WordPress is a fantastic content management system. CMSs are scripts, stand-alone applications that allow user to manage and deploy web pages, and WordPress is the king of CMSs that power the Internet.

WordPress is used by millions of users around the world, and has become the number target for bad guys who want to gain access to vulnerable sites to launch attacks on other sites.

If you don’t manage your WordPress blogs or websites properly by securing them, they may be compromised and used to launch attacks on other websites.

This brief tutorial is going to show you some tips to protect your WordPress blogs and websites easily and quickly.

Protecting your WordPress sites isn’t difficult and anyone who manages to install and configure WordPress should perform these tasks painlessly.

Always update WordPress and related plugins/themes

Your first priority when managing a WordPress blog or website is to always update it. Update WordPress core files and scripts, plugins and themes whenever newer versions become available.

Whenever you logon to your WordPress admin section and see a notification to update, go and update your system as quickly as possible.

These updates are released to fix bugs and other security vulnerabilities.

When you go to your WordPress admin page, it should always look like the image below. No notifications to update.

 

wordpress-update-security

 

The next thing you may want to do to protect your WordPress site is to guard against brute force attacks to gain access to your sites. Many attacks against WordPress sites are brute force attacks.

These attacks are carried out by bad  guys who usually try multiple username and password combinations in hope to guess the correct login credentials.

These attacks easy to carry out but difficult to succeed when the site is using a strong password. Strong passwords are ones that use a combination of lower/upper case, number, special characters, and are long – usually 12 to 16 characters.

Using strong password may help with with brute force attacks, but you may need more than that in some cases.

Some popular services that may help again brute force attacks include Clef and BruteProtect. These two WordPress plugins can help you protect your login against brute force attacks.

They bring 2-factor, secure, password-less authentication to WordPress.

Hope this helps.

Enjoy!