WordPress Security Best Practices

For all the WordPress websites out there, it’s important to keep your website secure. You can keep your website secure by following the right practices. If you follow all the right things, your website will be out of danger. These are some of the most common WordPress security best practices that you can do.

We will not use the common WordPress practices but we will also see all the other unique and best practices that you should do. If you follow all these tricks, you will keep your website more secure. Remember, it’s not just about reading them. Instead, you will have to implement them.

Updates are Crucial

With great popularity comes great risks. Many attacks are going on the internet. Many people are just targeting WordPress websites because there are so many websites. As it is open-source, it’s quite easy for WordPress hackers to hack the website. They know the code. So, they can take some steps to play with it – WordPress security best practices.

Luckily, there is a huge team working constantly on WordPress. Whenever any of the vulnerability comes into existence. The team will work hard to remove that vulnerability. When it happens, you will get a new core update. They will fix the code in case there are any vulnerabilities found on the code.

The new code will come to you as an update. If you update the code, you can access the new code which is free of all the viruses. If you don’t update it, you will still be using the vulnerable version of WordPress. This means that you should update your WordPress version whenever there is a new version available. The WordPress development team has been providing updates regularly. Therefore, you can update it.

The same thing goes with all the themes and plugins. Whenever you have any new updates available, you will have to install them first. This will ensure that your website is safe and secure. The good thing is that it hardly takes few minutes to install all the updates. You won’t even have to sit there till it updates. Just click on the update button and then you can switch to a different tab and do your work. It will update itself. In this easy way, you can update your WordPress website, themes, and plugins. You will also may new features and performance improvements with the updates.

Remove Unwanted Trash

WordPress makes it easier for you to install the plugins and themes. You can install the plugin with just one click. Just search your favorite plugin in the directory and you will find it. After installing it you will have the plugin ready to use. Activate it and you will be all set to use the feature of that plugin too.

This is why there are many plugins that you might be using. You can use all the plugins and themes that will allow you to use all the functionalities.

We are sure there might be many plugins and themes that are still installed on your website and you’re not even using it. Many people will even have them activated. This will put your website at risk.

Therefore, the next security practice is where you will have to remove all the unwanted and/or unused plugins and themes. If you want to use it in the future, you can at least deactivate them. This will decrease the chance of getting hacked. Also, it will increase the performance of the website.

If the plugin is activated, it’s loaded whenever the website is loaded. Therefore, the user will have to wait till the plugin loads. In this way, you will have to check out various plugins and ensure that everything is safe and secure. Don’t forget to delete the themes that you are no longer using.

These are some of the best ways to secure your website. If you follow all these things, you can be sure that all the things are safe. Further, it will help you in increasing the performance as well. Therefore, you are always in benefit. Additionally, you are not using the plugin. So, you don’t need to keep them.

The Security Plugin – WordPress Best Practices

Now, the next thing that you will have to keep in mind is the security plugin. You will have to install the right security plugin that will help you in securing your website. If you can secure your website with the security plugin, why not install it?

The security plugin should include various things. This will include the firewall, malware scanner, etc. These are the main things that you need to see. Most of the plugins are available for free. Therefore, you can install the free plugin and use it. The free plugin includes all the things that you will need, except if there is no specific requirement for a paid plugin on your website. You can keep using the free plugin that will keep your website secure.

If you don’t have a security plugin, you should install it right now. You can simply head over to your WordPress website and hit the add plugin button to find the best plugin. You can install Sucuri, WordFence, or any other security plugin. All of them are good.

In the same way, if your website is big enough, you should go with the premium plugin instead of a free one. The premium plugin will keep your website more secure. Therefore, you can upgrade and use the premium plugin if you have a big website.

For smaller websites, the free version is enough and will give you enough security for your website. Therefore, you don’t necessarily need to upgrade to a premium plugin.

Having a reputed plugin is also important here. Further, you can explore all the features and use all the possible features in the plugin. In this way, you can keep your website secure.

Now that you have the plugin, we will see the rest of the things.

