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The Top Three Ways To Secure Your WordPress Blog

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If you have a WordPress blog or a website, you may be wondering how am I supposed to keep it safe from hackers and from accidental changes or deletions?

In my previous post I described how I had five sites hacked, and what I did about it.

In addition to any kind of fancy modifications or security plugins, there are a few easy
steps you can take right now within the next few minutes to make sure your WordPress
website is secure.

The first three things you can do are:

  • only connect to WordPress on a secure WiFi connection,
  • only use trusted plugins, and
  • keep WordPress up to date.

Do you know that when you connect to a website using unsecure WiFi, which means
airport WiFi, Starbuck’s WiFi, public WiFi, that anyone can see your username and
password? That means when you connect via FTP or simply log into your WordPress
dashboard anyone can see exactly what your username and password is and join for
themselves.

That’s why it’s very important to only connect to your WordPress site and only connect to
FTP if you have an SSL connection or you’re connecting a cellular 3G network instead of
WiFi. If you don’t know what any of those things are, then simply make it a point to only
connect to your FTP website and WordPress from home instead of in public.

Next, only use plugins that you trust. Are you aware that any WordPress plugin, if it so
chooses, can have access to your entire WordPress site? All of your users, all of your
content, most of the time, to every single file on your website.

That is the reason why it’s very important that you only use WordPress plugins that you
trust. Don’t go out and install 200, 300 plugins just because they all seem like they have
cool features. If a plugin is brand new, if no one seems to be using it, that is not a good
sign, and it may be a Trojan Horse kind of plugin where someone had simply put it out
on the internet in the hopes that someone else will install it on their website, and now
you have given the hacker complete access to your files and your content.

Finally, a very easy way to secure your WordPress blog is to keep WordPress up to date.
People find security holes all the time, and WordPress is quick to fix those holes, but it
does you no good unless you update your blog to the current version, which is
safeguarded against most attacks.

Luckily the most current versions of WordPress have a single button you can click to
update it, which means it downloads and installs the most recent version so you are now
protected.

Backup your blog quickly and easily at Backup Creator.

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Google +1 Button – What it Means to You

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Are You Getting the Benefit of the Google +1 Button?

Google has been working on the +1 button, and in the last month or so it has changed character.  It used to just add a count on your profile, where nobody saw it, but it’s now similar to the Facebook “Like” button, which is what I suspect Google had in mind all along.  So what does this mean to you?

The big benefit I see in the +1 button is the ability to share content with specific groups of people, using Google Plus‘s “Circles”.  One of the frustrations I have found in Facebook is that this capability, although it exists, is not easy to implement.  I have over 4,000 “friends” on Facebook, and clearly not all of them are interested in the same topics.

Let’s suppose I’m working with Google Plus and have three circles: “Friends and Family”, “Colleagues” and “Internet Marketers“.  If my dog gets fleas I might choose to tell my friends and family, and perhaps my colleagues, but it’s doubtful if any internet marketing friends would find that very interesting unless they happen to be marketing flea powder.  (As it happens, I don’t have a dog, so please don’t inundate me with anti-flea information!)

On the other hand, if I have just found a new web hosting package that I like, most of my friends and family won’t be remotely interested, but my colleagues and internet marketers may be.  Do you see how neat this can be for segmenting your market and avoiding spamming family and friends?  I really wish this was as easy to do with Facebook.

What is the Benefit of the Google +1 Button?

You guessed it!  Google uses the +1 ratings to help rank websites.  Of course, it’s not all they use, but it can certainly help your site to get better SEO rankings and hence more traffic.

Here is a video from Google explaining how you can use this new capability:

Try it out now by “+1“ing this article!

PS: If you figure out how to join the preview group, let me know! Google has not released the new capability to the rest of the world yet :-(