WordPress Website Security

WordPress climbed to the top of free website builders a long time ago. As a developer who watched them battle it out from the beginning, I have used the platform on many occasions. It is a very fast way to build a website that can be managed very easily and has extra features called plugins that can add extra functionality with a click of the mouse.

However, the popularity and ease does not come without a price because it is a very popular target for hackers. Here is why. First of all, the second we build a WordPress website, its default coding will output public html that leaves a footprint saying “This site is built with WordPress”. Hackers built bots to crawl websites and if they are WordPress, or a specific modified WordPress site, it will attempt an automated attack such as registration which allows the user ‘in’ to alter code as a user.

As we look around the Internet, we can find many ways to avoid these issues, like deny user registration, use safe, updated plugins, updated WordPress version and strong passwords. In addition, if there is user registration, we must ensure it is only a subscriber because if we build a site and this gets switched to admin somehow, then,new registrations will be admins and they have ‘full power’ in the WordPress backend.

The problem? Is that this is a continual, tiring game. Our website could be up and running fine, unchecked for months. Meanwhile, the day an exploit is known and becomes public, the hacker could have done his damage because we did not act fast enough top fix the exploit.

For this reason, we must stay on top of WordPress installations if we use it. Otherwise, building a strong app with Laravel Framework or html/css/js can keep exploits more at bay.

January 3, 2022 by kent