If you want to keep your business running smoothly, then you should know how important it is to keep your WordPress website secure.
Uptime is important for any website. If your website is down because of an attack, you’re losing visitors and potential leads. The following tips will help you keep your website secure. In this guide, I will be walking through five tips to keep your WordPress website secure.
How to Keep Your Website Secure
1. Use Strong Passwords
As with any other website you have accounts with, strong passwords are critical for the security of your website.
It’s important to secure all of the passwords related to your website including:
- Your hosting account
- Your FTP credentials
- Your database
- Your WordPress administrator account
You can use a password generator, such as the one by Avast to generate a strong, unique password. Password managers such as LastPass offer an easier, more convenient way to remember strong passwords.
2. SSL Certificate
An SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate is another important safeguard to keep your WordPress website secure. Having an SSL gives your website visitors the peace of mind when transmitting information such as passwords and other sensitive data.
The most common way to get an SSL certificate is to check with your website hosting provider. Many website hosting providers offer SSL certificates for their customers. Some hosting providers even offer free SSL certificates via Let’s Encrypt. Want to learn more about the importance of SSL certificates? I wrote a blog post on the topic.
3. Keep Your Website Updated
It’s important to keep your WordPress website updated. First, it’s critical that you keep WordPress itself updated. WordPress powers 35% of all websites on the web, according to HostingTribunal. Vulnerabilities found in WordPress are often exploited in outdated versions. Since WordPress has such a large market share, it’s a popular target for attackers. Keeping WordPress up to date heavily reduces the amount of vulnerabilities that hackers can exploit. Keeping your website up-to-date goes a long way to keep your WordPress website secure.
According to WebARX, 98% of WordPress vulnerabilities are associated with plugins. This fact alone emphasizes the importance of ensuring all plugins in your WordPress site are up to date.
Be sure to also update your themes. If you have more than one theme installed, consider removing inactive themes to reduce the possible attack vectors.
4. Use a Reputable Host
Great support from your hosting provider is key when managing your website. A good rule of thumb is to use a non-EIG (International Endurance Group) owned hosting company. EIG companies are known to have less than ideal support, due to heavy cost cuts on the support side of each company by EIG. There are some hosting companies such as SiteGround and A2 Hosting that are independently owned. As a disclaimer, we have been a paying SiteGround customer for several months now, and we’ve been very happy with them so far. We’ve heard great things about A2 Hosting as well. If your website ever gets hacked, it’s important that you can rely on a dependable support team to help you out.
5. Backup Your Data
It’s always a great idea to periodically backup your website. Many website hosting providers even make daily backups of your website for you. If on the off chance your website is infected in an attack, you can simply roll your website back to the last backup. Backups are great even when your website isn’t infected. If you ever have a major plugin or theme conflict that breaks your website, you can rollback to the last available backup. I can’t emphasize the importance of backups enough! If you’re looking for a website hosting provider, I would absolutely encourage you to take a look at one that provides backups.
Final Thoughts
With these five tips, you are equipped to keep your WordPress website secure. It’s not too complicated to have a secure website, and it will definitely help in the long run.