I wrote a post last week on how Dean Hunt’s Wordpress Blog was hacked – what happened and how they fixed it.
If your blog is hacked and has spam links inserted into it you will, without question, lose all your search engine rankings and probably be blacklisted. That means no more traffic, and no more ad revenue.
You can also unknowingly infect (or at least affect) your regular readers and cause them all sorts of problems too. So keeping your blog secure is not only sensible for you it’s considerate to your readers!
Anyway, I may just be being paranoid, but it seems there’s a lot of focus on the security of Wordpress blogs at the moment. So I’ve gone trawling around the web for some different views, thoughts and tips on how to keep your Wordpress blog secure.
The first two links are to articles by different security experts on how and why security vulnerabilities occur and how to minimise them. The second two go to posts containing specific steps you can take to greatly improve the security of your WP installation. (Some steps are covered in both articles).
Comment on Wordpress Security Issues Lead To Mass Hacking. Is Your …
Is there any way to auto update ? i think yes, when admin logins to the blog they got RSS feed, and normally wordpress guys blog about security update… so if admin logins and go to their Dashboard they will come to know about there is …
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Terri recently sent me an email and wanted to know some precautionary steps as well as advice on how to keep WordPress safe from being hacked. Terri also wanted to know the differences in security between a self hosted version of …
9 SEO Security Tips for Wordpress
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Wordpress Security – Keeping your Blog Secure
I must say that it still amazes me how, in an environment such as the Internet that allows for so much productive creativity, there are still individuals that insist on putting a huge efforts into destroying the work of others. Just imagine what a better place the Internet might be if that same energy was put to a more productive use. That said, let’s review some easy steps to keeping your blog secure…
And, finally, here’s a link to an excellent tool to help you assess whether your blog has been hacked:
Cache Checker, created by Paul at SEOIdiot.
You enter the url of your blog and this tool will go and read the record that Google has of your site. It comes back with a list of all the urls that Google has a record of your site linking to and, if there are any you don’t recognise, you can click a link that will take you to them.
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
There is only onetrue way to protect wordpress from being hacked.. You must change what the hackers do not know about. What the dont know they cant hack.
James
Hi James,
Not sure I get that one… Don’t you mean ‘change what the hackers DO know about’..?
Cheers,
Martin.
Actually what they “Don’t” know keeps you safe.. My new digital report explains what to do so you will not behacked. No other guide on the net can secure your wordpress blog.
James
My blog was never being hacked before but reading this post does make me feel like changing my password or do something that makes me feel ok..
Thanks for sharing
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Hi Sleepy Surfer,
There’s a very good security plugin for wordpress blogs: wp Security Scan.
It gives you some easy steps to take to make your blog more secure – and they’re well worth following.
You may want to download and install it,
Cheers,
Martin.
This is what most people don’t realize, they think wordpress development team or plug-ins can keep them safe but it’s not that simple.
Only one way to secure you blog and server, remember if they get access to your blog they can also access your server.
The past five years has seen the popularity of blogs grow in their use and as a means of making money. That’s the meat that computer hackers look to sink their teeth into. A recent report by the Congressional Research Service stated that the financial impact of computer hackers amounts to $226 billion annually. Another report calculated that hackers could be taking up to six cents of every Internet dollar of revenue.
WordPress Secured is the only product that will teach you how to protect yourself..
James
I’ve heard of hackers gaining access to FTP clients through shared servers for a large metropolitan area because the host account publishes the login information on the FTP database. Basically, if you can access the log for the FTP through the service provider to that area, you can see the usernames and passwords of anyone using FTP clients.
I’m not sure if this is fact of myth. I’ve made it a routine to change my passwords often, and do a sweep of my database for ’suspect’ files.
Thanks Jonathan,
It is a good idea to change passwords often. There are numerous things you can do with some common sense that will make your blog more secure.
At the end of the day, though, determined hackers are usually going to get in if they really want to – their minds work in a way that finds routes around security steps that you setup.
But using common sense and taking precautions will help to protect against more casual hackers and the automated hackers that are looking for blogs with loopholes.
Cheers,
Martin.