How to Secure Your WordPress Site

Over a third of websites use WordPress, making it the most popular website platform. But that also makes WordPress a good target for hackers who want to attack multiple sites. Fortunately, you can learn how to secure your WordPress site.

Keep reading to learn a few methods you can use to keep hackers out and protect your website and site visitors.

Choose a Unique Username and Password

The first thing you should do when securing your WordPress site is to choose a unique username. Avoid usernames such as “admin” and avoid using the title of your site as the username. Those are some of the first names hackers and bots will try.

Even if you have a unique username, you should also use a unique password. That way, if someone does guess your username, you have another line of defense.

Try not to use the same password as for another website. But at least make it strong and include numbers or special characters along with letters.

Use the Two Factor Authentication Plugin

Once you get into your WordPress dashboard, you can add a two-factor authentication plugin to secure your site in the future. The Two Factor Authentication plugin makes it easy to require a second factor before you and others can log into your site.

You can install an authenticator app on your phone, and that will give you a passcode. When you need to log into your website, you can use the app to get a code to prove who you are. Then, you can make sure that people can’t log in if they don’t have access to your phone.

Restrict Login Attempts

You can also install the Login LockDown plugin to restrict the number of times someone can try to log into your site. The plugin is available from your WordPress plugins page, so you can search for it and install and activate it.

Then, you can change settings for things such as:

• How many login tries someone has
• The time period those tries occur in
• How long to lock someone out
• If you want to lock out invalid usernames

You can use this to make sure no one tries multiple passwords with a username. And you can make sure no one can get into your site unless you allow them access.

Limit Permissions

If you have multiple people who use your admin panel, you can change access permissions. That way, you can limit who can do things like update the site or add new plugins. This can be helpful in keeping your site secure by limiting those major changes.

You can change these settings under Users. Available roles include Administrator, Editor, Author, and Contributor. Your site may have other available roles depending on the plugins you use, such as to manage a shop or work on SEO.

Limiting permissions may not be necessary at first. But as you hire more people to work on your site, you may want to retain security and control by limiting access.

Update Your Site

You can also secure your WordPress site by keeping everything up to date and creating a backup using WordPress plugins. Whenever a plugin or theme comes out with a new version, update it. That way, you can take advantage of new security features and support.

As plugins and themes have new updates, they may not support the older versions. You may also face compatibility issues if you update your site with older plugins.

If you don’t have automatic updates available, try to check for updates each week. Then, you can keep everything secure, and you don’t have to put your site at risk for too long. But before you do a major update, make sure you back up your site in case the update isn’t successful.

Get an SSL

If you want to make your site secure for you and your visitors, you should use an SSL certificate. An SSL helps encrypt your website to protect data that you and your visitors enter on the site.

This is especially important if you plan to sell products and take payments on your website. Your customers need to know that you will protect their credit card information from hackers.

While you can pay for an SSL, you can get the free Let’s Encrypt certificate to start. It has enough security to get you started, and you can upgrade later.

Will You Secure Your Site?

Knowing how to secure your WordPress site is essential for protecting yourself, your information, and your website visitors. Ideally, you should use every method available. But using a strong password and adding security plugins is a good start. Then, you can add more security features as your website grows.