Five tips to improve the security of your WordPress

     WordPress is perhaps the most widely used website platform in the world, and a lot of time and money is invested to ensure that its users enjoy websites as secure as possible. However, this does not mean that you do not have to do anything on your part to help improve security. These tips will help you greatly improve the security of your WordPress-based website.

1. Change the administrator username

    When you create your website for the first time, you will be given an automatic account with the username 'admin' that can control any aspect of your WordPress site, from the content of your page to the billing settings and even the capabilities of access from other accounts on the site. This makes it a very powerful account and not something you want to lose control of.

      Hackers know that almost every WordPress site will have that unique admin account, so here's what to do to protect yourself from their influence: First, create a new user profile with admin powers that can do the same as the administrator account, but under a different name. Assign all posts that were previously under "admin" to the new account and then delete the admin account.

2. Use two-factor authentication

     We can keep talking about strong passwords all week, but if your password is somehow leaked, it won't mean anything. What you can do, instead, is make sure your password isn't the only thing between any user and their site.

      You can download a plugin that gives you two-factor authentication, a robust process that is being adopted by more and more sites as standard as time goes on. The idea is that you not only have to enter your password, but also receive a text message, email, use your phone's camera recognition, etc. Prove your identity twice, not just once. If someone has your password but can't access your text messages to read the authentication code, then they can't log in.

3. Update WordPress

     The latest security patches won't be applied to your site if you don't have the most up-to-date version of WordPress. Make sure to back up your site and then download and install the updates, both on your WordPress site and its plugins, as soon as they are available. This closes the gaps and prevents vulnerabilities from leaving you open to attack.

     If you are using our managed WordPress PRO hosting, security updates are more than covered. This hosting, among other things, includes: Updating WordPress, Updating the template or theme used on the website (provided the client has the license for their theme or template activated), Updating all plugins or functionalities used, Change or replacement of obsolete plugins, antivirus scan, anti spam, malware scan, broken link control, speed and performance test, cache and loading speed optimization. WordPress PRO users enjoy a very secure environment, since they use cloud servers configured especially for WordPress and in addition to using our own security plugins, dozens of rules similar to those in this article are also used.

4. Delete old files

     When you look at your list of plugins or themes for WordPress, everything should be up to date. But what about the ones you no longer use?

      If you are not using it, remove and uninstall it. Otherwise, security vulnerabilities in old plugins could still cause you problems.

5. Disable trackbacks

     In Settings> Comments, uncheck the option "Allow link notices from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks) in new posts". This will prevent other sites from leaving trackbacks, which means that you are less likely to be the target of a DDoS attack.