WordPress is the most popular blogging and CMS system on the Internet which makes it a target for hackers. Having a WordPress site means that you have to take some extra efforts in order to protect your and your user's data.Here is a summary of the best practices for securing a WordPress, that will help you do that. It is important to mention that these measures don't guarantee a 100% protection against hacking attempts, mostly because a 100% secure website doesn't exist, but they will protect you against the majority of attacks.
Step 1) Keep your WordPress site and plugins up-to-date
In most cases, WordPress blogs are compromised because their core files and/or plugin are outdated; outdated files are traceable and it’s an open invitation to hackers. Everything is working just fine, why should I touch plugins? The same reason you’d updating any other software — even more so with themes and plugins — because they don’t necessarily go through the same vetting and testing as WordPress core (unless you’re using StudioPress themes and plugins).
Step 2) Protect your WordPress Admin Area
It is important to restrict the access to your WordPress admin area only to people that actually need access to it. If your site does not support registration or front-end content creation, your visitors should not be able to access your /wp-admin/ folder or the wp-login.php file. The best you can do is to get our home IP address (you can use a site like whatismyip.com for that) and add these lines to the .htaccess file in your WordPress admin folder replacing xx.xxx.xxx.xxx with your IP address.
<Files wp-login.php>order deny,allowDeny from allAllow from xx.xxx.xxx.xxx</Files>
In case you want to allow access to multiple computers (like your office, home PC, laptop, etc.), simply add another Allow from xx.xxx.xxx.xxx statement on a new line.
If you want to be able to access your admin area from any IP address (for example, if you often rely on free Wi-Fi networks) restricting your admin area to a single IP address or to few IPs can be inconvenient. In such cases we recommend that you limit the number of incorrect login attempt to your site. This way you will protect your WordPress site from brute-force attacks and people trying to guess your password. For such purposes, you can use a nice little plugin called Limit login attempts.
Step 3) Never use “admin” as your username
Earlier this year, there was a spate of brute-force attacks launched at WordPress websites across the web, consisting of repeated login attempts using the username ‘admin’, combined with a bunch of common passwords.
If you use “admin” as your username, and your password isn’t strong enough (see #3), then your site is very vulnerable to a malicious attack. It’s strongly recommended that you change your username to something less obvious.
Until version 3.0, installing WordPress automatically created a user with “admin” as the username. This was updated in version 3.0 so you can now choose your own username. Many people still use “admin” as it’s become the standard, and it’s easy to remember. Some web hosts also use auto-install scripts that still set up an ‘admin’ username by default.
Fixing this is simply a case of creating a new administrator account for yourself using a different username, logging in as that new user and deleting the original “admin” account.
If you have posts published by the “admin” account, when you delete it, you can assign all the existing posts to your new user account.
Step 4) Strengthen up those passwords
According to this infographic, around 8% of hacked WordPress websites are down to weak passwords.
If your WordPress administrator password is anything like ‘myChildName’, ‘abc123’, or ‘password’ (all way more common than you might think!), you need to change it to something secure as soon as possible.
For a password that’s easy to remember but very hard to crack, I recommend coming up with a good password recipe.
If you’re feeling lazy, you can also use a password manager like LastPass to remember all your passwords for you. If you use this method, make sure your master password is nice and strong.
Step 5 ) Consider two-factor authentication
Enabling two-factor authentication for your WordPress website will significantly improve the security of your website. One of the easiest ways to do this is to use Clef to authenticate using your mobile phone. Find Clef Two-Factor Authentication or any other good plugin for two factor authentication. Clef is a free replacement for usernames and passwords that makes logging into your WordPress site easier and more secure.
Step 6 ) Ensure your computer is free of viruses and malware
If your computer is infected with virus or a malware software, a potential attacker can gain access yo your login details and make a valid login to your site bypassing all the measures you've taken before. This is why it is very important do have an up-to-date antivirus program and keep the overall security of all computers you use to access your WordPress site on a high level.
Step 7) Disable file editing via the dashboard
In a default WordPress installation, you can navigate to Appearance > Editor and edit any of your theme files right in the dashboard.
The trouble is, if a hacker managed to gain access to your admin panel, they could also edit your files that way, and execute whatever code they wanted to.
