5 Simple Things You Can Do Today to Secure Your WordPress Site

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had clients contact me after something has happened to their WordPress site.

Perhaps it had the “white screen of death”. Sometimes they have all kinds of error codes on top of their screen. Or even worse they had a malware infection!

Here are 5 simple things you can do today to secure your WordPress site today:

1. Have a reliable backup option on your site. My personal favorite backup plugin is a premium plugin called BackupBuddy! It is so easy to use and they have great documentation. With your purchase you get some free storage and scheduled backups you can send to remote storage! Schedule your backups and forget about it! This is important because if something does happen you will have a recent backup. I had a client who contacted me two years after I created his site. He had major problems with it AND he had no new backups. His hosting company had no backups. Thankfully I had a backup for him from two years prior so he salvaged some of his site but lost all of his changes and additions he had made in the last two years. Don’t make this mistake! Back up!!
2. Make frequent updates to WordPress, your theme, and your plugins. However of course before you do this make sure you do a backup :)  I recommend you schedule one day each month to just login and do these updates. All of my clients (thankfully it’s only a few) who have had malware hadn’t updated their sites regularly. I offer a service for WordPress maintenance that includes backups and updates if you are interested in having me take care of this task for you. You can contact me here.
3. Don’t use the default “admin” username. When you install WordPress the default username that is set up is called admin. I strongly recommend one of the first things you do is to add a new administrator login and then delete the “admin” one.
4. Don’t use the default login /wp-login.php. Have your web designer update this login URL for you! This helps keep out hackers because it’s harder to find your login URL. Not impossible of course – but harder!
5. Pick a SECURE password that you don’t use anywhere else. This one might sound too easy – but believe me it needs to be said. Don’t share your password with someone you don’t trust. A secure password is not password123 or your name with 123 or something that can be guessed! Use capital letters, lowercase letters, numbers and symbols! I also recommend you update this password every 6 months or so.

Although there are lots of other ways to secure your WordPress website as well, these 5 tips should help get you started!!

If you need any help be sure to contact me.

Rachel Muraca
WordPress Web Designer
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