How to Prevent a WordPress Site from Being Hacked

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WordPress has the largest market share among web platforms worldwide. And, like Windows, this platform is also a primary target for hackers. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use WordPress because there are many ways to prevent your WordPress site from being hacked.

You just need to take precautionary measures to ensure that your site is secure. Mangcoding has helped secure hundreds of WordPress websites and fix many hacked sites for over 5 years.

Below is a discussion about the most important things you can do to prevent your site from being hacked.

This is not a comprehensive list of everything you can do, but rather a very selective list of things we believe will make the biggest difference in keeping your site secure.

The first way to prevent your WordPress site from being hacked is by paying attention to the site’s theme. There are thousands of themes available for WordPress. These themes are usually written by developers without supervision.

Anyone can write and sell themes, and many people have done so. Since themes control the look and feel of a WordPress site, they are usually purchased based on their appearance and the style that fits the purpose of the site.

Security and performance are often factors that many people don’t consider when buying a site theme. As a result, WordPress site creators and site owners often choose themes that may not be secure or functional but are attractive or relevant to their desires and needs.

Of course, theme vendors try to appeal to as many people as possible in order to make as many sales as possible. As a result, they keep adding new features to their themes to try and create themes that can meet everyone’s needs.

As a result, commercial themes become larger and more complex, which reduces their performance and increases the likelihood of containing bugs.

Hackers can purchase these themes, just like anyone else, and they can review the source code of the theme to find bugs. Once they find a loophole, they can use Google to find every site in the world that runs that theme and hack it.

The best way to protect your site from hacking through its theme is not to use commercial themes.

Custom themes, which can be created by experienced WordPress developers, have far fewer scripts and their code is not sold on open markets. Therefore, these themes are much more secure and typically perform faster.

If you choose to use a commercial theme, make sure it has a good reputation and is well-supported. Read theme reviews, check how many times the theme has been downloaded, and pay attention to how often the theme is updated.

Keeping your WordPress core and plugins up to date is an easy task to do. Of course, if you don’t keep your software updated, you’ll get hacked. However, even if your site appears not to need updates, it doesn’t mean all your plugins are up to date.

WordPress only records updates for plugins that have a new version available. A plugin may have been abandoned by its creator and hasn’t been updated in years. That plugin might even have been removed from the WordPress repository.

In other words, your site could be running an insecure plugin, and you wouldn’t get any warnings about it.

Therefore, you should periodically review all the plugins installed on your site to ensure that the plugins are still available and updated regularly. Here is an example of a notification on the WordPress plugin page if the plugin has not been updated.

What you need to do is replace plugins like this with better alternatives that have good support and always perform regular updates and maintenance.

There are many WordPress security plugins you can use to strengthen your site against unknown vulnerabilities. Two of the most popular plugins are iThemes Security Pro and WordFence.

It is crucial for you to purchase one of them and install it. iThemes Security Pro has several features that you must activate, which we believe are very effective in preventing site hacking.

• This protection prevents hackers from trying to break into your site thousands of times by attempting to guess passwords.
• Disable PHP in Upload, Plugins & Themes. This is a lesser-known iThemes Security feature that forbids PHP from being executed directly from these folders. Uploading infected PHP files and executing them is one of the primary ways hackers harm your website.
• Password Requirements — This forces all users to have a complex password.
• Disable xmlrpc and WordPress API — Most sites don’t need either of these, and both provide a large loophole to your WordPress site that can be exploited by hackers.

CloudFlare is a free service that every website should run. There are many benefits related to security, and CloudFlare is a core part of any security strategy.

This service provides a web firewall that filters attacks before they hit your server. The service is continually updated to block new attacks.

There are paid levels that provide more security, but the free version is so useful that there is no reason not to use it.

There are many more things you can do to help secure your WordPress site. The list above just includes the things we consider most important in securing your site from hacking.

If you need help with a hacked site, Mangcoding can assist. We have a team that is experienced and responsive in security matters and is ready to help.

That’s the article on How to Prevent a WordPress Site from Being Hacked that Mangcoding shared. We hope this article is useful and provides new knowledge. If you have any constructive feedback or suggestions, please comment or send an Email through Mangcoding’s social media.

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