How To Secure Your Author Website on WordPress

A secure website is a must for any author who wants to build an online presence and connect with their readers today.

A WordPress author website can act as a place where you showcase your work, share your thoughts and insights, and communicate with your readers.

Increased cyber threats have made it even more important to ensure a high level of security to safeguard your content and private information.

A hacked website can result in a loss of data, harm your reputation, and even have negative financial consequences.

As an author, you should be concentrating on putting words on the pages and publicizing your books, not on the possibility of a third-party security exploit.

Fortunately, achieving peace of mind in knowing that your WordPress website is secure is not an all-consuming task.

There are some practices and tools that, when combined, significantly increase the security of your site.

This guide will provide you with all the necessary steps on how to protect your author website hosted on WordPress so that you focus more on what you do best—write.

1. Introduction To WordPress Security

WordPress security involves the prevention of breaches, hacking attempts, malware, and other internal and external threats to a WordPress site in its simplest definition.

Given that WordPress powers over 40% of all websites globally, it has become a prime target for cybercriminals.

Some of the other common threats are brute force attacks, where a hacker tries to guess a range of passwords, SQL injection which manipulates databases, and cross-site scripting (XSS) which allows unauthorized access to the site.

For authors, the risks are more detrimental. Aside from losing your intellectual property and private information, a breach of your site gives authorized control and access, which ultimately puts into danger your trust in readers and publishers.

Therefore, knowing the elements of WordPress security is the first part of your solution in protecting your site.

Knowing What are the attacker targets? what sort of ease of access they get? and what type of advanced persistent threats they have will strengthen your measures of protection.

2. Key Security Practices for Your Author Website

Regular Updates

Updating your WordPress website’s security can be achieved simply by using regular updates.

New versions of software, themes, and plugins are being released by WordPress to improve performance and security gaps that exist in the earlier versions.

With a failure to maintain these components comes the risk of a hacker taking advantage of the loopholes.

Try to make it a monthly task to log into your WordPress dashboard to check for any pending updates.

For minor releases, consider setting your updates on auto-pilot. There are even plugins intended to automate and ease the updating process.

Furthermore, it would be helpful to the site if themes and plugins were updated with changelogs attached so that users would know what adaptations were made.

Furthermore, plugins and themes that are inactive should be removed from the site.

These inactive components can still pose security risks if they are not regularly updated or maintained.

Keeping necessary elements active and updated reduces the chances of an attacker accessing the site.

Strong Passwords and User Roles

With your WordPress author site in mind along with other online accounts, it is important to note that the first step in securing an account is creating strong passwords.

Creating a strong password involves using a blend of characters, numbers, special characters, and symbols.

It is recommended instead of using easy-to-guess information such as common words or one’s birthday to utilize a stronger password.

Use a strong password and consider using a password manager to securely store the password.

In addition to using strong passwords, using adequate User role management is necessary for your author’s website.

As an example in WordPress, you can restrict users and grant them different tiers of access (i.e. administrator, editor, author).

Make sure that you trust only certain individuals with administrative powers and restrict this access to only the necessary people.

If you have an editor or a designer working with you, make sure that you give them the lowest possible role restrictions while making sure your site stays intact.

Managing your user accounts is crucial. Checking if the accounts are still in use or accounts that belong to previous members of your team can help you reduce the risk of being hacked or having any kind of unauthorized access.

Two-factor authentication (2FA)

Through two-factor authentication (2FA), an additional step is implemented by requiring a unique code sent via an SMS as well as entering your password.

This provides much-needed security and ensures that accounts are not hacked easily.

These unauthorized logins can now be avoided with the use of authored one-time passwords and by using SMS codes.

With the use of these techniques, the risk of your account being hacked is significantly lowered.

When adding 2FA to your WordPress, plugins Google Authenticator and Duo Two-Factor Authentication allow you to do it with convenience.

Once the user installs it and configures the settings, he will have to enter a second password sent to either Google authenticator or his phone after entering the first password. This greatly helps improve login security.

It is critical to ensure that additional steps are taken to avoid hacking, especially with individuals who hold admin credentials.

Enabling all users on your site to use 2FA ensures that the overall security is boosted.

This simple algorithm can protect against overly sophisticated hacking methods while ensuring safety by limiting access with multiple barriers that revert to passwords.

3. Configuring Your WordPress Settings for Security

Change Default Login URL

Modifying the default login URL “/wp-admin or /wp-login.php, makes it challenging for automated attackers who aim to exploit these weak points.

A good portion of hackers deploy bots that automatically crawl and check login URLs. So changing these URLs automatically makes it harder for them to find the login page.

Consider using plugins such as WPS Hide Login or iThemes Security to modify the login URL of your WordPress.

This way, you can effortlessly facilitate changes to the link without needing to edit the core files manually. Make sure to store it safely after changes are made.

This easy alteration can improve your website’s security by reducing chances of brute-force attacks which are hacks that try to guess passwords using various combinations.

Limit Login Attempts

You can also impose limits on login attempts as a way to protect your website against brute-force attacks that hackers constantly try to exploit.

Implementing a control mechanism that limits the login attempts made from a single IP address to five within 15 minutes can significantly flag suspicious activity.

This feature can be achieved through different security plugins such as Login LockDown or Limit Login Attempts Reloaded.

These plugins keep tabs on login attempts and IP addresses are blocked for a specified period of time once a certain number of attempts has been reached.

