Best Practices for Securing a WordPress Website for 2023

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Estimated reading time: 12 minutes

Securing A WordPress Website | Website Security

Securing a WordPress website is crucial for protecting your business and personal information from constantly evolving cyber threats. Without proper security measures in place, your WordPress site is vulnerable to attacks like malware, DDoS, brute force attacks, and data breaches.

In this post, we’ll explore the essential best practices for securing a WordPress website to lock down your WP site from common threats.

Use Strong Passwords

One of the most crucial steps for securing a WordPress website is using a strong, unique password for your WordPress admin account. Your admin password acts as the keys to the kingdom, giving full access to your site. A weak admin password makes your WordPress site extremely vulnerable.

Avoid using simple dictionary words or common phrases for your admin password. These are easily guessed or cracked with brute force. Instead, create a complex password using the following best practices:

• At least 12 characters long, the more the better
• Mixed case with upper and lowercase letters
• Incorporate numbers and symbols
• Avoid personal info or common patterns
• Don’t reuse passwords across accounts

You can use a password manager tool to randomly generate and store strong, unique passwords for all your accounts. This is highly recommended for properly securing a WordPress website. Enabling two-factor authentication adds another layer of protection by requiring your phone or security key to login, even if your password is compromised.

Keep Your WordPress Software Updated for Security and SEO

One of the most important ongoing tasks for securing a WordPress website is continually keeping your WordPress core, all plugins, and themes fully updated. Running the latest versions of all software is a key best practice for both security and SEO.

From a security perspective, WordPress and its extensions release new versions regularly that contain crucial security patches. These patches fix vulnerabilities and exploits in older software that attackers actively try to leverage to compromise sites. Using outdated and unpatched WordPress software makes your site an easy target. For SEO, search engines like Google want to provide users with the most secure and stable experience. Sites using outdated WordPress core, plugins, or themes may seem more unstable or vulnerable, indirectly hurting rankings. Certain Google features may also not work properly on outdated versions.

By promptly updating to the latest releases, you ensure your WordPress website is protected with the most up-to-date security fixes. You also present your site as secure, stable, and well-maintained – leading to better SEO performance. Enabling automatic background updates for WordPress core, plugins, and themes is highly recommended to stay current. Prioritize updates for key plugins and themes related to security, user accounts, e-commerce, etc.

Running the latest, most secure software is a best practice for both locking down your WordPress site against threats as well as maintaining strong SEO rankings. Don’t give attackers an easy path in and hurt your search.

Use a Security Plugin

Installing a dedicated security plugin is crucial for enhancing the security of a WordPress website. These plugins provide a range of protective features:

1. Wordfence – As the most popular WordPress security plugin, active on over 3 million sites, Wordfence offers a comprehensive approach to security. Its features include basic security hardening, login protection with two-factor authentication, malware scanning, file integrity monitoring, and an application-level endpoint firewall. For managing multiple sites, Wordfence Central is a useful tool. The Pro version, priced at $99, provides real-time updates to firewall and malware signatures​​.
2. MalCare – Primarily a WordPress malware scanning and removal tool, MalCare stands out for its unique scanning method. It copies files to its servers for scanning, ensuring that your live website’s performance isn’t affected. The tool also includes basic hardening, an application-level firewall to block malicious IPs, CAPTCHA login protection, and a cloud dashboard for managing multiple sites. The Pro version starts at $99 per year​​.
3. Cloudflare – Operating as a reverse proxy, Cloudflare not only secures but also speeds up WordPress sites. It secures your site at the DNS level, stopping threats before they reach your server, and offers a global CDN to boost site speed. Cloudflare’s flexibility allows you to set up custom security rules and adjust your site’s security level. The free service includes basic DNS-level protection, while the Pro plan, costing $20 per month, provides access to a DNS-level web application firewall​​.
4. iThemes Security – This freemium plugin focuses on security hardening and file scanning. The free version offers features like login attempt limitation, strong password enforcement, and checks against malware blacklists. The Pro version enhances these capabilities with additional malware scanning, file integrity monitoring, CAPTCHA, and two-factor authentication for login protection, and user activity logging​​.

Understanding the capabilities of these different plugins will help you choose one that’s tailored to your website’s specific security needs. Each plugin offers a unique set of features and protections, making it important to assess your website’s vulnerabilities and select a plugin that addresses them effectively.

Leverage a CDN

Leveraging a Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a key best practice for enhancing the security and performance of a WordPress website. CDNs offer several benefits, making them an essential tool for modern websites.

