How to Prevent WordPress Website from Being Hacked

Hacking has been going on since the birth of the Internet, but lately online criminals have taken it to a new level. Not only are digital villains cracking into our email, social network profiles and bank
accounts, but they are now hacking into websites for a whole host of reasons. Some hackers are looking to gain access to your website as a means to access your audience and usually spam them with useless links and very unprofessional content, but some are just looking to get under your skin. Also, mostly hackers aren't actual people, they are robots designed and developed to get into your WordPress dashboard quickly and without you even noticing, until you see the mess they've left behind. If you're using WordPress to host your website, chances are the security levels aren't as high as they should be. Hackers know exactly how to crack your password, move through your security system and use your website at their will. This can cause huge losses in audience, reliability and really makes you or your business look incredibly unprofessional. If you're looking for the best ways available for protecting your precious website from being hacked, here's what we recommend you do:

Get plugged-in

Installing a WordPress security system is your best bet for staying safe and hacker-free. There are a few options out there, but we find that the plugin Better WP Security seems to cover more bases than other plugins, offering a greater peace of mind. How Better WP Security works is it allows you to tweak and adjust features on your WordPress website to make it harder for hackers to attack and gain access. For example, you can change your username from “admin” to something less familiar to hackers. You can also lock access to your dashboard during certain time periods, which really comes in handy when dealing with hackers on the other side of the world. If you've already been hacked, Better WP Security will allow you to block a certain IP address from accessing your website. These small changes to your security go a long way when someone is trying to get into your website. We suggest you get yourself a plugin as soon as possible to avoid any hacker problems.

Beef up your password

There's nothing hackers love more than a simple, familiar password, like “1234” or “password”. Avoid passwords like that at all costs and come up with something personal, complicated and something you won't forget. As with all passwords, don't share them with anyone, especially on the Internet. Try not to write it down anywhere either, if you do, remember to use code so it's harder to decipher. Along with an original password, you must have an original username, that isn't “admin” or your first name etc. So get creative and remember to make them memorable but only to yourself. A good password and username combo could keep even the smartest of bots out.

Backup before you crack up

No matter what kind of website you're running, it's a great idea to perform regular backups to save your data and ensure that if you get hacked, you'll still have copies of all of your website's content. You can download a plugin that does this automatically and saves your data to an online storage program like Dropbox. We recommend WordPress Backup to Dropbox for all your backup needs.

And what if you've already been hacked:

If you've already been hacked and have no idea what the next step is, here's what to do:

Report it

Inform your website host immediately as they can sometimes help find the culprit and return your website to normal.

Find out what happened

Have a look around and find out which files were affected and what the hacker left behind in terms of content, links etc. Once you know what's been done, you can start figuring out how to fix it.

Did you backup?

If you had been backing up regularly, all your data should be safely stored. If not, you'll have to contact your website host to help with the recovery of your information.

Get sorted

Now that you've been hacked and recovered your website, make sure to put all the above security precautions into place so it never happens again.

Author Byline: This post was proudly presented by D. Blackthorn, a computer security specialist who is currently working on his DDoS mitigation service and runs a personal technology blog. 

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