10 Top WordPress Development Security Tricks To Secure WordPress Website

Imagine you made a website after putting in a lot of effort, and it gets hacked. You sure don’t want your WordPress website’s security to be jeopardized.

But the bitter truth is that this could be your website in the next hour with the least or no security measures in place.

Let us first understand why it matters in the first place.

Why WordPress Security Matters?

If you’re a website owner, you can’t afford to put your site at risk because of hackers or malware.

The problem is that many people don’t realize just how much their WordPress site is vulnerable until something bad happens to them or their website. It’s important then to understand why WordPress security matters so you can take steps now to avoid problems later on down the road.

Here are 10 tricks you can employ to ensure your WordPress website during the development process.

• Use SSL certificate

SSL certificates are digital documents that confirm that you are who you say you are. They must be installed on the web server and configured properly. When HTTPS is used, an encrypted connection between your browser and server is established by using this certificate, making it much more secure than HTTP.

Certificates can also be used to verify the identity of websites or individuals online; for example, if someone claims to be from Microsoft but doesn’t have an SSL certificate, then it may affect their credibility as well as yours.

• Require & Use Strong Passwords

Suppose you are among the ones who have the same password for literally any authorization on your devices; then, you are prone to security breaches. What if that password gets stolen? You now have all of your sites at the stake of being breached.

The best way to pass this problem is by leveraging password managers like 1Password or LastPass. With the help of these tools, you would not only be able to generate strong passwords but would have it all in one place, which is protected.

So that if someone were able to hack into your account through any means like phishing or malware infection, they wouldn’t reach anything confidential.

If you don’t already have an established practice of changing all of these passwords regularly, then now is definitely the time! It’s recommended that users change their passwords at least once every 30 days (or more often if there is any suspicious activity).

This and the rest below will not be your headache if you hire the WordPress web development service from an experienced company.

• Protect the wp-admin directory

When it comes to security that is a myth that wordPress is not secure but you must stay clear of this and all such myths about WordPress as there is a reason it is one of the most popular CMS in the world today. 

This control panel will allow you to manage all your website content, settings, and plugins. That’s a lot of information in a place that definitely needs to be secured.

There are a few WordPress development security tricks for that extra layer of security. First, you can create a customWP-ADMIN directory using the wp-admin rename plugin. This will change the default WordPress control panel URL from wp-admin to something else, making it harder for hackers to find.

Htaccess can be used to password-protect it. This will require anyone trying to access the directory to enter a username and password.

• Protect your wp-config.php

The wp-config.php file is a key part of WordPress and contains all the settings for your website, such as database credentials and what plugins are active on it. This means that if someone has access to this file, then they can change those settings so that they have full control over your website – which could lead to hacking attacks or even worse! 

To prevent this from happening:

Make sure you don’t store any sensitive information in this file (such as password hashes). If you do, avoid putting it into plain text format as well. Instead, use SHA1 hash functions with 256-bit keys so that anyone can access them without knowing how to break those hashes down into their original form (which would take ages).

The companies which provide the WordPress web development service recommend not to share these files with anyone else either. Otherwise, they’ll be able to generate their own versions. 

Which may contain additional features not available through default installations, so make sure everyone knows what version number corresponds exactly with what WordPress developers themselves released version number.

• Update regularly for WordPress security

Whether you’re an experienced WordPress developer or just starting out, it’s important to update your site regularly. Each time a new version of WordPress is released, security patches may be available to help prevent hackers’ attacks.

It’s also a good idea to use plugins and other tools that will alert you if there are vulnerabilities in your code or plugins so that you can address them before they become problems for users on your site.

Finally, using a firewall on every computer where WordPress runs will help protect against remote access attempts by unwanted parties (such as malware).

• Keep WordPress Core Files Updated

Outdated software is one of the biggest security risks for any website, so it’s important to keep everything up-to-date.

Do not skip the plugins and theme updation, as they cause many security loopholes if they are outdated. So it’s important to keep everything updated.

• Change the WordPress database table prefix.

This unique identifier is attached to your database tables. It’s used by the WordPress administration panel and other applications, such as wordpress.com and Jetpack, to access the website’s database.

Changing this demotivates the hackers’ moves slide into your system through SQL injection attacks—hackers’ favourite. When trying to gain access to websites on which they try to upload malware. Or steal sensitive information like passwords and credit card numbers via SQL injections.

If you don’t know how or where this is set up on your site, ask someone who does! 

You want these changes made so that no one else can see what’s going on with your site’s databases. Otherwise, it could lead them straight back into them (and possibly onto yours).

• Hide Your WP-Admin Login Page

You can hide your WP-Admin login page from search engines and visitors by using .htaccess files. Also, should protect your WP-Admin directory with a .htaccess file as well. This means no one can access all of your site’s information. Including passwords and user accounts, even if they have access to the admin directory.

All you need is WpRevert or WordPress Security Plugin to skip the hassle of creating yourself manually (which isn’t too difficult).

• Disable XML-RPC

XML-RPC is an easy-to-use, cross-platform remote procedure call protocol. That allows developers to communicate with WordPress.xmlrpc.php file remotely through the internet. 

This disables XML-RPC completely and prevents any possible attacks from taking place on your site’s back end. Which is where all of your sensitive data resides!

• Enable security scans

Last but the least that the WordPress web development service provides when it comes to security is enabling security scans. These can be done by a third-party service like Sucuri or SiteLock. Or you can do it yourself with a plugin like WP Security Scanner.

Security scans will identify and remove malware, viruses, and other threats from your WordPress website. That could otherwise affect visitor security.

Conclusion

We’ve all been there: you get your first WordPress website, and you launch it into the world. Only to get a barrage of notifications that someone broke into your account. 

It can be hard to know what to do next. But these measures when in place would provide you peace of mind.