1. Decreased Server Load – By caching static files like images and videos on servers globally, CDNs reduce the load on the main server. This is particularly beneficial during times of excessive traffic, ensuring that your website remains online and functional​​.
2. Improved Website Speed and Performance – CDNs store copies of your website content on servers worldwide. When a user accesses your site, the data is delivered from the nearest CDN server, significantly reducing latency and load times. This results in a faster and more efficient website. CDNs also optimize images and other media files to maintain quality while reducing size, further boosting site performance​​.
3. No Geographic Barriers – With CDNs, your website’s reach is not limited by geography. Since CDN servers are located around the world, users from any location can access your site quickly and efficiently, ensuring a consistent user experience globally​​.
4. Improved Security – A CDN can significantly enhance your website’s security. It acts as a barrier to Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks by preventing overwhelming traffic from crashing your site. CDNs also help detect unusual website traffic activities, which may indicate a DDoS attack​​.
5. Protection Against DDoS Attacks – DDoS attacks have become increasingly common and sophisticated, targeting both the network/transport and application layers of websites. These attacks consume server resources, leading to unavailability of the application or network and can cause severe drops in legitimate website traffic, affecting sales, revenue, and the reputation of the website​​​​​​.
6. Use of Web Application Firewalls (WAF) – Some CDNs, like Cloudflare, come with WAF capabilities. WAF plugins analyze incoming requests to a WordPress site, categorizing them as malicious or benign. They can block flooding attempts, thereby preventing hacking attempts that could lead to DDoS attacks​​.
7. Geo-Blocking Features – Many DDoS attacks originate from specific countries. CDNs can employ geo-blocking features to block IP addresses from these regions, providing a temporary solution to lessen the intensity of the attacks​​.

Choosing a CDN like Cloudflare, which offers web application firewall capabilities, can significantly bolster the security of your WordPress website while also enhancing its performance. These features make CDNs an invaluable addition to your website’s security strategy.

Limit Login Attempts

Brute force attacks that attempt to guess passwords through repeated automated login attempts are unfortunately a very common security threat facing WordPress websites. A determined attacker can use brute force tools to try endless password combinations and credentials harvested from past security breaches until they luck into access.To combat this threat vector, limiting the number of allowed login attempts is an important protective measure when securing a WordPress website. There are different ways to implement login attempt limits:

Plugins like Limit Login Attempts allow setting a threshold for maximum failed login attempts by a given IP address or address range over a defined period of time. Typically this may be 3-5 failed attempts. Once the threshold is reached, the offending IP can be temporarily blocked from any further logins for a duration like 15 minutes up to completely banning the source. This makes brute force credential stuffing very difficult.

You may also be able to set login attempt limits at the web server level for additional protection. Configuring rate limiting on the number of requests per minute can help block abusive login traffic as well. Login attempt limits should be calibrated to balance security and legitimate user access. The limits should be restrictive enough to prevent brute force attacks while accommodating occasional forgotten passwords by regular users.

By implementing proper login attempt limits, you can effectively defeat brute force WordPress login attempts before a password is cracked. This provides significant protection against unauthorized access and is a key best practice when securing a WordPress website against common attacks.

Use HTTPS Everywhere

It is absolutely vital to use HTTPS encryption across your entire WordPress website, not just on login or e-commerce pages. HTTPS should be implemented on every page to properly secure sensitive communications.

HTTPS encrypts all traffic between the user’s browser and your WordPress site using SSL/TLS certificates. This protects against man-in-the-middle attacks where someone could otherwise intercept unencrypted HTTP requests and steal data like session cookies, usernames, passwords, payment details, and more.

Given the prevalence of attacks like packet sniffing on public WiFi, HTTPS should always be used without exception when securing a WordPress website. Any page that transmits user information should be encrypted.

To implement HTTPS everywhere:

• Acquire an SSL certificate that fully covers your domain from a reputable SSL provider. Extended Validation certificates provide maximum trust.
• Install the SSL certificate on your web server and enable HTTPS encryption. Use a secure cipher suite.
• Update WordPress settings and .htaccess rules to use HTTPS URLs, enable HSTS, and redirect all HTTP traffic to HTTPS.
• Verify HTTPS works across all pages, not just your homepage. Check for any resources still loading over HTTP that need updating.

Making HTTPS ubiquitous may require some upfront work, but is absolutely necessary for properly securing sensitive communications and preventing eavesdropping. HTTPS should never be optional when securing a WordPress website – use encryption everywhere.

Leverage HTTPS Across Your Entire WordPress Site

It is absolutely vital to use HTTPS encryption across your entire WordPress website, not just on login or ecommerce pages. HTTPS should be implemented on every page to properly secure sensitive communications.HTTPS encrypts all traffic between the user’s browser and your WordPress site using SSL/TLS certificates. This protects against man-in-the-middle attacks where someone could otherwise intercept unencrypted HTTP requests and steal data like session cookies, usernames, passwords, payment details, and more.

