Keeping your WordPress website secure is something every WordPress website owner worries about. And for good reason: if your site is hacked or goes down, you could lose business and customers, and it can take a long time and a lot of expense to get your site back online and back to the way it was. Before we get started, we want to make sure we’ve covered the most important things.
How do you go about keeping your WordPress website secure? There are a few things to keep in mind in order to keep your WordPress website safe.
It is important to keep your plugins, themes, and installation updated. 3. Only buy plugins and themes from reputable sources. If you download free themes and plugins, use the official WordPress.org directories.
If you have the ability, it is always better to keep things on a development server and only push to the production server once everything is tested.
It is also a good idea to use a plugin like Wordfence. It will scan your WordPress site for malware, blacklisting it if the plugin finds anything. Sucuri is another good security plugin for WordPress. Your hosting provider may also have additional tools available to secure your site.
Keep your files organized so you can easily track down any problems.
Some additional tips to secure your WordPress website:
1. use strong passwords
2. use secure WordPress hosting
3. disable the WordPress theme editor
4. take regular backups and store them on the server and on another location like Dropbox or other cloud services.
5. use SFTP to upload files to your site
6. add SSL to your site Some web hosting providers will provide a free SSL service but you may need more features for eCommerce sites.
Note: Using SFTP instead of FTP means that the files will be encrypted before you upload them. This prevents access to them while you’re transferring them to your site or downloading them to your computer.
This is important when you work on a public network, such as coffee-shop Wi-Fi. Although you should avoid using public Wi-Fi to manage the files in your WordPress site, in reality, we’ve all had times when we’ve needed to upload a file and can’t wait till we get back to a more secure internet connection.
Using strong passwords is the simplest and one of the most effective lines of defense against hackers. It doesn't matter how complicated or difficult your password is, if you use the same user name and password on many accounts, your chances of getting hacked skyrocket.
It's most important to make sure your WordPress password is at least 8 characters, with upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters.
Also, before you go with that ultra-cheap hosting provider, ask yourself if it might cost you more in the long run. The more people use that server, the more opportunities there are for introducing security problems. If you are serious about your WordPress site, you will want to make sure that you are secure. All it takes is one little hack, disgruntled employee, or one accident, and you will lose everything that you have worked to create. You can protect yourself with a few simple practices, but you might also want to consider the hosting plan that adds more security and backup features. Some will check your themes and plugins for flaws. You should also know malicious or insecure themes and plugins are also banned on many managed WordPress hosting services