When the Spice Girls famously sang “Tell me what you want, what you really, really want!” I bet they weren’t expecting thousands of website owners and developers to raise their fists in solidarity and shout “A WordPress website that is secure!” But here we are.
Learning how to keep your WordPress website secure is an important topic!
Let me tell you, friends, this is a cause worth joining hands for. Life is full of unexpected difficulties, but there are some that you can count on.
If you don’t get an oil change, you will likely ruin your engine. If you don’t tell your kids that broccoli looks like a little tree, they will never eat it.
If you don’t properly maintain your website and keep it secure, you are more susceptible to hackers and ultimately, losing the online presence you have worked so hard to create.
Be wise with the time and money invested in your WordPress website by keeping it safe and up to date.
Don’t risk your business, hours of hard work and large amounts of money by slacking on web security. Keep reading for a few QUICK tips for keeping your WordPress website secure.
1) Keep WordPress up to date. WordPress powers 23% of websites in the world. Because of this, and the fact that WP is an open source project so anyone can study the code, hackers are constantly trying to break into WordPress websites. Every time the security of WordPress is seriously compromised or a change needs to be made, the team alters the code and updates WordPress. To learn more about the importance of keeping WordPress up to date, check out THIS video.
2) Keep Genesis up to date, for the same reasons that you keep WordPress up to date.
3) Keep Plugins up to date as well.
Always remove ones that you are no longer using. A large portion of hacks to WordPress website come from old/not-updated plugins.
4) Don’t use your Admin name as your Username.
5) Change your password often.
6) Avoid sketchy plugins and themes. Only download ones from known sources!
7) Choose the best hosting company you can afford. If you don’t have a good hosting company, your efforts won’t be worth much! Security experts at WP White Security reported that 41% of WordPress websites that were hacked were hacked due to a security vulnerability in the host itself! That is nearly half of all hacks. Make like a rabbit and take carrot it!
8) Do regular backups of your website to a third party server. This is important because if anything DOES happen and your website is compromised or your content is lost, it isn’t REALLY lost. Hah! Joke’s on you, hackers!
9) Optimize your database. The more you update your website, the bigger your database gets. A lot of unnecessary data is automatically saved. Unless you “clean house” once in a while, your database gets cluttered, making your website slow and less responsive as your server tries to sort through unneeded information in your database tables. You can download a plugin for this.
10) Keep a close eye on your comment section. Delete spammy comments! Word on the street is, this is the very best plugin for getting rid of spam! Annnnd, it’s free!
We hope these tips for keeping your website secure have inspired you to join us in our efforts to protect and maintain! Here’s to a bright future full of routine updates and healthy websites.