How to secure your Wordpress site?

Wordpress is the most popular CMS (web content manager) in the world. It is used by more than 39% of internet users. 

In addition, sites developed with Wordpress represent 65% of sites developed with a CMS. The popularity of wordpress is due to its simplicity and ease of use.

Due to its popularity, some hackers try to take over untrusted sites. So, if you have a Wordpress site or plan to create one, you will need to think about securing it.

How to do it? We will show you everything in this article.

Why is WordPress security important?

Wondering why secure your site? If it is necessary or mandatory? Know that yes. It is not for nothing that applications and software are regularly updated. 

The security of your data, that of your users and your company is one of the reasons why the maintenance of a website is crucial for your company.

However, there are other reasons to proceed with the security of your site such as:

• Protection against attacks and hackers
• Improve SEO natural referencing 
• Improve user experience
• And others

How to secure your WordPress site?

Now that you know why it is important to secure your Wordpress site, let's now see how to do it.

In this example, I will present 10 points you should check to secure your wordpress website

1. Update WordPress regularly.

Many bugs, errors and vulnerabilities are fixed every time a new version comes out.

• To update WordPress, you must first go to your dashboard. 
• At the top of the page, you will see an announcement whenever a new version is released. 
• Click on the update, then click on the blue "Update Now" button. It only takes few seconds.

2. Update your themes and plugins.

• To update your plugins, just click on "update now" under them, and they will be up to date in seconds.
• To update your theme, go to App
• Appearance/Themes, and you will see all your installed themes there. Outdated ones will be marked as plugins to be updated. Just click "Update Now".

3. Backup your site regularly.

Backing up your site involves creating a copy of all site data and storing it in a safe place. This way, you can restore the site from this backup copy in case something goes wrong.

4. Limit Login Attempts and Change Your Password Often

Don't let your login form allow unlimited username and password attempts, because that's exactly what helps a hacker successfully infiltrate and take over your site

Plus, by changing your passwords often, you further reduce the chances of hackers getting into your site. But "often" does not mean every day, once every 2 or 3 months would be enough.

5. Install a firewall

In addition to installing a firewall on your computer, you can also install security tools on your WordPress site. This type of firewall protects your site from viruses, malware, hacker attacks, etc.

Sucuri does a great job in this regard, and it is one of the best security services for WordPress. He does a bit of everything.

You can also use the wordfence plugin

6. Limit user access to your site

If you are not the only user with access to your site, also be careful when creating new user accounts. You should keep everything under control, and try to limit access to users who don't necessarily need it.

If you have many users, you can limit their functions and permissions. They should only have access to the features they need to do their job.

7. Rename your login URL

By default, the URL you use to login to your dashboard is either wp-login.php or wp-admin , appended after your main site URL. For example, YOURSITE.com/wp-login.php .

The iThemes Security plugin does this trick. For example, your login URL might turn into something like YOURSITE.com/I_love_my_site . This is one of the WordPress security tricks that is very simple to perform.

8. Enable security scans

Security scans are performed by specialized software/plugins that crawl your entire website looking for anything suspicious. If anything is found, it is immediately deleted. These scanners work exactly like anti-viruses.

9. Use SSL

SSL certificates allow us to certify ownership of a public key. If that's gibberish to you, that's okay. Choosing an ssl certificate  is not complicated, and it is really necessary to have an SSL certificate on your wordpress site .

The goal here is to have an https:// url that shows the padlock to your users

10. Protect your wp-config.php

One simple thing you can do is take that wp-config.php file, and just move it up a notch above your WordPress root directory. Your WordPress site will not be affected at all by this move, but hackers will no longer be able to find it.

Conclusion

You need to go the extra mile to keep your site secure, a frequently hacked site would certainly affect your customer trust, so your first priority would be to have robust security protocols in place.

According to Juices, 

• 83% of hacked sites created using a CMS content manager are created with wordpress
• 39% of hacked wordpress sites have non-updated versions of wordpress

There are plenty of statistics like this on wordpress, and if you don't have any security measures, you have reason to worry.

With the previous steps you should be able to update

If you need help with Wordpress or another CMS to grow your business, give us a call or contact us and we'll be happy to help. Our team of wordpress experts will help you achieve your goals.