How To Secure Your WordPress website with 7 Steps

WordPress sites are targeted by many hackers and malware each day due to its prominence. So, its equally important for every webmaster to secure WordPress sites from being vulnerably attacked.

However, the WordPress core software installation is pretty much secure as it is examined by many developers steadily. But on the other hand, themes and plugins used in WordPress to extend its functionality and design are made by various developers worldwide. Few of those themes and plugins may not be very well tested so, there is always a chance that hacker would find their window to hack into the site. Hence, you have to take cautious steps to prevent your WordPress site from being attacked and keep it secure.

So, dare not to take it on a light side!

The issues can be more cumbersome if you don’t pay enough attention to your WordPress site security.

Well, you don’t want to mess up your WordPress site from being hacked – it’s a sure thing.

Nor would you like to downside your business reputation and revenue by getting your WordPress site hacked.

Lucky you!

To make it simple, get a glance at this simple though useful to use tips and tricks to secure your WordPress website from being the target of an attacker.

Not a tech-savvy person? Not a problem!

Let’s kickstart from the simple tips and tricks:

Keep Your WordPress Site Secure Using 2-Factor Authentication

The two-factor authentication (2FA) is a better security way that can be set on the login page. Here the user provides two varied components of login details.

So, if you are a website owner, then you can decide both the components and what to choose in each of them.

Like, it can be a normal password followed by

• Question
• a set of characters
• a secret code
• Or even more safely a Google Authentication code sent on your registered phone number.

Doing so will safeguard your WordPress site and make it more secure.

Periodic Password Change

Some of the people with malicious intentions and bots can try to directly attack to log in your WordPress site.

First things first!

The foremost thing that you’ll need to do is to strengthen your site password by implying Uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters.

Although using a strong password can better secure your WordPress site, changing the password periodically can make it even more secure.

Bonus Tip: Don’t make a long-phrase password instead use the combinations of random numbers and letters (Upper and Lowercase both). Also, it’s better not to use a username while setting a password.

Encrypt Data using SSL/HTTPS

SSL (Secure Socket Layer) provides a safer way to transfer the data between websites and browsers by encrypting it.
After activating your SSL, your site will be seen with a padlock followed by Https (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secured) whenever anyone searches for your website URL.

Getting an SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificate can be a smart move toward better securing your WordPress site and the admin panel.

The webmaster can purchase the SSL certificate from the hosting company. Some of the hosting services offer prices whereas some offer SSL for free its plans.

Let’s Encrypt uses a free open source SSL certificate that is provided by some of the top hosting companies. Apart from that, Google considers Https sites in its ranking factor rather than those sites with Http protocol.

Using Email To Login

There are two ways

• One with the use of username (In Username Field).

• The second way is to log in to a WordPress website by using an email address in the username field.

While you can always go for the former option, the latter one proves to be a more reliable option to safeguard your WordPress site better.

Besides, many WordPress security plugins allow you to do so.

To Secure your WordPress site Install a Backup Solution

When it comes to the security of a WordPress site, you better care for the sensitive data of your site!

There is always a chance that your site can get down due to many reasons like server issues, coding issues, system crashes, maliciously injected code and more such reasons.

No backup means your business can have a loss of plenty of work hours of the team, revenue, reputation and above all it highly impacts your customers whenever they visit your site.

The backup solution works as a defense mechanism

To restore your site without any hassle then you need to first store the data with a periodic backup plan. So that you can restore your WordPress site data whenever you want.

The backup and restore can also be done easily with the powerful WordPress plugins like UpdraftPlus and VaultPress. The best part of both these plugins is that there’s no coding required.

Recommendation: Our best recommendation is to store the backup on the Cloud Storages services like Amazon, Dropbox, and Stash.

Installing Powerful Plugins like Wordfense Security

We talked about backup and restore, password change, two-Factor authentication but what about securing your WordPress site malware, malicious attacks, and threat defense.

Ever wondered if you can protect your WordPress site with an endpoint firewall, and threat defense?

Here’s the catch!

Wordfence Security – With over 3+ million active installations, Wordfence Security is the most extensive WordPress security solution facilitates and takes care of things like:

• WordPress Firewall
• WordPress Security Scanner
• Login Security
• Wordfence Central
• Country Blocking

Hence, to monitor your real-time site visits and hack attempts along with the IP address and Geolocation that is not shown elsewhere on any other analytics is facilitated in Wordfence Security.

Limit Login Actions

The default setting in the WordPress can allow unlimited login attempts for any users. This can have some inverse effects and may result in brute force attacks and other insecurity risks on your WordPress site.

Luckily, this can be fixed and controlled by limiting the failed login attempt from a user. Simply install and activate the Login LockDown plugin.

Once you install and activate the Login LockDown plugin into your WordPress site then visit Settings>Login LockDown page to set up the number of failed login attempts.

You can also set the retry time period restriction (In Minutes), Lockout Length (In Minutes) for how long a particular blocked IP will be locked and other settings as such.

Final Thoughts to Secure your WordPress Site

Lastly, many of the WordPress site users don’t take these WordPress security things seriously until their site gets hacked. So, keeping that on the top of priority, the above things will help you to secure your WordPress site.

After all said and done your WordPress site performance matters! Keep your thoughts and ideas flowing in the below comment box, we value that a lot!