So it’s a good idea to disable this method of file editing, by adding the following to your wp-config.php file:
define( ‘DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT’, true );
Step 8) Secure your WordPress through .htaccess
.htacess is a configuration file that allows you to override your server’s global settings for the directory that it’s in, by limitting file access. There are several ways of making your WordPress secure (using WordPress best practices, security plugins, content delivery networks…) and configuring your .htaccess is just one of them, the one that belongs to the domain of prevention.
WordPress best practices suggest you protect your wp-config.php file and you can do that by adding:
<files wp-config.php>order allow,denydeny from all</files>
# Prevent any directory browsing:Options All -Indexes
# Adding this to your .htaccess will prevent hotlinking from happening:
RewriteEngine onRewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?YourDomain [NC]RewriteRule \.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif)$ - [NC,F,L]
# Protect the .htaccess Itself
<files ~ "^.*\.([Hh][Tt][Aa])">order allow,denydeny from allsatisfy all</files>Protect /wp-content Directory
WordPress holds all your media files in here and they’re an asset you want search engines to crawl. But, “/wp-content” is a place where your themes and plugins reside, too. You don’t want to allow access to those sensitive .php files.
In order to work you need to create a separate .htaccess file (just use your FTP client and create a file with no name and give it an “.htaccess” extension) and put it in your /wp-content directory. This code will allow access to images, CSS, java-script and XML files, but deny it for any other type.
order deny,allow deny from all <files ~ ".(xml|css|jpe?g|png|gif|js)$"> allow from all </files>That’s it. Your WordPress website should be a lot safer place now. There’s just one last thing we should do and that’s protecting the .htaccess file(s).
Step 8) Try to avoid free themes.
We’re confident in the quality and security of our free themes. As a general rule though, it’s better to avoid using free themes, if possible, especially if they aren’t built by a reputable developer.
The main reason for this is that free themes can often contain things like base64 encoding, which may be used to sneakily insert spam links into your site, or other malicious code that can cause all sorts of problems, as shown in this experiment, where 8 out of 10 sites reviewed offered free themes containing base64 code.
If you really need to use a free theme, you should only use those developed by trusted theme companies, or those available on the official WordPress.org theme repository.
Note: The same logic applies to plugins. Only use plugins that are listed on WordPress.org, or built by a well-established developer.
Step 9) Keep a backup
I can’t over emphasize the importance of making regular backups of your website. This is something that many people put off until it’s too late.
Even with the best security measures at your disposal, you never know when something unexpected could happen that might leave your site open to an attack.
If that happens you want to make sure all of your content is safely backed up, so that you can easily restore your site to its former glory.
The WordPress Codex tells you exactly how to backup your site, and if that seems like too much hard work, you can use a plugin such as WordPress Backup to Dropbox to schedule regular automatic backups.
10. Use security plugins
As well as all of the measures above, there are tons of plugins you can use to tighten your site’s security and reduce the likelihood of being hacked.
Here are a handful of popular options:
- http://wordpress.org/plugins/better-wp-security/ – offers a wide range of security features.
- http://wordpress.org/plugins/bulletproof-security/ – protects your site via .htaccess.
- http://wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-wp-security-and-firewall/ – adds a firewall to your site.
- http://wordpress.org/plugins/sucuri-scanner/ – scans your site for malware etc.
- http://wordpress.org/plugins/wordfence/ – full-featured security plugin.
- http://wordpress.org/plugins/websitedefender-wordpress-security/ – comprehensive security tool.
- http://wordpress.org/plugins/exploit-scanner/ – searches your database for any suspicious code.
Further resources
To learn more about hardening your website’s security, please check out these two resources:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Hardening_WordPress
http://wp.tutsplus.com/tutorials/11-quick-tips-securing-your-wordpress-site
We also recommend Sucuri.net if you are unsure about this topic. Sucuri can help monitor your site, alert you of suspicious activity and even help clean up your site in the case of a malware attack.
Don’t panic!
This may all sound pretty intimidating, especially if you’re a beginner. I’d like to point out that it’s not intended to scare anyone, it’s just important to discuss the topic of security regularly, as we want to make sure you stay one step ahead of the hackers!
You don’t have to do everything on this list (although it certainly wouldn’t hurt). Even if you just remove the ‘admin’ username and start using stronger passwords, your site will be that little bit safer but not enough.
Support-Agent
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