Conformity: Undesirable for You, BAD for Your WordPress Site
As you are probably starting to understand from my previous posts, WordPress security is multi-layered. By now, you should at least be limiting login attempts on your site and making sure that everything stays updated.
Up Next: Be Unique
The next phase is to take steps to reduce what potential hackers know about your site, thus making it more difficult to gain access. Because WordPress is the most popular content management system on the planet, keeping the default settings means that you’re using a lot of the same information as many other sites. And that makes your site more vulnerable.
I get notification every time someone (or some bot) is blocked because of too many login attemps. These notifications plummeted by about 90% when I changed the location of my login page. As soon as I quit using the default location for my WordPress login page, the attempts to get into my site dropped dramatically. Yup, it pays to be unique.
No normal person is going to take the time, or have the patience, to go through each of the WordPress default settings for users, databases, login pages, etc. and change them. That is why plugins like iThemes Security exist.
There are several good security plugins out there, but I am currently using iThemes Security. In fact, for my site & the sites that I manage, I actually use iThemes Security Pro.
iThemes Security
Like other plugins, you can grab iThemes Security from the plugin repository and install it on your site. Then you need to configure it. Otherwise, it isn’t going to help you.
The plugin has a dashboard that alerts you to the high, medium & low priority items you need to set up. Be sure to do a backup of your site before you start. As with anytime you are changing things on your site, be sure you have carefully read the information AND write down major changes. You know – like your new username or what your new login page URL is. This isn’t information you typically can get again. So just keep a piece of paper next to your computer and write down what you changed.
Here’s all the good stuff wrapped up in a video for you!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1H55S9AqXk
Links Mentioned in the video
