Worried about WordPress security?
You should be! But don’t worry too much – if you implement some WordPress website security best practices on your site, you can feel confident that your site won’t experience issues.
WordPress is secure. But the actions that users take (and the plugins that users install) can introduce all kinds of WordPress vulnerabilities.
To avoid making those mistakes, all you need to do is follow the tips in this post.
To make this post as actionable as possible, we’re going to divide our WordPress security tips into two categories:
❗Seven MUST-FOLLOW WordPress Security Best Practices
If you take nothing else from this post, I recommend that you implement at least these seven WordPress security best practices on your site.
If you aren’t doing these seven things, you’re opening your site to huge vulnerabilities.
1. Apply Core and Plugin Updates ASAP
One of the absolute best things you can do to keep WordPress secure is to always promptly apply updates to the WordPress core, plugins, and themes.
No matter how great a piece of software is, it’s natural for new vulnerabilities to be discovered. However, with a quality development team, these vulnerabilities will be fixed before they can be exploited by malicious actors…as long as you promptly apply the updates!
So many of the most recent widespread WordPress exploits could’ve been avoided if people just would’ve updated their sites.
To be alerted to new updates, pay attention to the Dashboard → Updates area in your WP admin.
If you’re worried about compatibility issues, you can test updates on a staging site before applying them to your live site. You’ll also want to take a backup before applying updates – more on that later.
Note – the one exception to this rule is major updates, which are solely focused on adding new features and don’t include any security fixes. You can safely wait a few weeks to apply these major updates.
- Major release (features) – 5.0, 5.1, 6.0, etc. – you can wait to apply these updates.
- Minor release (security/bug fixes) – 5.0.1, 5.1.2, 6.0.4, etc. – you ALWAYS need to apply these ASAP.
2. Only Use Plugins and Themes from Reputable Developers (and No Nulled Plugins)
While the core WordPress software is secure, the same cannot be said of every single plugin and theme out there (mostly plugins).
By adding new code and modifying the functionality of your site, plugins can introduce all sorts of vulnerabilities.
At the same time, not using plugins isn’t really an option as plugins are an integral part of every WordPress site.
Consequently, it’s important to focus on only using plugins and themes from reputable developers with
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This article was written by Colin Newcomer and originally published on WPKube.