Furthermore, you may also want to turn on notifications for failed attempts so that you can keep an eye on any suspicious activities on your site as they happen.

Disable XML-RPC

This is a feature in WordPress systems that allows remote publishing and communication between different systems.

XML-RPC can also pose security threats if left enabled when not needed.

Attackers tend to target XML-RPC endpoints in DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks or try to brute force login attempts and use the endpoint for authentication because multiple requests can be sent at once.

If you do not need the XML-RPC function (which is the case with a lot of authors), it is best to completely disable it.

This can be done by adding a few lines of code in the functions.php of the theme or by using security plugins that have this option within their configurations.

Disabling XML-RPC will prevent a lot of potential threats while still keeping the performance high on your author’s website.

4. Utilizing Security Plugins

WordPress security plugins are invaluable tools that were specially created to secure WordPress sites from different vulnerabilities.

There are popular ones such as Wordfence Security, Sucuri Security, and iThemes Security that have various features programmed into them to cover different issues regarding website vulnerabilities.

The Wordfence Security solution offers near complete protection with its firewall and malware scanning features, which automatically analyzes any incoming traffic for potentially harmful requests.

It further blocks such requests from being processed on core files for your site.

It also provides real-time intelligence updates regarding fresh attacks that are targeted toward WordPress users based on usage all over the world.

The focus of Sucuri Security is persistent with monitoring and auditing functionalities, along with malware scanning that Wordfence has.

However, they can accomplish such things as blacklist monitoring, which allows them to warn you if blacklisting happens as a result of your domain being attacked.

Combining several key features into one plugin is what iThemes Security manages to do, giving users more options when configuring security practices to their needs.

Options like two-factor authentication setup can be embedded directly into the interface, which makes it easier for those less tech-savvy to implement.

While picking a security plugin for your author website hosted on WordPress, keep in mind things such as the ease of use, support for the existing theme and other plugins, updating process, customer support, and pricing structure.

Plugins must also be reviewed every once in a while to much sure they align with the new features introduced after installation.

5. Implementing SSL Encryption

SSL(Secure Sockets Layer) Encryption is needed in all kinds of websites, including authors on WordPress.

It allows to transmission of confidential material such as usernames and passwords securely, encrypting data received from the user’s browser to the server.

Not only does the use of SSL encryption enhance security for users, but it also boosts the rating of a website on search engines as Google takes into account the SSL certificate.

In addition to that, many web browsers now label non-SSL-enabled sites as “Not Secure,”.

This can prevent visitors from interacting more with the site’s content, causing fewer eyes on the material published!

The absence of SSL certification can have a severely negative impact on readership!

Installing SSL encryption on your author WordPress site is an easy process.

It begins with the purchase of the SSL certificate from trusted service providers like Let’s Encrypt, who offer this feature free of charge.

We also have providers like Bluehost and HostGator, who offer it at a cost alongside their other hosting features. Most of the time, they make it easy by installing it through their control panels!

After the certificate has been installed, the next steps involve making sure that all internal links are directed to the HTTPS instead of the HTTP version.

Posts and pages that are hard-coded in the URLs need to be changed.

Any redirection methods employed ought to guarantee that the users’ experience is not affected negatively. These relative changes ensure the safety and security of the readers.

6. Regular Backups

Backups are one of the key parts for any website owner, especially authors since the content is always at risk of deletion or hacking!

Forming backups allows the author to restore their information quickly.

When there’s a fast restoration that exists, this minimizes downtime of the site while also ensuring that the author’s literature remains undisturbed.

To ensure that your backups are amped up, consider installing consistent backup tools like UpdraftPlus or BackupBuddy since this also offers users the setting of their preferred timings or frequencies.

Other tools, such as the Amazon S3 or Google Drive, add a layer of protection if the local backups malfunction.

Be smart while figuring out the timings for your backup schedule: determine how often backups should be done according to the volume of content changes made.

You should perform daily backups while you are in the process of writing and weekly or monthly backups should be done during the less intensive periods.

Always make it a priority to check if the backup restoration works before the situation spins out of control!

7. Monitoring and Auditing Your Site

As an author, it would do you some good to monitor activity on your site, as this allows you to check for threats that may arise and ensure that the best practices are being followed.

You can conduct scans to audit activity on your page check the behavior of users, and check the metrics for optimal performance.

Such actions ensure that the optimal conditions are maintained.

Using Google Analytics in conjunction with the built-in features of the previously discussed security plugins can be helpful.

This is because these plugins can alert you to actions that are out of the ordinary, such as spikes in traffic or suspicious login attempts.

These actions could indicate unnoticed breaches occurring on different endpoints.

Monitor anything suspicious that can suggest a possible breach to ensure seamless cyber protection.

Facilitate routine audits to review aspects like the usage of plugins and themes to check if they comply with the standards active within the industry.

This ensures breaches don’t occur unintentionally!

Devise checklists that show all focal points that need to be focused on while revisiting them periodically so that oversight remains constant in the whole lifecycle operation.

Wrapping It Up

Managing a WordPress author website goes beyond preventing cyber attacks, It also involves protecting your artistic work and the friendships you build with your readers through the internet. You can boost creativity from authors by limiting the external factors they cannot control with the right security measures. By using strong passwords paired with two-factor authentication and routine updates alongside efficient tracking tools, those factors can be reduced to a manageable level. Begin today by implementing all the changes suggested above which will grant an assurance that priceless literary contributions remain shielded against the fast-evolving cyber threats we face today.