How to Secure Your WordPress Website

Keeping your WordPress website secure is of utmost importance. You wouldn’t want personal information to be compromised, would you? Once that happens, you’ll have to deal with the embarrassment of having your privacy violated. It’s not fun when that happens, especially when you’re not aware of what’s going on.

WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) in the world, with over 75 million users. It’s a great choice for webmasters who want to build a website but don’t have the time to learn programming languages like PHP. Since WordPress is so popular, it’s a great target for hackers and third-party attackers who want to steal your content or destroy your website. That’s why you need to take special steps to protect your WordPress site.

Install WordPress Security Plugins

WordPress is very secure out of the box. Still, you should take steps to make it even more secure. One of the simplest ways to do that is through the use of security plugins. These plugins make it much easier to keep your site safe by taking care of the tedious tasks that you wouldn’t have the time for otherwise. They also provide you with extra features that make your website more convenient to use.

Here are a few of the security plugins for WordPress:

• MyWPSecurity ((free)): This plugin focuses on providing secured connections to your WordPress site. That means that all the data transferred from your website to other servers has a layer of security built into it. As a result, if someone tries to hack your site, they won’t be able to access your personal information. The best part is that this plugin is extremely lightweight and doesn’t slow down your website. Thanks to the incorporation of the XHAP protocol, which stands for eXtremely High Antipatterns, your website will be much more stable than it usually is. A less stableserver,is more often than not, a result of poor hosting choices or a non-optimized codebase.
• PrettyLinks ((paid)): PrettyLinks is one of the most popular WordPress security plugins available. It was designed with the theme layer in mind, which means that it will integrate seamlessly with any WordPress theme. If you use this plugin, all the links on your site will be encrypted, which means that they’ll be hidden to users who aren’t logged in. That way, even if someone steals your content and uses it on their own site, their visitors will still have no idea what they’re clicking on.
• Sucuri ((paid)): This is another extremely popular WordPress security plugin. It is most suitable for those who want to keep their site ultra secure. It provides a layer of security that integrates deeply with WordPress. As a result, any changes you make will be reflected across all parts of your site. This plugin also has a built-in firewall that stops attacks from coming in from outside sources. That way, even if a bug were to be discovered in the WordPress code, it wouldn’t pose a threat to your site’s security.
• Boomerang ((paid)): This plugin is designed for content authors who want to switch posts and pages among several channels. For example, you could have a blog, a boutique site, and a magazine all on the same WordPress installation. Each of these could have their own dedicated channel within the app. When a post is published to one channel, the other channels will be updated with the fresh content. That way, you don’t have to worry about people seeing older posts on your site. They’ll always be accessible via the Boomerang feature.
• NoScript ((free)): If you use WordPress and you’ve installed the NoScript plugin, then you’re already well on your way to being more secure. This WordPress plugin stops a number of attacks before they even happen by disabling JavaScript on your site. That way, any malicious code that gets through will be unable to access your personal information or destroy your site. This is one of the simplest ways to secure your WordPress site. If you use Java, then you’ll need to disable it as well.
• Wordfence ((paid)): This plugin provides additional layers of security for your site by adding extra checks and balances. It integrates deeply with WordPress, providing you with a simple interface for all the features it offers. It also protects your site against brute force attacks by requiring you to enter a password whenever you log in.
• HCIBOT ((paid)): This plugin provides more complex user management capabilities than the NoScript plugin. It’s designed for site administrators who want to keep a close eye on what their users are doing. For example, you could enable this plugin to check the content created by users before it’s published. That way, nobody will ever be able to publish content without your approval. Otherwise, they’ll see an error message letting them know that their content is inappropriate.
• Advanced Custom Fields ((paid)): This plugin gives you the ability to create custom fields for your posts and pages. That means that you can add additional data to your posts and pages to enhance their functionality. For example, you could add an author bio field to your posts, giving you the ability to add more information about the person who wrote the post. Or, you could add a field for the category of an article, so that when someone clicks on that category, they’ll see all the related posts.
• Redirection ((paid)): You can use this plugin to create simple or even complex redirections to make sure that your users are directed to the right place. For example, you could create a simple redirect that takes your users to the about page if they try to navigate directly to a post or page. Or, you could create a complex redirect that takes your users to the homepage but also includes a list of all the articles that they’ve previously read. Even if someone manages to get past all your security plugins and filters, they won’t be able to do much damage to your site because of all the back-end security measures implemented through the use of these plugins.
• WPSC ((paid)): This plugin incorporates the Skip-Login and XFrameOptions headers to provide a more secure connection to your website. That way, if someone tries to hack your site, they’ll see a message indicating that they’re being redirected. They won’t have access to any of your content until you activate them again.

Use Secure URLs

If you use WordPress, then you know how easy it is to get a free domain name and use it to create a blog. But, did you know that it’s possible to get a subdomain and use it to secure your personal information? That’s what the Secure URLS plugin does. It adds a bit more convenience to the process of creating secure URLs.

To start, you’ll need to purchase the Secure URL plugin from the WordPress repository. Then, you’ll need to install it on your site. This will add a small banner at the top of your WordPress dashboard, notifying you of the new feature. You’ll also need to activate the plugin so that it starts working. Once that’s been done, you can use the URL shortening service, Bit.ly, to create unique short URLs for all your content.

These short URLs will be much more accessible to search engines, allowing them to correctly identify and index your content. In addition, they’ll be much more convenient for your users, making it simpler for them to find the content they’re looking for. For example, if you have a blog post about fashion, you could use the /fashion subdomain to create a short URL that will look like this: http://bit.ly/2qPz3gc.

This URL will point to your fashion blog, allowing people to easily find content related to fashion, while preventing anyone from directly accessing your personal information. That’s what makes this URL secure.

Now, if you want to add additional security measures, such as preventing posts and comments from being displayed until a password is entered, then you need to use the Basic authentication. With that option, your users will be prompted to enter their username and password each time they visit a page with that specific security measure enabled. They’ll also be required to re-enter their password if they return after having been away for a while.

As you can see, there are several different ways that you can utilize WordPress to make it safer for your content. Following those simple tips will help you avoid being hacked or damaged by malicious parties. Keeping your WordPress site safe and sound is a lot easier than you think it is!