’s a good idea to conceal your site’s .htaccess and wp-config.php files to avoid hackers from trying to access them. Get the best SEO company in Singapore to hide your files, and you can rest assured.
8. Update your WordPress version
Keeping your WordPress updated is a great practice for keeping your website safe. With every update, developers introduce a few new changes, often consisting updates of security features. You are helping secure yourself against being a target of hackers by staying updated with the latest version.
Secure your WordPress site by seeking assistance from the best SEO company in Singapore or from any social media marketing agency in Singapore.
