Don’t do this! How to Secure WordPress Websites Free in 2021

wordpress websites get infected 10 times more than almost any other cms and as hackers can compromise a hundred thousand websites in a single day they are out for blood for starters let's see how many websites have been hacked so far today and i'm filming at just about midday if we use internet live stats and wow that is a lot already now wordpress powers almost 40 percent of the internet so it's not really that surprising but can you be sure that your website won't be next thankfully i'm here with seven top tips to help keep your website secure in 2021 i've even got a bonus for you at the end of this video aren't i the best i'm jack with jack in the net welcome to the video make sure to like it subscribe and of course turn on notifications so you don't miss out on the upcoming videos now let's dive in tip number one is to change your admin login url by default the way to login to your wordpress dashboard is by going to yourwebsite.com forward slash wp hyphen admin unfortunately all the hackers and bots know that as well making brute force attacks a lot more likely fortunately there is a way you can easily change the url that you use to log into your dashboard if you come over to wps hide login plugin and install it you can then change the url that you use to log in to something that's going to be a lot more hard to find tip number two limit login attempts the next step is to stop people from having an infinite number of guesses at your login details unfortunately by default wordpress has no limit on the amount of times you can try to log in now that means that hackers can use software to just bombard your website with attempts at finding your password credentials now fortunately there is another free plug-in that you can use to stop that from happening uh it is this one it's called server limit login attempts simply install and activate that and then you can limit the amount of logins that people can have before they are locked out and then they won't be able to attempt to get in anymore tip number three php version and secure hosting php is what holds your wordpress website together and not only does it keep it secure it also increases performance it keeps it speedy it's vital that you have the latest version that said there are a ridiculous number of websites that aren't on the latest version we take a look at the official latest wordpress figures look at this i mean it's just an embarrassment look at the amount of people that aren't even close to being on the latest version it's just disgraceful really now use a web host that offers this to you as standard the best on a budget are siteground or name hero of course if you do have the cash to splash there's no one better at security than kinster tip number four only use trusted plugins and update them wordpress users rely on plugins but before you go installing it make sure that it has been updated and that it is a trusted plugin with lots of good reviews now i was actually going to be recommending a plugin as part of this tutorial and then i went and checked and saw it hasn't been updated for the last three major releases of wordpress okay don't use plugins like this simply don't do it now there is something else you can do uh you can also check plug-in files before uploading them to your site if you visit virus total okay simply upload the file here and it will check it for any known viruses for you tip number five ssl certificates and https using an ssl certificate doesn't just harden your site's security it also boosts your seo and it makes customers feel more confident they know that their data is being kept secure by your website they're more likely to do business with you now unfortunately a lot of disreputable web hosts try to make you buy an ssl certificate in addition to their hosting don't do it grab yourself a free ssl certificate come on over here to let's encrypt and grab yourself one for free now also good web hosts like siteground or name hero will also offer these for free for you as part of their web hosting tip number six backups backups and more backups no matter the number of security precautions you take things can still go wrong so it's vital that you have a backup for your website now hosts like siteground do do this for you but it's not enough just to have your backups at the server level because hackers can get in there too what you want is a proper backup plugin there are free options and also premium ones as well two of the best are updraft plus and backup buddy go and grab yourself one of these and then you can keep the backups of your website on an offsite location somewhere that's going to be secure and you can restore them if the worst does happen tip number seven two-factor authentication this helps you stop brute force attacks one of the most prevalent types of attacks that your website will face from hackers and they can compromise up to 30 000 websites in a single day doing this now there are two parts to this you need to have it enabled on your hosting provider and also logging into your wp dashboard for hosting providers like siteground for example this comes with it all you need to do is log into your account section settings and enable two-factor authentication then you need to have one of these with you when you log in okay you're going to get a message either on an authenticator app or as a text on your phone let's be honest it's very unlikely that any hackers are going to have your phone as well as your login details not unless they've kidnapped you or something that's a little bit extreme for a wordpress website i think the next step is to have it enabled on your wordpress dashboard itself now for that you need to have a security plug-in what's the best security plug-in i hear you ask well dear viewer that is the bonus i have coming out for you next a comparison of the best security plug-in options that you can have for your wordpress website bonus tip security versus ithemes security pro so the previous tips will help you out loads but they only work on a software level what you need is a proper security solution and that involves two things first of all a security plug-in and second of all a website application firewall now the two best options really are securi or itheme security pro now if we take a look at the two we can have a look at some of the differences it's important to know that both of these will do all the things that i've already talked to you about so if you have one of these you don't need any of the other plugins that we were just looking at so if we start off with ithemes security pro you get this dashboard that gives you an overview of everything that's going on with your website it shows you things like a band's overview if there is anybody who's currently locked out it also shows you a history of your brute force attacks so you can take a look at that as well that actually shows you how many times this has protected you actively and if we come on over to the actual security settings section then here you can see all of the different options that you have to turn on there's a load of ones that come with the sort of free base plug-in and then there's a load more that come with the pro option including things like the two-factor authentication that we were talking about if we then come on over to securi you can then see here again you've got lots of different settings personally i prefer the appearance of i themes i think it's a little bit friendlier on the eyes basically but security has more options take these hardening options for example you want to turn all of these on you won't be able to turn on the firewall if you have the free option but you will be able to turn on everything else it then gives you a lot more in-depth uh things like um hacks alerts uh history etc and the the key thing here the key difference between both of these brilliant plugins is the cost now if you go for the pro version of either of these ithemes security pro costs 80 i believe or you can get it as part of a plug-in suite which is about 250 dollars but you just need the the security plug-in at 80. security the base plan for that is 199 so there's obviously quite a bit of a difference there however security is better it gives you more options they are considered to be the industry leaders now it also comes with the website application firewall what that means is that it will root all of the uh the traffic to your website through their security servers and it will stop anything malicious before it ever gets to your website in the first place that's really important i themes don't even have that as an option so that's a big thing that sets security apart it's part of that 199. um there are other providers as well places like cloudflare that offer obviously a free cdn they also have a firewall option but if you start to compare the features that they or other providers offer to get the same level of stuff that security gives you you're actually having to pay a lot lot more so as i said considering that security is considered to be the top one in the industry at 199 it starts to look like a bit of a steal so pick the one that you want if you're just starting out i'd say that i theme security pro is the one for you if you've been invested for a bit longer you've got more customers you know your business is actually rolling you want to be looking at security so there you go there are the roundup of top security tips for you to keep your website secure in 2021 i hope you've liked this if so hit that like button and of course subscribe to the channel make sure to turn on notifications as well that way you're not going to miss out on the upcoming videos otherwise they might not turn up in your subscription feed i've been jack with jack in the net thank you very much for watching and until next time goodbye you

Channel: Jack in the Net

Views: 2,043

Keywords: how to secure a wordpress website, wordpress security, wordpress website security, website security, wordpress security 2021, best wordpress security plugins, wordpress security tips, how to secure wordpress website, wordpress security plugins 2020, wordpress security plugins 2021, wordpress security without plugins, how to secure a website, jack duel, jack in the net

Id: 0WaNQTpdCB4

Length: 10min 29sec (629 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 18 2021