How to Make a WordPress Website Secure?

A question of security always comes in mind while running a website. No matter what kind of website you have, security is mandatory to keep you safe from several cyber attacks. WordPress is the most popular Content Management System (CMS) made by PHP and MySQL and powers more than 34% websites. It can also be under the attacks in the event that you don’t take proper measures to protect your site. So, everything related to the security solutions you need to know about. There are a lot of things you can do to secure your WordPress site by preventing hacking and different vulnerabilities.

In this article, we will talk about the best techniques to keep your WordPress website secure.

Regular Backup

Keeping regular backup for your website is very important to make it secure. You must not want to lose the website with all its data. So, you need to keep a weekly or monthly on-site and off-site backups of everything before the worst happening. You have many good backup solutions such as some plugins like Jetpack, that comes with a premium version at an affordable price. There's also a free alternative, ‘Updraftplus’.

Update Everything

Keep your WordPress up to date with the latest version that will help to make your website secure. Running a website with outdated software, themes and plugins easily compromise with the security vulnerabilities. Updates are downloaded by default in WordPress and shown in every system that needs to be updated. Just update them in a few seconds.

Rename WordPress login URL

During WordPress installation, most of the time we use wp-admin or wp-login.php as our login URL as it is set by default. As a result, hackers can easily discover the login page and attack spontaneously. If hackers get the login page URL, they will try to do the brute force attack. In this case, changing the login URL will reduce the possibility of this attack by 90%.

Limit login attempts & use a strong password

WordPress usually does not limit users to make unlimited login attempts. Frequent login attempts can easily open you to the brute force attacks and let hackers have easy trials to get unauthorized access to our website. You can set a fixed number of login attempts by using certain specialized plugins such as ‘Login LockDown’ and ‘WP Limit Login Attempts’ which are free to use. You should not set up more than 5 retries.

You should not use a common password like ‘123456’, ‘your name’, your birthday’ and so more which are easily guessable. The password should be as strong as possible and changed often to avoid all bad practices.

Two Step Authentication

Only changing the login URL, username or using a strong password cannot be the ultimate security solution. The utmost way to get rid of it is to enable two-step authentication. It needs to use two devices to log in to the site. In this process, after entering the username and password into the login panel, a message will be sent to the device set previously. This message will contain a code that has to be used in the main device from where the login attempt is actually performed. After authenticating the code, you can enter the site successfully.

To do so, you can use two certain free plugins such as WP Two Factor Authentication (2FA) and Rublon Two-Factor Authentication.

Use SSL Certificates

Security Socket Layer (SSL) is used to secure data transactions between the web browser and the server though it won’t make your website secure against hacking attempts. SSL is mandatory for those websites that process sensitive information and credentials like passwords, credit card details and so more. By using SSL, all sensitive data is encrypted before its transmitting. This makes the data unreadable to the hackers and secures your site. To set up SSL for WordPress websites is not so difficult. Almost every web hosting service provider offers a free SSL or you can pay for this if you have more sensitive information to transfer.

Hide wp-config.php and.htaccess files

When you are serious about security, it’s the best solution to hide your wp-config.php and .htaccess files from getting accessed by hackers. These files actually contain all sensitive data and information about your WordPress and technically care of your WordPress site. So, if something bad happens to these files, you won’t be able to run your website normally. You can do so simply by using a number of plugins like ‘iTheme Security’, ‘WordFence’, ‘Sucuri Security’, ‘Hide My WordPress’ which are free to use with one click installation. You can also try their paid versions to get extra more facilities.

The security plugins will not be 100% hacker proof but you can do much better with them. Both the paid or free version will provide you an additional layer of protection to prevent the automated cyber attacks.

Choose a good hosting provider

The most important way to keep your website secure is to choose a good web hosting service provider that will provide the multiple layers of security for your website. There are many hosting companies that are highly recommended for providing the best services ever. By using a good WordPress hosting with necessary security features, it’s much possible to speed your WordPress site smoothly.

To Sum Up

One of the most important parts of a website is to maintain your WordPress security properly by preventing the malicious practices of hackers. It’s not so hard to do as you have many free options. Paid versions are for advanced users. By doing so, you can easily maintain the security of your WordPress site and protect from hacking.

I am Sharmin Islam working as a marketing officer at MyLightHost, a Web hosting service provider