Keeping Your WordPress Safe – Safety Measures against Hackers

There is no content manager available that can surpass WordPress in this day and age; it lets you do pretty much anything you want, while also being very friendly towards developers. The software is behind millions of websites at this moment, especially because of its developer-friendly characteristics. The freedom of the software can also be a negative thing, when it falls into the wrong hands, here comes Wurdey – helping those of us going through some hard times.

There are people who will not hesitate to hack your WordPress if you don’t alter the default configuration a bit. If you decide not to speak with a specialists, hackers can very easily start break in attempts, as they will know exactly where they have to go to start their mischievous deeds. The login page of WordPress can be accessed by going to domainname.com/wp-admin, where domainname.com is obviously, the name of your website. You should know that hackers have ways to test out millions of password combinations in a pretty short period of time, so once they get to your login screen, they will have a bigger chance to deface your code. There are several things you can put in practice that will get the bull’s eye off your back.

Frequent Backups Help A lot

It is recommended that you do a backup at least once every week. It depends on how frequent you update your website of course. WordPress can be used in combination with multiple plugins that can do this for you, such as BackupBuddy. For $100, this plugin will restore your website in a matter of minutes, although you will definitely need to read below and find out about Wurdey if installation and configuration is not up your alley.

There are also free plugins that don’t cost you a dime, but can still do a good job. For instance, plugins pertaining to that category are Ready!Backup and Updraft Plus. The first one, Ready! Backup, offers you the possibility of backing up your WordPress and then sending the backups to your Dropbox account. Configuring and restoring them is also fairly easy matter if you are versed in this type of activity.

Back to Wurdey, for those of you looking for something a little more streamlined, services like Wurdey offer a completely managed solution. They take all the guess work and setup out of backups. The service offers quite a bit more as well, which we will discuss later in the article.

Wurdey gets automatic WordPress backups running on a schedule that is right for you. It can backup stored archives, media files, themes, and plugins, along with the entire WordPress database.

Limit the Number of Available Attempts for Logging In

Also a good method for keeping hackers out is limiting the number of failed login attempts one can be afforded before the penalty is being banned. After failing the last available attempt, you can have them locked out for as long as you determine necessary. In addition, you can even set a ban to be activated once there are too many lockouts. You can also set how long the lockout lasts. The plugin is named Limit Login Attempts and it gives any hacker at minimum a headache when attempting to do malicious things to your site. In hacking a user/password combination, you are using brute force, where millions of combinations are tried. With the Wurdey plugin, it will become much more difficult to pull off this feat, as the hacker will need many proxies to deal with the constant lockouts resulted from wrong combination attempts.. The list of customization options for the Limit Login Attempts plugin is pretty long, as you can set it to pretty much do anything in it you desire.

For Example: No “Admin” In Your Username

It’s not a very good idea to use Admin as you username, as hackers will usually try to use brute force on your Admin username. For your own safety, it is much a better idea if you picked something else.

If you currently have Admin as a username, you can change it by creating a new account on your WordPress and granting that account admin privileges. You would then proceed to delete the old admin account and rely on the new one exclusively.

Stay Away From Easy Picks

If you want your WordPress to remain safe, the “why would someone hack me?” attitude must change. Don’t make things easy for hackers by choosing a very easy or predictable password such as “admin”, “password”, your name, or anything of that nature. Instead, try to make your password more complex by adding both upper case and lower case letters, signs and symbols, and also numbers to create a very hard to guess password. You can use Dashlane to keep track of your passwords, and make sure you don’t forget them now that they’re as complex as they are.

The Last Stand

There is also another solution for this issue that some might label as “extreme”. When none of the above items discussed help you, you might want to consider imposing a limit for the IP addresses that visit your login screen or the /wp-admin section of the website. Using an .htaccess file should do the trick for blocking all but your own IP.

Extra Notes

There a few other details that you might want to take into consideration regarding your WordPress Website. These too, much like the advice above, can make the difference in your security.

Consider a Hosting Provider

The problem you may run into with shared hosting, like in the case of WordPress, is that your website will be thrown into the mix with countless other websites. If one of those websites gets hacked, you could very well be next. We know that your own dedicated server is a bit of an overkill usually and too much to handle financially, but there are also other solutions like managed WordPress hosting.

For the extra money, you will get better support, complete backup, security, and also a speed boost for your website. One of the other great facts to mention about Wurdey is that they offer 100% Free Migration Services with their hosting plans. Their hosting offers On-Going Site Maintenance Updates, Uptime/Downtime Monitoring, Malware and Security scans, along with a slew of other features to increase your site protection. Wow!

Note: with their more advanced plan your SSL is included, DNS monitored and YES! Detailed website hack cleanup in the event your site is compromised.

In others words, Wurdey has the best protection, with almost 0 involvement from your side. For the business owner, this site lets you do what you do best while avoiding the daily job that has become WordPress.

The Take Home: Be Careful With Precious Data

You need to make sure that you don’t leave sensitive information in plain sight or within the grasp of anyone who might use it to harm you. Keeping backups stored directly onto your servers is a big “no no” because this method gives hackers a chance to very easily hack into your system by downloading the backup.

Directory browsing might help hackers find information they can use to hack into your system as well and should be turned off.

Also make sure to check your i.php and phpinfo.php files, as they can lead hackers exactly in the direction where they need to be in order to hack your system.