Getting hacked is the kind of thing that you might think only happens to other people. However, that heart-dropping moment when you realize your site have been hacked changes everything. You can check on your site if it had any Common Signals That WordPress Site was Hacked then consult our guide on how to Fixing Your Hacked WordPress Site. Maintaining a healthy and hack-free website does not need to be hard work, but protect your site early will help you catch problems early and fix them before any damage occurs.
Fortunately, there are various ways in which you can protect your WordPress blog from hackers make sure of the following:
- Switch to Managed WordPress Hosting – Most managed WordPress hosting companies go to extra lengths to keeping your site secure.
- You should change the default “Admin” username, and set a strong password. Hackers invariably use the default username, as it is low-hanging fruit; change it, and they’ll turn their attention elsewhere.
- Only use well-regarded, trusted plugins. Always check the plugin reviews.
- Avoid pirated themes, using only reputable sources if you’re using third-party themes. here’s how to tell if your WordPress theme is legal.
- Maintain a regular backup routine.
- Install an encrypted login plugin to make hacking your site trickier.
- Disable PHP Execution in certain directories – Adds additional layer of security
Aside from that, here are some more things you can do to better protect your site – these are not in order and you should do as many as you can!
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Regularly Update WordPress
One of the most powerful but oft-overlooked solutions for keeping WordPress safe from hackers is to make sure it is regularly updated.
Updating WordPress is possible from within the Dashboard, but always take a backup of your database before doing so.
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Keep Regular Backups
An important procedure for all WordPress blog owners is to ensure that backups are made regularly and that they can easily be restored should the worse happen.
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Install an Encrypted Login Plugin
Protecting the actual act of logging on to your WordPress-based website is best effected by using an encrypted login plugin, as the website software doesn’t have this facility by default. Any attempts to disrupt your can be markedly reduced using these plugin: Login Lockdown plugin to blocking IPs that record repeated failed attempts to access your site, a strong CAPTCHA plugin for login protection and RetinaPost plugin for requiring users to enter highlighted characters from a phrase rather than try and decipher screwed up text images or do maths challenges
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Hide “Powered by WordPress”
Hackers have a different tactic for each of the various types of website software that is in use, but you can make things tougher for them by not advertising the fact that your website is “Powered by WordPress”.
By default this information can be found in the footer.php file, reached by entering your blog’s Dashboard, selecting Appearance > Editor to edit within the browser window. Different themes will require different methods for removing this text, so you should check online to find the best approach (if plain text is used to display the legend, then delete this; if PHP code is used, tread carefully unless you know what you’re doing).
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Move the wp-config File
The wp-config.php file contains all the admin login details for the MySQL database but it is unencrypted file so it can be hacked and used to take control of your WordPress site.Therefore, securing wp-config.php file is paramount if you wish to protect the site from hackers. You can move the file to the root web directory on the server, for instance, is that if you have your site installed in www.yoursite.com/wordpress, the wp-config.php file can be moved up a level, to the yoursite directory.
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We hope this article helped you understand how to secure your WordPress Site from hackers. If you have any further questions for us, don’t hesitate to put it up in the comments.
See you again in orther tutorials!
