Complete WordPress Security Guide (Beginner Friendly)

Are you looking for the ultimate guide to WordPress security? Keeping your WordPress website secure is important. You want to take all the necessary precautions to protect your site from malicious hackers, spammers, and intruders. Securing your website may seem like a complicated task, especially for beginners, but it really isn’t.

In this article, we will share our ultimate WordPress security guide so you can easily protect your website. Since this article is long, here is a table of contents to help you navigate through the steps we are going to take:

Table of Contents: WordPress Security Guide

• Is Your WordPress Website at Risk?
• The Easiest Way to Protect Your Site? Use the Best WordPress Security Plugin
• Choose a Secure WordPress Hosting
• Use Strong and Unique Passwords
• Choose a strong username for your WordPress admin
• Follow best practices for WordPress plugins and themes
• Keep your WordPress site up to date
• Install a WordPress Backup Plugin
• Limit login attempts
• Add security questions to WordPress login
• Automatically log out inactive users
• Disable file editing on your site
• Signs Your WordPress Site Has Been Hacked
• What to do if your site has been hacked

Now, let’s get started.

Is your WordPress website in danger?

If you run a small business website or want to start a personal blog on WordPress , you might think that your website isn’t at risk. But it is. All websites are at risk of being hacked, from giant e-commerce websites to small personal websites.

You may also think that since WordPress is the most popular platform for building websites, your site is totally safe. But that’s not entirely true either. Although the core of the WordPress software is very secure, there are other measures you should take to further protect your website. Plus, the sheer popularity of WordPress is partly what attracts these cybercriminals to your website.

Just take a look at some of these WordPress statistics that prove how important it is to protect your website with WordPress:

• 83% of all CMS-based websites that were hacked recently were using WordPress, which makes sense since WordPress holds 60% of the CMS market share. (WPBeginner)
• Hackers are attacking WordPress sites large and small, with over 90,978 attacks per minute. (WPPlugins )
• The four most common malware infections in WordPress are Backdoors, Drive-by downloads, Pharma hacks and Malicious redirects. (Smashing Magazine )
• Google blacklists around 20,000 websites for malware and around 50,000 for phishing every week. (WPBeginner)
• Wordfence blocked 9,495,478,648 attacks on WordPress sites. ( Wordfence )

As you can see from these statistics, anyone with greece phone number library a WordPress site is at risk of an attack, so it is extremely important to strengthen the security of your WordPress site.

A hacked website

can cost you a lot of money and top 10 wordpress security authentication plugins (compared) damage your business’ reputation. If you sell products online or collect online payments and sensitive information from your customers, protecting your website should be a priority. Hackers can steal your customers’ private information, passwords, credit card data, and more.

It’s not just the theft of sensitive information that you have to worry about. Hackers also often take over your website and its content to install malicious software and may even distribute malware to your users. They may even ask you for a ransom to regain access to your own website.

Some hackers don’t even need a reason to attack your website, some of them do it just for “fun”.

Securing your WordPress website is not something you want to ignore. There are a number of simple steps you can take, even if you are not a tech expert, to protect fanto data your WordPress website from hackers. So, let’s dive into the 1st easy step of our WordPress security guide.

The easiest way to protect your site? Use the best WordPress security plugin

The easiest and most effective way to protect your WordPress website is to install a WordPress security plugin. A WordPress security plugin will protect your site from any harm and give you peace of mind that your site is hacker-proof, without needing to get into any technical aspects.

The best WordPress security plugins should have the following features:

• Scanning – A good security plugin will scan your website on a regular basis to find malware and other potential threats.
• Firewalls – Firewalls control all traffic to your site and keep out vulnerable bots trying to reach your website server.
• Removal and Repairs – Your security plugin should ensure malware removal and repairs to your site in the event that it is attacked.

Since there are so many WordPress security plugins available, it can be difficult to figure out which one will offer your website the most protection. So, to help you choose the best security plugin for your WordPress site, here are some of our picks for the best WordPress security plugins.

1. Sucuri

Sucuri is our top pick for the best WordPress security plugin. We use it on our own website and love it. Sucuri is a complete cloud-based website security solution that will protect your site from malware, brute force attacks, and any other potential threats.

When you use Sucuri, all of your website traffic goes through their CloudProxy servers and every request is scanned in order to filter out malicious requests. This not only protects your website, but also reduces server load and improves your site’s performance and speed .

Sucuri also reports potential security threats to the WordPress core team and third-party plugins, has an antivirus suite that monitors your site every 4 hours for threats, keeps track of everything that happens on your website, and much more.

Get started with Sucuri today.

2. SiteLock

SiteLock is another amazing WordPress security plugin. It comes with all the features you need to protect your site, including malware scans, managed web application firewall, DDoS prevention, and much more.

Their cloud-based technology deploys and protects your site in minutes, so it works super-fast to find, fix, and prevent vulnerabilities. Every day SiteLock scans your WordPress themes , plugins, and files for potential vulnerabilities that could get your site blacklisted.

Plus, when SiteLock automatically finds and fixes any vulnerabilities, it provides you with an easy-to-understand report so you can learn more about security.

Get started with SiteLock today.

3. WordfenceWordfence is another powerful WordPress security plugin that offers everything you need to protect your website.

Wordfence offers a free plugin that includes important features like a web application firewall, malware scanner, and brute force attack protection. Which is perfect if you’re just starting out and need a cost-effective protection solution.

With Wordfence Premium you get access to even more powerful features like real-time IP blacklisting, real-time firewall rule and malware signature updates, 2-factor authentication, country blocking, and more.

Get started with Wordfence today.

Now that you have some great WordPress security plugin options that will protect your website and give you peace of mind, let’s look at some other ways to easily increase the security of your WordPress site.