Quick Steps to Increase WordPress Security Without coding
WordPress security is of utmost importance. If your website is vulnerable, you don’t just risk losing crucial data to hackers but you also risk being blacklisted by Google. On a daily basis, Google blacklists about 10,000 websites for malware and about 50,000 websites for phishing. If you are serious about your online business, you need to pay attention to WordPress security best practices. Here are some of the easiest things you can do to improve the security of your website without coding anything.
Install WordPress backup solution
Automated website backups are your first defense against attacks. Regardless of the measures you have put in place to secure your website, it can still get hacked. Government websites get hacked, remember? By having regular backups of your website, you will be able to restore it if something bad ever happens. There are so many WordPress backup plugins you can use for this. Always store the backup on the cloud such as Dropbox, Amazon or a private cloud like Stash. How frequently you backup your site depends on how many times you update it. A real-time or once-a-day backup are ideal.
Install WordPress security plugin
You will need an auditing and monitoring system in place so as to keep track of everything that happens on your WordPress website. The good news is that there are plugins that will help achieve all this. With the right plugin, you can get file integrity monitoring, malware scanning, failed login attempts and so on. Sucuri Scanner is one of the best plugins you can use to increase WordPress security.
Enable Web Application Firewall
Enabling Web Application Firewall (WAF) will also come in handy. Website firewall blocks malicious traffic before they get to your site. Some of the best WAF plugins you can use are:
- DNS Level Website Firewall
- Application Level Firewall
Move your site to SSL/HTTPS
Secure Sockets Layer (popularly known as SSL) is a protocol that encrypts data transfer between a website and a user’s browser. The encryption makes it hard for someone to sniff and steal the data being transferred. After enabling SSL your site will have HTTPS and not HTTP. SSL certificates are issued by certificate authorities and price varies. It is good to note that moving to HTTPS will make your website more trustworthy and you will also get better rankings on search engine results.
Keep WordPress updated
WordPress is open source software that is maintained and updated regularly. Minor updates are installed by WordPress by default. Major version releases have to be initiated manually. Making sure you have the latest WordPress version will improve the stability and security of your WordPress website.
These are the easy things you can do to increase WordPress security without writing a single line of code. Needless to say, you must ensure that you have strong passwords and user permissions. The login page is the first target when hackers are trying to get into your website.