WordPress is the most well-liked Content Management System (CMS), and over 529 million sites are built with WordPress.
There are tons of themes and plugins available to customize your site as you want. But building a site is not an end. One of the most important things about a website is security. There are thousands of sites that are being hacked every day and blacklisted by Google.
So if you are very serious about your site, then you just need to pay attention to your WordPress site security. Follow WordPress security tips from the experts to keep hackers away from your site.
WordPress is a well-growing open-source platform, so hackers principally target WordPress sites. You’re not free from this.
Your website can get hacked if you do not care about your site’s security. Like different things, you furthermore need to check your site security frequently.
WordPress Security Tips to Protect Your Website
In this guide, I’m sharing the 10 Best WordPress security tips to keep your website secure from hackers and malware.
1. Use a Good WordPress Hosting
This is the most important part to strengthen your WordPress security and safeguard your business. Good web hosting plays a major role in keeping your site secure. A top-rated web host will offer multiple security layers and monitor your site 24/7 for malware and attacks.
Most of the newbies make the first mistake when they buy cheap hosting. They like inexpensive hosting rather than decent hosting. Basically, cheap hosting doesn’t provide any good security function, and its performance is poor as well. This way, hackers can target your site and hack it easily.
So, before buying any web hosting from any company, check their hosting performance as well as security services. If they provide good security, you can go for it.
2. Keep WordPress Up to Date
If you are not updating your WordPress versions, plugins, and themes, then you are far behind in security. Staying up with the latest version of WordPress is a good practice.
With every WordPress update, there come many WordPress fixes, security improvements, bug fixes, etc. This is also similar to plugins and themes.
Updating the WordPress version is very easy, and you can do it right from your WordPress admin dashboard.
First, go to your WordPress dashboard> Update. From there, you can see what needs to be updated.
3. Don’t Ever Use Nulled Theme
This is another key WordPress security tip to protect your website. There is no doubt that premium themes look professional and have more functionalities than a free theme.
Premium WordPress themes are paid and need an activation key to activate them. But there are so many sites that provide free premium themes/ nulled, which are dangerous for your site. Many malicious codes are injected and can contain many bad links. So, always avoid such nulled themes.
There are many free themes available in the WordPress theme directory, where thousands of beautiful-looking themes are available.
4. Use a Strong Password
A password is the most vital part of website security. Luckily, WordPress can automatically generate complex, alpha-numeric passwords for all users. However, you should make sure that passwords are not shared with others.
If you want to give admin-level access to developers, use plugins like
Temporary Login Without Password and WP Activity Log to protect your websites.
In addition to this, it is recommended to use a VPN tool from the top VPN providers when you’re logging in on public Wi-Fi or an unfamiliar network. This will secure your connection and your sensitive data, like your password, whenever you sign in to your WordPress site.
NordVPN is an excellent VPN that offers many beneficial features. Read this particular NordVPN review and find out why it’s one of the most used VPN by WordPress users.
5. Change the WordPress Admin Login URL
By default, the WordPress login address is “yourdomain.com/wp-login.php,” and if you have the same, you need to change it.
There are a few reasons to change your default WordPress login address. First of all, if hackers target your site, they will run a brute force attack on your site and try different types of password combinations. The thing is getting too much SPAM registration.
If your site is popular, then there is a high chance that you will get hundreds of thousands of SPAM registrations every day. To stop this, you need to change the default login URL. More than that, you can add security questions to your login page for extra security.
6. Add Limit Login Attempts
This is another of the best WordPress security tips that you should not miss.
By default, WordPress permits users to log in as many times as they want. So any user can use the login system without any restrictions. Sometimes hackers use a method by running software to decode encrypted data, such as passwords. This is called a Brute force attack.
So, if you add a limit to the login function on your website, users will have a limited number of attempts to log in. Once they reach their login retry limit, they will be temporarily blocked from using this login function. This will be done by a WordPress login limit plugin.
7. Add SSL Certificate
These days, SSL is advantageous for all sorts of sites. An SSL keeps your site secure, and your site will get an SEO boost in search results.
In case you are running an e-commerce site, an SSL certificate is a must, and a normal SSL costs around $70-$199 per year. Generally, E-business sites collect sensitive data, i.e., passwords, credit cards, etc.
So all the information between the client web browser and web server is delivered in plain text, which can be discernible. So if you use SSL, the SSL encodes the sensitive data, which can’t be decrypted effortlessly. Along these lines, it influences your site to be more secure.
8. Disable File Editing
By default, WordPress comes with an inbuilt file editing function from the dashboard, which allows you to edit themes and plugins.
You can access the theme editor by going to Appearance>Editor. Similarly, the plugin editor can be found under Plugins>Editor.
We suggest you disable this feature, as a result of which, if hackers log in to your dashboard, they will inject malicious code into your theme and plugin. So you need to disable the file editing function from your WordPress dashboard.
9. Use a WordPress Security Plugin
To make your site more secure, you can use a WordPress security plugin. A security plugin monitors your site 24/7, scans for malware, and prevents brute force attacks.
It’s tedious work to check your site security each time, even if you don’t know which file to check, and it is risky as well. So, by using a security plugin, the plugin will take care of all your security.
There are many free WordPress security plugins available that you can use.
10. Hide the WP-config.php and .htaccess files
You can hide your WP-config.php and .htaccess files for extra protection of your site.
Many times, hackers target our .htaccess and WordPress config file and destroy our site. To prevent this, you need to hide both files so they cannot be accessed by users.
It is an advanced step, so we recommend that you take a backup of both files.
First, go to your wp-config.php file and add the following code,
<Files wp-config.php>
order allow, deny
deny from all
</Files>
Similar way, add the following code to your .htaccess file,
<Files .htaccess>
order allow, deny
deny from all
</Files>
Conclusion
WordPress security is one of the important things you should focus on. If your site gets hacked, you will lose the website forever. So it is better if you secure your site, and in this article, I have written the 10 best WordPress security tips to make your site secure from hackers.
I hope this tutorial helped you fix your security problem. If you’re still having an issue, do let us know.
Do you have any other WordPress security tips to share?
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