How to Secure Your WordPress Admin Area from Hackers
WordPress has achieved a huge popularity among businesses & developers since its inception in 2003. The reason behind its great success is that it comes with thousands of pre-designed themes and 15000+ plugins. Moreover, it is open-source and allows developers to create polished and powerful business sites even when they don’t have core development knowledge. It can build amazing blogs, e-commerce sites, custom sites, social networks and job boards.
According to W3Techs stats, it is used by 60.1% of all the websites. We have approximately 19,882,189 live websites today that are using WordPress. Therefore, security of these websites is another major concern in web development. If you are choosing an online tool like website builders for making your website, you need to focus more on the admin area of WordPress as it is the soft target for hackers and cybercriminals.
Moreover, you can use various security plugins in order to save the admin area from any unauthorized access. In this way, you can secure the WordPress admin area from hackers.
If you own a business and your business website is built using WordPress then it is necessary to secure your website from the unauthorized access. In fact, WordPress is considered as the best web solution if you want to develop a website for your business or looking to build a blog. And, to make it secure should be our first priority. In this blog, we have discussed some important ways by which you can secure your WordPress admin area from hackers.
Here is the list:
Custom Login Links
Users usually log in to WordPress admin panel by using URL “/wp-login.php.”. So, if you use the same password at multiple locations then it becomes easy for hackers to hack the site. Thus, custom login links provide a great way and can be used by website owners to secure their WordPress sites. They create custom links for login to admin panel and hence save their site from getting jeopardized.
Moreover, you can also use the WPS Hide Login plugin to prevent users from accessing the wp-login.php page and wp-admin directory directly. This lightweight plugin works by intercepting the page requests on your WordPress website. However, using this plugin would require you to add and keep a bookmark for the URL. Once disabled, the changes will be aborted and your website’s login page will be accessible the general way.
Login Attempts
By limiting the number of login attempts, you can prevent the WordPress site from the brute force attacks. All these attacks can easily guess your passwords by iterating through every possible combination. In fact, it is the most popular method by which you can hack a website easily. By using this approach, you can easily hinder such harmful attacks. However, there are some powerful plugins available to rescue the site. We mention them below:
Captcha
Using a captcha in the WP admin area can limit hacking attempts. It works by preventing automated scripts against brute-force attacks or any other attack on the login page. To put a captcha, you need to go to the WP dashboard and then to the Plugins → Add New. Now, type “Captcha”. It will show you a number of WordPress Plugins that can enable Captcha on the login page. We mention some of the plugins below:
Strong password
When you install WordPress for the first time, never leave the default admin account as “admin”. Hackers can easily predict this password and your site will no longer be safe from brute-force attack or any other attack. Always try to set the password after following the WordPress guide for passwords. Whenever you enter the password, it shows you how much strong your password is. Hence, always try to make your password strong enough in this aspect.
A strong password is all enough to keep hackers away from your business WordPress site. Even if your website is not providing any financial privileges to hackers, but still they don’t stop to try to gain the access to your website. This is clearly indicating to secure your website in any situation. Moreover, WordPress has no banning rule for any attacker. That’s why it is important to put strong passwords in order to save your site from them.
Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)
You can add Two-Factor Authentication for blocking unauthorized logins. It is a powerful method of protecting your site. It asks for a unique code or token by sending it to your smart devices whenever you logging in. Therefore it keeps hackers away and ensures a full security to your site. You can use following WP plugins which can help you implement 2FA:
- Two Factor Authentication: It works well with Google Authenticator in order to provide time-limited codes for any login access.
- Google Authenticator – Two Factor Authentication (2FA): Use two-factor authentication during login and add an additional layer of security.
- Rublon Two-Factor Authentication: Increase the security of your website. Confirm your identity by clicking on a link or scanning a Rublon Code.
More Security Plugins Recommendations for Securing Your WordPress Site
– iThemes Security: This all-in-one plugin allows you to ban suspicious users and also lets limit login attempts.
– Jetpack: It mainly offers two modules that will monitor your site and also restrict brute force attempts.
– BruteGuard: It is helpful in protecting your site against brute force attacks. It works by connecting its users to track unsuccessful login attempts on all WordPress sites that use it, then a protection network is created that learns and becomes more powerful than more and more people are doing.
– Wordfence Security: This comprehensive plugin protects your site against brute force attacks and also features a bouquet of vital security-related features.
– NinjaFirewall: This is one of the dedicated plugins which is touted as a “true WAF” and also acts as a standalone firewall in front of WordPress.
Ending Note
WordPress is the most widely used Content Management System across the globe due to its ease of functionality and the most amazing plugins and themes. Somehow, we forget that its flexibility can be brutal if someone gets access to the respective website. Keeping these things in our mind, we have provided some of the ways by using which one can secure the admin area of WordPress from the hackers. Hope you like this blog. For any queries, you can mention it in the comment box provided below.
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September 21, 2018 @ 8:30 am
Just wanted to give clarity on this. WordPress is used by 31.8% of websites on the internet and 60.1% of websites CMS that we know of. The way it’s written in the article is a bit deceiving.