How to Get Your WordPress Site Unblocked
You probably use WordPress to write your blog. For many of us, it is the perfect blend of creativity and technology. It is completely flexible, which makes it super easy to use for any type of project. It is also very easy to set up.
If you are running your own WordPress site, you will most likely want to protect it from hackers and other bad actors. Unfortunately, WordPress makes this quite difficult. The good news is, there are several things you can do to make sure your site is as secure as possible.
Let’s take a look at them.
Keep Updating Your Theme
One of the simplest ways to make your site more secure is to keep updating your theme. You should always update your theme when a new version is released or if there is a significant security flaw in the previous version. The problem is, keeping up with this can be quite the effort. If you are running a business blog, you will need to do this about once a month to make sure you always have the most recent version installed.
Even if you are just doing this for fun, you will still need to keep up with the theme’s updates to make sure you are protected from malicious attacks. To make things worse, not all updates are created equal. Some theme updates can be pretty major, and you will have to assess each one carefully to see if it is worth the effort or not.
Use A Secure Password
One of the first things a hacker will try to do is try to guess your username and password. While using strong and complex passwords is great, it isn’t always possible. Especially if you use the same passwords for different accounts, this can lead to major security issues. For this reason, you should use a secure password for your WordPress site, and make sure it is something unique and difficult to guess. You can use a tool like Neverboring to generate passwords that are as secure as possible. With a unique and complex password, you can be sure that no one but you will ever be able to log in to your WordPress site.
As scary as this might sound, using the same password for different accounts is even more dangerous. For example, if someone guesses your username and password for your blog, they could then use these credentials to compromise your email account. After compromising your email account, they could then reset your passwords for all of your other accounts, effectively giving them access to all of your personal information. Using a tool like TwoFactorAuth can help combat this issue. With TwoFactorAuth, users will have to provide a code sent to their phone as well as their username and password to log in. This way, even if someone gets access to your username and password, they will not be able to log in without the code as well. Not only does this add an extra layer of security for your WordPress site, it also encourages users to choose passwords that are difficult to guess.
Use Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)
Two-Factor Authentication adds an extra layer of security to your website by requiring a code to be sent to your phone as well as your password before you can log in. You can easily set this up using Google Authentication or Authy. With these two-factor authentication services, all you need to do is enter your email address and a security code will be sent to your phone.
These codes can then be used to access your site along with your password. While this might seem like an extra step, requiring a code sent to your phone adds an extra layer of security for your site. Even if someone were to get access to your phone or the email associated with it, they would not be able to access your site without the code as well.
Use A Content Delivery Network (CDN)
A content delivery network (CDN) is a group of servers located around the world that store and serve websites’ content to users. This helps ensure that content is available when users request it. When you use a CDN for your WordPress site, all the content that you publish will be stored on remote servers, instead of your own. This means that if your website is offline for any reason, your subscribers will still be able to access your content. The CDN will cache the content, so if a user requests it, they will get it quickly without having to wait for your server to respond.
Using a CDN for your WordPress site means that all the content that you publish will be stored on remote servers. While this might sound like an extra step, making sure that your content is always available is one of the biggest security risks that you could face. If you are publishing content that can’t be cached, like JavaScript, this could lead to big problems. If your site goes down for any reason, people will not be able to access any content until it is back up and running again.
Monitor Your Site’s Performance
Depending on how much content you have on your site, it could take a while for people to access it. To ensure that your site is always available, you should be monitoring its performance. There are several tools that you could use for this purpose, like Google’s Page Speed Insights or GT Metrix. With these tools, you can assess how long it takes for different parts of your site to load. From here, you can determine whether or not you need to upgrade your server, or if there is something wrong with the content itself. For example, if the page speed is terrible but the content is what you are looking for, then you should check out your HTML and see if there are any errors in the code. If you do find any issues, you can correct them immediately to improve the performance of your site. In some cases, the poor performance might be due to malware or a hacked site. In these instances, you will need to remove it or fix it.
Back Up Your Site Frequently
If you are worried about the security of your site, the last thing you need is to be scrambling to save it after it has been hacked. To avoid this, you should be backing up your site frequently. If you have a hosting plan that supports this, you can use automated backups through your control panel. Alternatively, you can use services like BackWPup, which offers free unlimited backups for one year. Backing up your site means that if it is ever compromised, you will still have a copy that you can use to restore it to its original state. This might not seem like a major security risk, but when you are scrambling to save your content and trying to figure out what happened, not having access to your backup is very risky indeed.
Use A Content Filter
Having a content filter is also a great way to make sure that your site is as safe as possible. A content filter scans your site for harmful words and then blocks them. You can use a tool like Cloudflare’s 1st Text Filter to do this, for example. When used in conjunction with a CDN, content filters can reduce the strain on your server while still keeping your website free from inappropriate content.
Use An Email Service Provider (ESP)
Finally, you should not store your site’s passwords in plain text. To prevent cyberattacks, you should never do this. Instead, you should use an email service provider (ESP). These are services that not only allow you to store and send emails, they also encrypt them to keep your personal information secure. If you opt to use this option, make sure that the email address associated with your site is not listed as the sender’s address in the emails that you send. Doing this could lead to big problems if you get emails mixed up with bad actors trying to impersonate other people. To prevent this, you might need to look into getting an ESP account, and then using a tool like Mailvest to set them up. Once you have your ESP account set up, you can send out encrypted emails to your subscribers without having to worry about any security issues.
Keeping up with all of this can be a lot of work. If you are using WordPress for your blog, you will want to make sure that it is as safe and secure as possible. Doing this is quite easy, but it takes some work. Still, you should be able to rest assured that your site is as safe and secure as it can be.