Top tips to prevent a WordPress hack

The content management system (CMS) that has the most users is WordPress. It is easy to use, it does not cost anything, and it is open source. Therefore, it is also chosen for web hosting. There are multiple benefits to using WordPress web hosting. But if it gets hacked, it will be very difficult to remove a hack from a WordPress website.

In this article, we will discuss the top tips to prevent a WordPress website hack.

How Hackers Get into WordPress

No matter if it’s a phpBB discussion or a WordPress website, hackers are always trying to get into them. Hackers often look at tens of thousands of pages or try to log in hundreds of times every day.

That’s just one hacker. A lot of hackers are attacking websites at the same time.

Most of the time, it’s not someone trying to hack you. Hackers use software that automatically “crawls” the web to look for specific flaws in websites.

Bots are the names for these computer programs that automatically browse the web. I call them hacker bots to tell them apart from scraper bots, which are programs that try to copy information.

Preventing a WordPress Website Hack

The tips that follow are not listed in order of how important they are; they are all of equivalent significance. Just like with any other security step, every extra thing you do makes you safer overall.

You can make the best safe and secure setting for your WordPress website if you make it your goal to do everything we talk about here.

Change your WordPress password again and again.

First, let’s talk about something that is only sometimes related to WordPress: passwords. We might not be exaggerating when we say that passwords are an important part of our lives. That being said, it’s easy to get lazy when you have a lot of passwords to remember.

We use the same passwords over and over, weaken them to make them easier to remember, and usually don’t care about “rules” about password security.

There are many ways to hack into a WordPress website, but the second most popular way is to use your username and password to log in.

You can be hacked in a number of ways, but one way is known as a “brute force” attack. That means using automatic programs that try to log in dozens of times every second.

It may be tempting to stop being careful with our passwords, but keep in mind that people are working around the clock to find people who use weak passwords.

Most password managers can also make strong passwords for you. A password manager can store your login information for you. On top of that, it instantly logs you into websites.

You might find it strange the first time you go to your bank’s website and are already logged in. But password managers can make your life a lot easier.

Keep plugins and themes up-to-date

We know that the second most popular way to hack a WordPress website is to use weak passwords. But plugins are by far the most common way that WordPress websites are broken into. Check that all of your WordPress themes and add-ons are current. That’s all you need to do to make it less likely that someone will hack into your app or theme.

Obviously, there is a significant amount of labour involved in doing it.

• Manual Updates

If you often add new content to your WordPress website, it’s pretty easy to keep plugins and themes up-to-date manually. You will see a message every time you log in to your WordPress admin page if a plugin or theme needs to be updated.

• Automatic Updates

Set your WordPress website to update itself if you log in to it infrequently. There are a number of distinct approaches one may use to implement automated updating.

You’re in luck if you use Softaculous to install WordPress. Softaculous lets you keep apps and themes up to date.

Let WordPress update itself.

It’s important to keep your plugins and themes up to date, but it’s also important to keep your WordPress version up to date.

I know how you feel if you’re afraid to update WordPress because a big version once messed up your website. Sometimes changing can feel like a crap shoot if the person who made your theme doesn’t keep up with changes to WordPress.

It’s actually even more dangerous to not update WordPress than to use plugins or themes that need to be updated. If you only remember one thing from this story, make it this one. Update WordPress often.

If you aren’t sure about an update, you might want to try it first in a development environment. You can then fix anything that goes wrong without having to shut down your main website.

WordPress changes can be done by hand or automatically, just like plugins and themes.

Date cleaning

It was talked about in the “Update Plugins and Themes” part how to keep plugins and themes up to date. But sometimes, coders give up on these parts and stop updating them.

Once in a while, look through your plugins to see which ones last changed a while ago. It’s also possible to delete your whole WordPress system and start over.

In the WordPress dashboard panel, go to “Installed Plugins” and click on a plugin’s “View details” link to see when it was last updated. The “Last Updated” date is shown in the new window.

If a plugin hasn’t been changed in about a year, you might want to find a different tool that does the same thing but is more up-to-date.

Also, remove any plugins or themes that you’re not using. Don’t just turn these plugins off; get rid of them totally. The goal is to have the most recent versions of all the tools and themes you use.

Locate and Delete Abandoned WordPress Installations

Because WordPress is so easy to set up, there are a lot of test installs that need to be used. Old WordPress websites that were last used months ago are often infected with malware. People who visit your website and other websites can get infected.

It’s important to look for WordPress installs that you need to remember to set up.

You can see all of your WordPress installs in Softaculous if you use cPanel. Get rid of the ones you’re not using.

Suppose you don’t use cPanel or Softaculous. In that case, you can FTP into your website and delete any folders that look like they might be old WordPress installations that aren’t being used.

When you test WordPress, it will also have a database somewhere, so remember to get rid of that, too.

Make sure that all of your website’s files are up to date, not just WordPress. It is simple to gather old versions of files. Get rid of the stuff you just aren’t going to use! If it makes you feel bad to delete files from the WordPress web hosting server, download a copy of the old files, save it locally, and then delete the server copy.

Get rid of the automatic administrator account

WordPress may have made a user called “admin” by default if you installed it a long time ago. When people try to hack WordPress, they usually start with the “admin” account. You make it easier for the attacker to do their job if it’s there.

Visit the WordPress Users page (/wp-admin/users.php) and look for “admin” to see if you have a user with that name.

You should either make a new account or give a current one the administrator role and delete the default admin profile if you already have one.

Get Assistance from Professionals

I’m not talking about getting a security guard to stand behind you and watch over your shoulder. If you do that, please let me know how it goes. Expert help in the form of a program is what I mean.

We’ve been talking about how plugins can make security worse, but some of them can also make it safer.

Using security tools like Wordfence can make it much less likely that your website will be hacked. And since this tool is free, there is no risk in adding it to WordPress.

Wordfence and other security apps can stop all of the things we’ve been talking about. There are a lot of other things that are more challenging to check as well. It will even email you about what it finds.

Backup

If your WordPress website is hacked when you wake up, it can take a long day to fix everything. You can finish the job much faster if you have a recent backup of your website and database that you can use.

You can back up your WordPress website in a number of different ways. You can use both manual and automatic methods. Another option is to use a paid backup service that will connect to your website and database and download them every day.

Having good backups not only gives you peace of mind in case of a hack, but it also helps protect you from yourself.

Even though I’ve been making websites since 1994, I still break them every once in a while. Really badly. And the backup from yesterday has saved me more times than I can count.

A backup won’t protect you from a hack or other website disaster. It can, however, make your life a lot easier if you ever get hurt, whether by the bad guys or by accident.

Conclusion

WordPress website hack is challenging to clean. In order to prevent our WordPress website from being hacked, we must follow some tips like changing passwords, backing up your website, getting professional help, data cleaning, updating software, and more.