Published on December 17, 2021 in Establishing Your Home Base Online.
There's this dusty old myth out there that says that WordPress isn't secure...that it's vulnerable to hacks and online attacks. The truth is that ANY website -- including highly secure corporate and government websites -- are susceptible to hacks.
Here are links and resources mentioned in today's video. Enjoy!
To keep your WordPress-driven website and your online business safe from online bad guys, there are a few simple, common sense things that you can do.
For example, as a first step, the best thing you can do to keep your WordPress site safe is to use a solid, reliable, and reputable web hosting company. There are a lot of web hosts out there, but there are just a few that I use and recommend to my students.
If you're interested, check the Show Notes below where I'll leave you some links. Another pretty common sense thing you can do is to, well, NOT use "admin" as your administrator username, and to of course use a strong password.
In fact, I change my admin password on a regular basis just for my own piece of mind. And my admin username is so complex, that it would be very difficult to guess.
Keeping WordPress up to date is another important thing you can do to protect your website. The army of developers who contribute to WordPress are constantly patching things, plugging potential holes and so on.
The good news here is that high quality web hosting companies like the ones I recommend automatically keep your website up to date, which is great. Keeping your WordPress plugins up to date is also important. Oftentimes, older plugins might have vulnerabilities or weak spots that get patched up with updates.
And speaking of plugins, another big step towards keeping your WordPress website safe and secure is to install a security plugin like WordFence, iThemes Security, or All In One WP Security.
I can't recommend enough for you to pull regular backups of your website, too. This way, if something bad happens on your website, you can be back up and running in a matter of minutes.
Now how often you back up your website is up to you...and it usually depends on how regularly you update your website...but the good news here is that there are plugins available that will automate this process for you.