Today’s tips are on how to protect your WordPress site from hacking attempts and even protect it from yourself.
“Wait. You’re telling me I have to protect my site from myself?! I’d never do anything to hurt my site.”
While you might not purposely do anything to take down, or break your site, the number one thing that causes sites to crash is doing updates willy-nilly.
#1 UpdraftPlus
UpdraftPlus is a free site backup plugin that you can download and add right to your WordPress site. Just search for it in the add plugin search box.
Now, why would you want to add this plugin?
Whenever you go to update your site, whether that is a plugin update, theme update or WordPress core update, a box will pop up asking if you want to back up the site prior to proceeding with the update.
Always check that box and back up your site.
That way, if after the update is complete and anything on your site breaks then you have a backup that you can restore from.
They also have a premium plugin that gives you a bit more features that the free version doesn’t have. I pay for the premium version and any site that I work on I always add UpdarftPlus to the website.
#2 Wordfence
Wordfence is a free security and firewall plugin for WordPress sites. It automatically blocks hacking attacks made on your site.
For example, if someone attempts and fails to login to your site 5 times then it will temporarily lock that person’s IP address so they can no longer access your site. You are then sent an email and can permanently block that IP address.
They will also email you whenever an admin logs into your site. That way if you weren’t the one to log in and you get that email then it could be that your password has been compromised.
That is when UpdraftPlus comes in because if you are hacked you can always have a backup to restore your site.
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