Backups and Hosting

You can take regular backups here. Backups are great and will help you to recover your website in case something goes wrong. You need to have a perfect backup solution that works the best. If you are not taking regular backups, you are missing out on a lot of things.

In case, something goes wrong, you will lose all the things. You won’t even have the website’s user data to restore. Therefore, you will need a backup solution that will allow you to do all these things.

Generally, people are taking monthly backups. This is one of the worst things you will do. Monthly backups are as good as useless. Let’s understand one thing. Assume, you are running an online eCommerce store.

If something happens to your website and you would want to restore the previous version, the last version you have is a month old. This will simply cause issues with your website. If you restore the backup that was a month old, users who have ordered the items within that month will be gone.

This is why you will need daily backups. For blogs and similar websites, monthly backups can work. However, it’s not possible to do so for a huge website that has regular updates and the website where you are updating the data daily. The same goes for the website where the user is generating content.

If you own a multi-category blog and there are many posts on the website on daily basis, you will end up with big trouble. Therefore, you shouldn’t do that. Instead, you can focus on the main part that is the daily backups.

This is one of the important security measures you need to take if you want to secure your website for WordPress security best Practices.

SSL

SSL is the must-have thing now. SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer. This will add HTTPS to the website. Instead of a website being opened in HTTP, it will add the extras. The extra S is for security. This simply means that all the traffic that your website is getting will be filtered and then it will go through the website.

This will remove the stealing of the data. No one can steal the data from between. Further, it will also prevent unwanted bots and traffic. Many unwanted bots are generated purely for spamming will be visiting your website, HTTPS will stop them from accesses your website.

If you are collecting any payments from your website, you will have to add the SSL to your website as it’s mandatory. All the payment gateways will ask you to add the SSL before you can continue.

In the same way, you can use SFTP instead of FTP. This will secure your file transfer protocol. These are some of the measures you can take.

Further, if you want, you can also add privacy protection to your domain. This will hide your name, email, phone number, etc from the WHOIS database. So, no one will know the owner of the website. This is yet another way to keep your website secure. You can do both of these things and keep your website secure.

Passwords and Username – WordPress Security Best Practices

At first, if you are using the “admin” user name or you have the website’s name as the username, you will have to change it right now. These two are the worst practices that you can do. You should never put admin as username and neither you should add the exact username as your website’s name as an WordPress Security Best Practices. Many hackers are doing mass attacks where they will randomly brute force the website. If you have “admin” as the username, you can easily be hacked.

The same goes for the password. You should always keep a strong password. When you set your password, WordPress will tell you whether your password is strong enough or not. You need to do this. If you don’t do this, your password will be easy to crack. This might be a dangerous sign.

Limit Login Attempts and 2FA

You can always limit your login attempts. There are plugins like Loginzer or Limit Login Attempt (yes that is the name of the plugin). You can use any of these plugins. When the user is trying to log in and they fail for a certain time, the plugin will simply block the person from accessing your website.

You can set the number of times when the wrong logins are allowed. In the same way, you can also set the timer interval for which you want to ban the account of the person who was trying to access your website.

The next thing that you can do is the 2FA. You can set the two-factor authentication on your website. This is where the login will require you to add one extra detail. without that, you can’t simply log in to the account. This is how you can keep your website secure. You can find the plugin for the same.

Hosting and Server Security

Lastly, it’s important to use a standard hosting account. If you are using a standard hosting provider, your website will be secure. You can also make sure that the server is secure. Just choosing the best hosting provider will do the work here. You don’t need to do anything else. This is the only step needed if you want to secure your website.

Final Words about WordPress Security Best Practices

To conclude, these are some of the best practices to secure your website. You also have to monitor the website regularly to ensure that everything is secure. The plugin will do the work. That is the exact reason why you will have to choose the best security plugin. You can also follow the rest of the security practices that are given here. If you follow all of them, you won’t face any security issues. For all these things, you will find a suitable plugin. Therefore, you can use it.