Secure Your Blog

Since my blog was hacked, I have learned how to keep it safe.  Believe it or not, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to keep your blog safe from most hackers. It just involves taking a few simple steps and a few safeguards to make sure that you don’t have problems in the future.

Here are four things you can do right now.

• Use good WordPress usernames and strong passwords,
• keep your email secure,
• use a good WordPress security plugin and
• activate the Akismet anti-spam plugin.

Passwords

You would be amazed at how many people use simple passwords such as their name, pet’s name or names like test, or test1234 as the password to their WordPress blog.

There are robots or spiders that comb the internet trying to find those websites that have named their passwords with these simple names. That means when you set up your WordPress account don’t call it Admin – call it something that is non-standard such as your name. And when you have a password, name your password something with at least one number, one uppercase letter or even one punctuation character to ensure that no one can guess it.

eMail

The next thing you should do is make sure that no one has access to your email account.
It does you no good to have a strong WordPress password but a weak email password,
because someone can always gain access to WordPress by using the lost password tool.
If someone has access to your email account, they can use the lost password tool and reset your WordPress password to gain access to your website.

This means that you should secure your email, change your password regularly and be
very careful whose computer and whose wireless network you use to check that email.

Use a Security Plugin

I use BulletProof Security, which is a free WordPress plugin.  After I have installed and activated it, I activate the security modes and check the security status to see that I got everything.  It shows that I still need to back up the .htaccess files, so I go to the Backup & Restore tab and back them up. Finally, I check the security status again and review the File and Folder Permissions to see if there are any I feel strongly should be changed.

Depending on your web host, changing file permissions may cause problems later, but it’s easy to undo those changes if you need to.  If you perform this step, make a note of the original permission settings, or take a backup before you change them so that you can restore them if there is a problem later.

Block Spam

And finally, one thing that every blog owner who enables comments on their blog should do is to activate the Akismet anti-spam plugin. This plugin checks any new comments coming to your blog for spam. If you don’t have a plugin like this, your blog will at some point be flooded with thousands and thousands of spam comments flooding your site with all kinds of nasty links and garbage. Install this Akismet anti-spam plugin or turn off comments entirely and that will help your blog from being spammed to death.

Summary

Those are some very simple tips to help secure your WordPress blog. Use strong passwords, secure your email, use a good security plugin, and use the Akismet anti-spam plugin.

Back Up

You should definitely back up, clone and protect your WordPress blog right now by going
to Back Up