Given the prevalence of attacks like packet sniffing on public WiFi, HTTPS should always be used without exception when securing a WordPress website. Any page that transmits user information should be encrypted. To implement HTTPS everywhere:

• Acquire an SSL certificate that fully covers your domain from a reputable SSL provider. Extended Validation certificates provide maximum trust.
• Install the SSL certificate on your web server and enable HTTPS encryption. Use a secure cipher suite.
• Update WordPress settings and .htaccess rules to use HTTPS URLs, enable HSTS, and redirect all HTTP traffic to HTTPS.
• Verify HTTPS works across all pages, not just your homepage. Check for any resources still loading over HTTP that need updating.

Making HTTPS ubiquitous may require some upfront work, but is absolutely necessary for properly securing sensitive communications and preventing eavesdropping. HTTPS should never be optional when securing a WordPress website – use encryption everywhere.

Backup Your Site

Regularly backing up your WordPress website is a critical step in securing a WordPress website. Backups ensure you have a recent copy of your site that can be quickly restored in case of data loss, corruption, or a cyber attack. Let’s look at some effective backup solutions that automate this process:

1. BackupBuddy -One of the oldest WordPress backup plugins, BackupBuddy offers real-time automatic and scheduled backups. It allows for comprehensive backups of your entire site or specific components like themes, plugins, and databases. It integrates with cloud services like Google Drive, Dropbox, and Microsoft OneDrive and offers additional security features like malware detection​​.
2. UpdraftPlus – UpdraftPlus provides both automatic and manual backups. It allows you to store backups on the server or with remote storage providers. Features include the ability to restore backups directly from the WordPress control panel, migrate websites to new hosts or domains, and support for incremental and multisite backups​​.
3. BlogVault – BlogVault focuses on cloud infrastructure, reducing server load by saving backups on its cloud. It offers unlimited backup copies, incremental backups, and supports WordPress multisites. BlogVault integrates with third-party services for backup storage and can restore sites even when fully down​​.
4. Duplicator – Duplicator is known for its ability to backup entire websites or specific parts. It is particularly useful for cloning or migrating WordPress sites. While its free version offers comprehensive features, it does not include third-party storage integrations​​.
5. Jetpack Backup – Previously known as VaultPress, Jetpack Backup is part of the Jetpack plugin suite created by Automattic, WordPress’s parent company. It integrates seamlessly with WordPress websites​​.

These tools provide automated backup solutions, essential for securing a WordPress website efficiently. Choosing the right backup plugin depends on your specific needs, such as the frequency of backups, storage options, and additional security features. Regular backups, combined with other security measures, form a solid foundation for maintaining a secure and resilient WordPress website.

Monitor Closely

Actively and closely monitoring activity on your WordPress website is crucial for identifying potential security issues or early warning signs of a breach. Rather than set-and-forget security, you should monitor your site in an ongoing manner. Carefully review WordPress logs on a very regular basis – at least daily if possible – for any abnormalities that could indicate suspicious behavior, access attempts, or major configuration changes. Watch for unusual traffic spikes, 404 errors, login failures, and new administrator accounts.

Advanced monitoring techniques include:

• Web application firewalls that automatically monitor all traffic in real-time, detect common attack patterns, and block suspicious requests. A WAF can provide alerts for priority threats.
• Security information and event management (SIEM) solutions that aggregate and analyze log data from multiple sources to identify potential incidents and anomalies.
• Intrusion detection systems (IDS) that flag traffic matching attack signatures and unusual access patterns.
• Website monitoring tools that proactively check uptime, performance, and malware.
• Ongoing manual checks for malware, unauthorized code changes, new user accounts, etc.

The goal is to be extremely vigilant about any and all activity on your WordPress site so that you can respond to threats quickly. Don’t just set security measures and forget about your site – be proactive with continuous monitoring for a hardened WordPress site.

Seek Expert Guidance

While these best practices help secure your WordPress website, cyber threats are constantly evolving. Work with trusted web security experts who can audit your site, conduct vulnerability assessments, provide ongoing monitoring/incident response, and apply the latest protections when securing a WordPress website.

At Web Experts, our team has deep expertise securing WordPress sites and other platforms. We take a customized, defense-in-depth approach to tailor security to your specific risks and needs. Contact us to discuss protecting your online presence.

By leveraging these WordPress security best practices and partnering with experienced professionals, you can effectively secure your WordPress website from the growing range of cyber threats facing websites today. Don’t leave your site vulnerable – proper security measures are a must.