When it comes to the security of WordPress websites, users generally fall into two types of categories: first is the group of users who take serious steps to keep their website secured and keep on learning new things while the other groups don’t give enough importance to it.

Unfortunately, people who don’t look after their website security often face catastrophic consequences.

Undoubtedly, WordPress is one of the most popular, secured, and stable CMS platforms. But it’s not only popular among web owners but hackers too. If you don’t follow necessary steps and take safety precautions, your website can get hacked easily.

That’s scary, right?

Well, there’s a way out. There are plenty of things you can do on a daily basis to keep your WordPress website safe and secure from hackers and malware practitioners.

In this article we’ll be discussing a few practices that you need to follow in order to keep your WordPress website secure.

07 Ways to secure your WordPress website

Choose quality hosting provider

One of the easiest ways to secure your WordPress website is to choose a quality wordpress hosting company. Quality hosting service can cause you a bomb. Being an entrepreneur it might seem a heavy investment but it will work for you in the long run.

Cheap hosting service can cause severe issues like redirecting your website to contaminated or illegal pages or erase your data completely.

Paying a little more is much better than losing literally everything. There are plenty of hosting providers in the market offering outstanding security features, we recommend WPEngine and Liquid Web as they are the two most reputable web hosting providers in the marketplace.

Avoid using nulled themes

We know premium WordPress themes look more tempting and professional but you need to pay a price to get them. But there’s another way to get hold of them free of cost and that’s by using cracked versions of premium themes which are also commonly known as nulled themes.

There are a few sites that offer plenty of cracked and nulled WordPress themes. Usually these themes are often contaminated with malwares and they can cause severe damages.

Though they seem very tempting especially when you could save a few bucks, we strongly recommend you to avoid using nulled WordPress themes.

Use strong login credentials

Login credentials like passwords are an important part of a website. Unfortunately, passwords are one of the most overlooked parts of security. Users often prefer to keep simple passwords so they can memorize them easily.

What they don’t know is that their website can be easily compromised because they are using plain passwords. If you’re one of those just go and change your password right away.

While your password is quite easy to remember but it’s more easy to guess. Malware practitioners can easily crack your password and enter your website without any hassle.

That’s why it’s highly essential that you choose a complex password. Or if you cannot think of one, use auto-generated passwords. These passwords are made by the combination of letter, digits, and special characters making it hard enough for someone to guess.

Install an SSL certificate

SSL certificate also known as Single Socket Layer certificate  it’s an additional security layer that protects a website. Initially it was used to secure specific payment transactions, now it’s essential every website must use it who deals with sensitive customer information like credit card details.

Adding an SSL certificate to your site will keep all the sensitive information encrypted making it almost impossible for someone to read it.

An SSL certificate is especially important when you’re using WordPress for your eCommerce store (by using the WooCommerce plugin, for example). In fact, many payment facilitators won’t even integrate with your store if you don’t have SSL installed. Whether you’re a small store selling a few products or using WordPress + WooCommerce for running a wholesale store, an SSL certificate is a must-have.

Usually it’s offered free by hosting companies. If your hosting provider is not offering a free SSL certificate then you need to purchase it. An SSL certificate will cost you around $70 – $199 annually.

Use a WordPress security plugin

We understand being a web owner you already have a lot on your plate. Along with those necessary tasks that you need to carry out on a daily basis like updating content on your website, it’s nearly impossible to check your site security on a regular basis.

Secondly, if you don’t have much knowledge about coding it will be challenging for you to find malicious code hidden in your website.

 Fortunately, WordPress has developed an optimal solution for this issue- WordPress security plugins. A WordPress security plugin looks after the security of your wordpress website. It monitors your website 24/7 and scans it for malware.

There are plenty of security plugins available but we suggest you use Sucuri. It’s one of the most outstanding and trustworthy WordPress plugins. It offers outstanding security features such as, security activity auditing, malware scanning, efficacious security hardening, security notifications, blacklist monitoring, etc.

Keep your WordPress core, plugins and themes up-to-date

One thing that you should know being a web owner is never leave room for security vulnerabilities. Keeping outdated files can cause serious damages. Therefore, it’s highly essential to your WordPress and its components like plugins and themes.

WordPress and it’s components are frequently updated. The new versions are better and mostly the bugs are fixed. You can update WordPress and it’s components either manually or automatically.

The choice is yours but it’s obligatory that you do it no matter what.

Create a backup of your WordPress site

If you have not created a backup of your website yet, what are you waiting for? Go and do it right away. Backing up your website on an external server is essential.

At times even after following the best security practices websites get hacked and you can do nothing about it. That’s why it’s necessary to keep a backup of your website. It’s not just a task that you do only once. You should create a backup of your site at least once in a month.

You can use WordPress plugins and backup services for this purpose such as:

• BackWPup
• UpdraftPlus
• VaultPress
• BlogVault

Final thoughts

WordPress is a popular and powerful content management system (CMS) that allows anyone to easily build a website. However, since it is so commonly used, it is also a popular target for hackers.

Fortunately, there are many precautions you may take to secure the WordPress website. However, keep in mind that you are not required to do everything we have mentioned above. If you stick to the fundamental practises, you’ll be way ahead.

After that, do what you can and what you’re capable of doing. Security is an ongoing process, not a one-time event. You can do a lot of things, but getting started is the most important thing.