Six Simple Tips on How to Make Your WordPress Site More Secure

WordPress makes your site updates a breeze without knowing a single line of code.  It also enables you to have multiple site authors and still have a secure site.  The problem is that a lot of site owners tend to take security for granted and leave their WP sites open to hacking attacks.  

Here are six of the most common things that most people overlook when it comes to securing their WordPress sites.

1. Update. Update. Update.

The first thing to remember is that you should always take time to update your WordPress and your plug-ins.  This is because the people behind your WP and your plug-ins tend to release an earlier version and people find bugs in it.  These are corrected with an update.  

In short, if you want to make sure that you have a better and more secure site, then make sure to have the latest version of everything running.

2. Mind Your Password.

Most people opt for passwords that are easy to remember.  Unfortunately, these are also very easy to guess.  Having a password that is very easy to guess is like putting the keys to your house up on display for the robbers to use.

Create a strong password that has both capital and small letters in it.  Include numbers and symbols to make it impossible to guess.

3. Block IPs with .htaccess

The .htaccess file is made available to you by default. Use it to block different IPs that you don’t want accessing your site.

4. SSL Encryption.

You need SSL encryption  in order to protect the data you send out from your WP site.  This means that no one could intercept your transmission and get your login credentials.

With WordPress, SSL encryption comes free with just a simple tweak to your wp-config.phph file.  Add this:

define (‘FORCE_SSL_ADMIN’, true);

5. Set the right file permissions.

Although this is another article altogether, it deserves mention here.  If you use FTP to  transfer files to your WordPress site, then make sure that you configure your file permissions correctly.

6. Never use admin as your login name

Admin is a default with every WordPress installation, so if a hacker wants to try getting into your WP site, this is the login name he’d start with.