Think about it, your website is your online space and just like you’d lock your physical doors, you’ve got to lock the digital ones as well.

So, why is all the fuss about security now more than ever? Well, the internet is evolving, and with more transactions happening online, hackers are becoming more active.

This means your customers’ data, their personal info, and even their hard-earned money – all at risk.

That’s where robust security measures come into play.

This means setting up barriers, to create a safe site for your visitors.

The idea of this blog post is to show 10 ways you can harden your WordPress site and make it more hacker-resistant.

Tips to Secure a WordPress site

Now, let’s start with the basics. These are the non-technical & simple ways to secure your WP site.

Change Your Login Page URL Regularly

One of the most common and simplest methods to prevent brute force attacks on your website is to change the URL of the WP login, some experts even recommend doing it twice a month.

WordPress Login page is one of the most popular targets for hackers, which is why it is prone to exploitation.

Hackers usually always rely on automated bots to do brute force attacks, trying out various combinations of usernames and passwords to gain unauthorized access. Changing the URL interrupts their automated attempts, making it less likely that they’ll breach your site’s security.

If you change this page regularly, you’ll be doing yourself a favour, adding an extra layer of protection to your site from potential harm.

Limit Login Attempts

Limiting the number of allowable login attempts is a simple yet important way of adding another layer of security to your website.
This measure can prevent hackers from applying brute force methods to get access to your site.

When you limit login attempts, you make sure that whenever hackers tried to even guess your username or passwords, they won’t be given numerous chances or opportunities to crack your password.
After they’ve reached a certain number of unsuccessful attempts, the system is smart enough to either block their IP address or lock the user out.

You can take this security measure through your site’s setting or better still using security plugins in order to safeguard your site and maintain integrity of sensitive data.

Secure All Passwords & Enable Two-Factor Authentication

If you wish to keep your website or blog safe and secure from hackers or any malicious activities then you must create smart and strong passwords.

Times have changed, today passwords such as “abcde” or “12345” or other ones that has something to do with your personal life like your name, pet’s name or date of birth don’t work anymore.

Make sure your passwords are strong and uses a mixture of numbers, letters, punctuation Mark, if your worry is easiness to remember, then you can setup a password manager like Bitwarden to or Avast password manager to manage all your passwords across devices.

Remove WP and Plugin Versions

When you hide your WordPress version number or even plugins version, you make it a little bit more difficult for potential hackers to even identify the version you currently use.

Similarly hiding your WordPress version number of your plugins, makes it impossible for hackers to pinpoint outdated plugins versions that might be susceptible to unauthorized access.

How can you remove these version numbers?

You can do this by modifying your theme’s functions.php file or by using a security plugin to apply changes to your site.

Disable Comments

Disabling comments might seem counterintuitive, especially if you encourage user engagement on your site. However, for security reasons, it’s a prudent step to consider. The comment section is one of the most vulnerable areas of any website, often targeted by spammers and hackers to inject malicious code.

Whenever you disable the ability of visitors to leave comments on your site, you eliminate an Avenue for hackers to exploit your site.

These hackers use very harmless comments to insert scripts and links that could compromise the security of your site or even redirect your visitors to other dangerous websites.

Advanced Ways to Enhance Security

Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s delve deeper into some advanced tips to enhance the security of your WordPress website.

Add a CDN-level Firewall

A CDN-level firewall also known as Content Delivery Network acts as a virtual built-in wall between your website and potential threats by filtering out any form of malicious traffic before it even gets to your server.

This firewall serves as a form of protection for your website against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. This type of attack happens when malicious traffic overwhelms your site’s server and causes it to crash.

It protects it by first identifying if the traffic exhibits some suspicious behavour, Secondly, it then blocks the traffic request if it appears to be malicious.

You can set up a CDN-level firewall for free, thanks to a provider like Cloudflare. After integration the firewall will start working silently and keeping your site safe. Our Web hosting on Mode Web Host does not need a CDN, it already comes with a CDN that is pre-installed for Edge Caching element of the CDN.

Add a JavaScript Challenge to Your Login Page

Most CDN providers like Cloudflare allow you to add a JS challenge which is shown to certain visitors on your website. It behaves like a Gateman, letting nothing but only legitimate users (users whose browsers can execute JavaScript) to access your login page.

During the five seconds delay, the JavaScript challenge makes sure that the request is coming from a browser that is capable of executing JS scripts.

If the user’s browser cannot execute a JS script, then a barrier would be formed against unauthorized bots or scripts that try to gain access.

Remove XML-RPC.php

When adding advanced methods to secure your WordPress website, then consider removing the XML-RPC.php file.

This is a remote access protocol that opens up possible vulnerabilities into your WP web. When you disable its functionality, you reduce the risk of unauthorized access or any other type of exploitative attacks through the file.

XML-RPC are usually used for brute-force Attacks in a bid to let potential hackers continuously guess your passwords and gain entry. They can misuse the XML-RPC to carry out malicious code or even access sensitive users’ information on your website. If the file is not currently in use by your, then you can remove the file or have disabled to further strengthen your website.

Reduce Plugins

Reports have that most vulnerabilities that come to 0ver 85% of websites are caused by plugins. While plugins are built as addons to integrate different functionality and features to your website, but then it’s important to know that with every plugin you add, you increase the likelihood of an attack on your site.

Excessive number of plugins as well as old and outdated plugins can become a point of entry exploited by attackers, they seek to take advantage of the security flaws, in light of these we recommend, limiting the number of plugins you install on your web and make sure to only active and leave installed plugins that are in use.

Before you resort to using a plugin, make sure to check the feature you need cannot be implemented from the code base, a good number of processes people use plugins for can easily be replicated manually using code snippets.  If you must use plugins, use regularly maintained ones, that way you’d be decreasing the potential security breaches on your site.

Set Up Auto-Update on Plugins

Still on the topics of Plugins, you can definitely tell how time consuming it will be to always manually update your plugins whenever there’s a new update. Sometimes doing this might even lead to you neglecting critical updates.

You don’t have to manually update your plugins, WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you set auto-update for all your plugins, this will help to automate the entire process of both receiving and updating any new updates. However, this may break your site due to compatibility issue, so be sure to make it a duty call to do timely checks on your website and make sure every section runs smoothly.

Automatically updating WP plugins is one simple trick that can help you stay atop of security issues and bug fixes without requiring your manual input.

Conclusion

By implementing all these simple and advanced security strategies, you will not only be adding an extra layer of security to your website, you will also be enhancing user experience and boost the overall performance of the web.

We advise that you take action today to secure your WordPress site and create a safer online environment for you and your visitors.