Your website is your business’s biggest salesperson. It draws in potential customers, answers their questions, and satisfies their needs. Thus, if it’s hacked, all of that can go down the drain. Even if you don’t think you have anything to hide, a WordPress security guide 2023 should always be maintained. This guide is packed with the best practices and latest information from the security world and will help you to reduce the risk of a compromise and optimize your WordPress site for speed and security.
Why Is WordPress Security Very Important?
There are plenty of reasons to love WordPress. It is easy to access, to learn, features, and themes for functionalities and design. However, as time passed, the popularity of WordPress is not limited anymore to website owners and designers. That’s why it became the favorite of cybercriminals and hackers who also have WordPress websites. This is why WordPress Security is so important for website owners like you because hackers are always alert and lookout for vulnerabilities that can help them to steal data, hold business owners to ransom, and sell counterfeit products.
First of all, WordPress Security is very important because it can protect your brand information and reputation here, the data stored on WordPress sites can result in the loss of confidentiality, especially the customer records. In the end, your customer’s overall trust will be also affected by this. That’s why keeping the site safe from cyberattacks is the best method in order to protect your brand reputation.
Secondly, it can prevent loss in revenue. When your website is compromised, even your most loyal customers would switch or turnover to the closest competitor and that can cause a loss in revenue. These are not the only reasons why WordPress Security is so important, there are plenty of various reasons that can change your mind. Keep on reading this WordPress Security Guide for 2023 for a better understanding.
WordPress Security Guide / Tips
- User Permissions and Passwords
Many say when a hacker stole your password, it is also like handling the keys to them. That is why stolen passwords are also commonly involved in compromised WordPress websites. In fact, when you use a weak password, a hacker can easily guess it and get access to your WordPress immediately. So, in order to avoid that to happen, you should use strong passwords and always watch out for user permissions. You should not hand out your admin credentials or data to just anyone.
- Always Update Your WordPress
If the host in your WordPress site doesn’t provide you with automatic updates, you should make sure that you execute these updates yourself, regularly. WordPress releases regular software updates to improve performance and security. These updates also protect your site from cyber threats. Updating your WordPress into a new version is one of the simplest ways to improve your WordPress security.
- Use Trusted WordPress Themes
In most cases, these themes are sold at a lower price so they can attract users. In fact, nulled WordPress themes are unauthorized versions of the original premium themes. Since it is distributed illegally, users do not usually receive any support from the developers. To avoid becoming a hacker target, you must pick WordPress themes from its official repository or trusted developers.
- Back Up Your Site Regularly
When you regularly back up your site, you are also about to create a copy of all the site’s data, and store it somewhere safe. In that way, you can restore the site from that backup copy in case anything malicious happens. However, to back up your site, you need to use a plugin and there are lots of good backup solutions out there that can help you to do that.
- Limit Login Attempts and Change Your Password Often
Do not let your login form let unlimited username and password attempts because this is exactly what a hacker needs. On the other hand, it can help the hacker to succeed in their doings. If you let them try an infinite number of times, they will instantly know your login data which can cause them to steal all your data. In order to prevent that from happening, limiting the available attempts is the first thing you should do.
- Set Up Website Firewalls
A firewall is a security network that you can use in order to protect your computers and websites. Having this application set up is a must if you really want to increase or improve the security levels of your website files. In fact, this firewall uses filtering to filter all the data coming into your servers, networks, and websites. It can also help in analyzing the data by inspecting all the files so you will be surely safe from hacking attacks.
- Use Secure WordPress Hosting
You must choose a quality WordPress hosting provider so it can help you to ensure your site’s security. It will ensure that your environment is secured and optimized. WordPress hosts will also build in more proactive protections, such as malware scanning and built-in firewalls. Some hosts manage to even clean your site for free if ever that will happen to it.
- Only Use Secure Connection for FTP
It protects the connection between your FTP client and your server. But, you should avoid keeping your FTP passwords in your FTP client, unless those passwords are securely encoded.
- Run Malware or Security Scans Regularly
To check for any issues on the front end of your site, you must run malware or Security Scans regularly. If you do not want your site to experience some issues, you must implement good practices to run malware or security scans on your site.
- Block Hotlinking
Hotlinking is an issue when someone is trying to embed the content from your server on their site. In fact, when it happens to your server, it can affect your site’s security by doing the process of draining your server’s resources without your permission. In order to block hotlinking, you can add some code to your site’s .htaccess file. In order to generate it, you need to block hotlinking using any free tool.
WordPress Security Guide: Final Thoughts
You can make your WordPress secure by following the guides here in WordPress Security Guide for 2023 and applying them to practice. Even though WordPress could be easily hacked, following some essential security best practices will make your site very hard to hack. If you are really interested and achieving the best security for a site, you are in the perfect spot! This article discussed all WordPress Security Guide for 2023 so you can be aware of cyberattacks and know what you should do when it happens on your site.
If you want to maintain or improve your website securely, you can ask 465media for help. They specialize in maintenance for small and medium-sized businesses which can help you as an owner. They have comprehensive offers yet affordable WordPress Development solutions.
