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When it comes to blogging platforms, there is no match for WordPress. WordPress is one of the best content management systems (CMS) platforms. Since the origin of this awesome blogging tool, it has attracted many people. Some bloggers migrated to WordPress from other blogging platforms like Blogger.
One of the main advantages of WordPress is that it is an open-source tool. The majority of bloggers like it; in fact, all top professional bloggers use it. According to Wikipedia, WordPress is used by more than 18.9% of websites.
With thousands of customizing templates, themes, and plugins, it is obvious why many bloggers prefer WordPress. Anyone without having any coding languages, like HTML or CSS, can easily build a website with this.
Even though WordPress has so many advantages, it also has some drawbacks. One of the major issues with WordPress sites is their security. Thousands of WordPress sites get hacked every day. Many of this happens because of newbie errors from users or not having enough knowledge to secure their WordPress websites.
If you’re new to WordPress and don’t have enough knowledge to secure your site, don’t worry. I’m going to explain bit-by-bit to protect your site from hackers.
First thing a newbie doesn’t realize is that using an ‘admin’ username is not okay. You need to change it. Use a strong password (this is basic).
However, using a unique and strong password and username is not enough to protect your WordPress site. You need to use some major security plugins as well.
Let me explain to you everything about security plugins that will protect your site.
WordPress Security Plugins
This is by far one of the best WordPress security plugins developed by Mark Maunder. This plugin does a lot of security work.
Major features of this plugin:
- It scans everything, including themes, core files, and other plugins for suspicious changes or malicious attacks
- Firewall security feature to throttle or block fake bots or attacks
- Find out malicious networks and block them
- Scans for over 44,000 known malware variants
- Scans for known backdoors
- Find out Google blacklisted URLs from posts, comments, or files
- Repair changed files
- Monitor unauthorised DNS changes
- Block scrapers and aggressive crawlers
- Limit log-in attempts
Above are the major security features of the Wordfence plugin. One of the features I like about this plugin is its ability to identify changed files or themes and repair them with a couple of clicks. This is the only plugin that does this kind of task.
Another feature I like is that it shows real-time live traffic; it is pretty useful if your site is under attack, you can manually block all IP’s. However, don’t enable this live-traffic feature every time, because it slows down your site by 2-3 seconds.
Its firewall security is advanced; you can limit the crawl rate of any user or bots.
Moreover, you can immediately block IP’s which try to log in using an invalid username. I usually get email notifications whenever a user gets locked out using an invalid username; this is usually not done manually. In fact, attackers use brute-force techniques to hack weak usernames and passwords.
The Wordfence security plugin is highly recommended for all WordPress sites. No matter what, you need to use this awesome plugin to protect your site from hackers.
There are some WordPress users who claim their site got hacked despite having the Wordfence security plugin. Even though the Wordfence plugin does so many things, it still lacks some security features, such as not protecting .htaccess files (distributed configuration files) of your site.
Bulletproof security plugin stops any attackers/hackers’ malicious scripts from reaching your PHP coding in WordPress.
Major features of the Bulletproof plugin:
- Protect the wp-admin folder
- .htaccess file editor
- .htaccess backup and restore
- .htaccess security protection against XSS, RFI, CRLF, Code injection, and SQL injection
- Hide WordPress version
- Website maintenance mode feature
- Add, edit, and change the .htaccess file within the WordPress dashboard
- Displays security notice on dashboard
However, activating this plugin is a little trickier; newbies might find it difficult. But there are easy guides, instructions, and FAQs; you just have to read them carefully. You don’t need to know anything about .htaccess and all, you just need to click ‘AutoMagic’ buttons and activate Bulletproof modes.
However, sometimes this plugin messes up with the W3 Total Cache plugin; I’ve faced some issues a couple of times while upgrading. But there are support forums where you can find all the solutions.
By the way, I use both Wordfence and Bulletproof plugins. I had doubts before using both plugins together; I asked Syed Balkhi of WPBeginner, and he said not sure. Luckily, it works quite well, but don’t activate login security on the Bulletproof plugin; since Wordfence also has the same feature, both plugins might clash.
You are already aware of two-factor authentication security features in Gmail, Facebook, and Dropbox. This security feature is used widely everywhere now. We can see this in bank accounts, government agencies, and in Military world-wide for better security.
This plugin will add an extra layer of protection to your site. With your username and password, this plugin will ask you to add Google Authenticator codes, which can only be found on your mobile app. You need to download the Google Authenticator mobile app for this plugin to work. This Google Authenticator plugin will give the highest level of protection for your WordPress site.
Wondering why to use this plugin when you have a strong password?
If you think your strong passwords can’t be stolen, then you’re wrong. There are some malicious adware programs that can steal your passwords if you use computers infected with adware. Recently, hackers came up with a new method to steal WordPress user passwords: a brute-force attack. By this computer-generated method, hackers continuously try random passwords from different IP addresses. This eventually makes it harder to control.
This plugin ensures that there is no way for hackers to log in to your WordPress dashboard, even if they have your login credentials.
Conclusion
With hundreds of WordPress websites getting hacked every day, it is your responsibility to keep your site secure. Don’t forget to update all your themes and plugins regularly. And lastly, always back up your site. There are many backup plugins to do this. The three plugins I mentioned above are highly recommended to protect your site from hackers.
