Securing your WordPress website in order to prevent any potential attempts of hacking, might seem like a complicated task. However, it all pretty much boils down to these seven easy-to-follow steps that will make sure your website is secure at all times.
Set up a website lockdown feature and ban users
One of the first things you could do to secure your website is to set up a lockdown feature and ban users. A lockdown feature will help you detect any unwanted failed login attempts. This way, if anyone tries to hack your website, after a few failed attempts to get the password right, the site will get locked. Also, you will receive a notification of this activity. There are many different security plugins out there that could help you solve this potential problem. Find the one which suits you the best. Look for the ones which allow you to specify a certain number of failed login attempts before the plugin automatically bans the user’s IP address.
Use two-factor authentication for WordPress security
Another security measure that you can introduce to the login page of your website is a two-factor authentication module. The website owner gets to decide which two different components they are going to use. The user is then expected to provide login details for both of those two components if they want to log in to the website. It can literally be anything. For instance, it can be a regular password, but you could also set up a secret code to your phone or a secret question, or even a set of different characters, and so on. There are even some authentication apps that can send a secret code to your phone so that only you can log in to your website.
Use your email to log in
The website login page will usually ask you to type in your username in order to log in. However, using an email ID instead is a far more secure approach than using your username. Keep that in mind. One of the main reasons why is because email IDs are a lot harder to predict. Also, every WordPress user account has a unique email address. It makes it a valid identifier for the logging in process. You can even go a step further and make sure that every user on your website has to use their email address to log in. Several WordPress security plugins allow you to make these changes to your login page.
Protect the wp-admin directory
The wp-admin directory is a very important part of any WordPress website. It is the heart of your website and therefore has a crucial function. In other words, if this part gets hacked, the entire website is damaged. The first thing you could do to prevent this from happening is to password-protect the wp-admin directory. The owner can access the dashboard by typing in two separate passwords. The first one will protect the login page, while the other one can secure the WordPress admin area. In order to set this up, in most cases, you need to adjust your hosting setup via cPanel. It might sound complicated, but if you follow the right steps you shouldn’t have any issues.
Update regularly for WordPress security
Themes and plugins are essential ingredients of any website, and we all know what Australia is like when it comes to regular updates of WordPress security measures. They are very important if you want to make sure your site is safe. For software to maintain that high quality, it needs to be supported by its developers and gets the needed updates from time to time. These updates and plugins are supposed to fix any bugs that might appear on the website. Therefore, updating your themes is very important, because hackers rely on the fact that people don’t usually bother to think much about themes and plugins. Believe it or not, your design matters. So make sure you update your themes regularly and reach out to professional web design in Sydney if you need any additional advice concerning this matter.
Set strong passwords for your database
Setting a strong password for your database is also one of the crucial steps in securing your website. Try to create a password as strong as possible, because this password is the one that WordPress uses to access your database. For instance, try using an uppercase, different combination of numbers, special characters, and so on. Passphrases are also acceptable. You can even look for some of the online generators which can help you come up with a complex password for your website and other security safeguards that will help you avoid an online breach.
Make backups regularly to secure your WordPress website
Lastly, it doesn’t matter how secure you think your website is, you still have to be careful. That is why keeping an off-site backup is very useful and recommended. Having a backup allows you to restore your whole WordPress website to a working state if anything happens to the site. You can even use some of the plugins for the backup process. They can help you restore your website with just one click. Some larger websites tend to do this backup every hour, but mostly it’s unnecessary to do it that often. You should do regular backups once a week or month.
Conclusion
In conclusion, securing your website is very important because this way you’re ensuring that all your hard work not only pays off but also stays safe. Following these tips will help you figure out how to secure your WordPress site in the most efficient way possible.
What to Do If Your Website Has Been Hacked?
Getting your website hacked is not a new thing. The websites are usually prone to get hacked, and there are various steps that you must take to get rid of such issues. The website is a property of a single person, company or multiple individuals. The famous websites are at a risk always that they might get hack by someone. It is a common issue that people and companies are discussing recently. The cyber crime of hacking the websites is not increasing with the passage of time.
If your website has happened to be hacked, we would first of all advise you to resort to specialists to remove malware, backdoors and viruses from your server and get a website protection ASAP.
Your primary task after hacking is to ensure secure storage of information as well as to ensure security of your website users. Remember that in case of a successful hacking attack you don’t only get malicious code to your website but you can also lose user database with all contact details and passwords. In such a manner intruders can place lots of spam at your web recourse and get passwords to social networks and mail boxes of your customers.
First Steps You Should Take
It is also necessary to analyze the hacking of your website to find out soft spots in the code and eliminate them as soon as possible. You should also remember that very often hackers after having got access to your website prefer to reserve ways for further hacking of your web resource. Only a specialist is able to uncover such ways.
So, here follows step-by-step guidelines what to do in case your website has been hacked:
1. Check your home PC for viruses. It is not necessary to run to the shop and buy a commercial antivirus. We would recommend using Antivira and Comodo.
2. Install FireWall to your local PC. Use of FireWall significantly reduces the risk of penetration of malware to your PC. We would recommend to use Comodo, free and one of the best FireWalls, or Zone Alarm, also a very good but commercial alternative.
3. Contact your hosting provider. Not only your website may have been hacked, especially if you do not rent your own server but use usual hosting. Notify the administrators and ask them to analyze the hacking.
4. Change all the passwords, from passwords to mail boxes to FTP passwords.
5. Warn your users that your website has been hacked and recommend them to change their passwords to your website.
6. Back up all the files at your server without delay.
7. Check the code of the file .htaccess. A hacker can use this file to forward your visitors from your web resource to a website with a malicious code installed.
8. Be prepared that it might be necessary to delete all the files from your server. The installed code may be hidden so well that it may be necessary to delete all the files and the data base from your server. However to restore your website you will need the backup which should have been done before; therefore, please read our article on the importance of backup of server files.
9. Update your CMS to the newest version.
To sum up, it is easier to prevent hacking the website than to restore the website from scratch. Your website protection is a big responsibility only experts can deal with. One should not entrust a website to the first comer but it is not advisable to neglect security either.
