Episode 144 - 9 Ways to Protect Your WordPress Website

Show Notes

Episode 144 – 9 Ways to Protect Your WordPress Website

00:00

From the center of the universe, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. This is the SDM show with your host Rob Cairns. The SDM show focuses on business life productivity, digital marketing, WordPress and more. Sit back, relax, grab your favorite drink, and enjoy the show. Here is Rob.

00:20

Hey, everybody, Rob Cairns, here today, I’m gonna give you nine. And I mean nine really important things to help you lock down your WordPress website and make your website more secure. And help save you from all the hackers out there. So sit back, relax, and enjoy this quick solo podcast.

00:44

And the creator of making ideas selling digital marketing. For those who don’t know me, whatsoever is having an amazing night. The night outside, I test out a new product called melon. Shout out to Tim Doyle for mentioning it in a regular newsletter. And what I wanted to do was do a live stream on typically Wednesday night. That is something that matters for you in the marketing space. And today, I’m more going to talk more technical. And let’s start off with talking about workplace security. And this is something as many know is near and dear to my heart, and frankly matters in a big way. So what I give you is nine actionable tips that I can help you with the WordPress security. So let’s get going and get on with the show. Number one, get a good web host, your web host is your partner in all this and web host matters. Tip number two, don’t use the word admin as part of your administrative login, get admin out of there, use something else, I don’t care what you do. Number three, keep backup regular backups and test your backups to make sure they can be restored. I can’t tell you the number of people over the years that I’ve seen that have backups, and they’ve never actually tested them to make sure you can restored number four, keep your website, software and plugins up to date. And that means the WordPress core which is the base WordPress version, and the project, and you must keep those up to date. More and more. I see sites when clients and potential clients come to me. And frankly, their sites are not up to date. And that big problem number five, and this one should be obvious. Don’t use pirated themes or plugins. And the reason is many pirated themes or plugins are laced with malware. So please don’t use number six, you might want to hide the log in URL, WordPress, website calm slash WP admin. Yes, I know what security by obscurity, but it just makes it a little tougher for the hackers to get in. Number seven, use two factor authentication. And that’s really not hard to do on all my websites. Now I’m using two fa so even if you get my passport, you got to get my authenticator app on my smartphone. Think about that. Number eight, use software to help you. And my two favorite choices or shout out to both it and wordfence. They’re the two that I use quite regularly on both my clients site. And frankly, at the end of the day, they kind of matter. And number nine, and this is gonna sound self prophecy but hire a professional, most, and many small businesses, frankly, do not. And I mean, do not keep your websites up to date. Don’t know how to set them up, don’t set up proper backups. And then by the time I get a call from my clients, they’re in trouble. I’m in big, big trouble because they haven’t done anything. And then we’re scrambling around and then the malware removal costs more than having a good backup. One other tip is to go back to the backup ID don’t just keep the most recent backup. I actually took backups to go back three months. And the reason I do that is it’s quite often what happens is the backup get laced with malware a month ago. And the hacker doesn’t invoke the payload right away. Sometimes you have to go back more than a month and or more than a couple backups. So I would suggest keeping a couple months of backups throughout the week. And then the debate is you keep them at host level or the keep them at site level. Personally, I tend to keep most of them At the host level, I put our passport but I do a summer super high.

05:05

But regardless to what you do is make sure and make sure that you test the backup that is so key and all that. So I’m giving you nine actionable tips how to protect your WordPress site really deep real quick tonight. And join me Everyone can I put some quick tips because I’m going to keep them going. Some of these will be repurposed as a podcast, some mostly, but I think it’s a way of helping you. And I really liked your platform. So we’ll see where it goes. I think I’m gonna end right now running a trial version, I think I’m actually gonna convert to a paid version. Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars and really make them have a great night. Bye for now.

05:59

Thanks for listening to the SDM Show. The show is a production of stunning digital marketing and all rights reserved. Rob can be reached by email at VIP@stunningdigitalmarketing.com on twitter @Rob Cairns on his website stunning digital marketing calm and on his website there’s links to all his social media platforms. This show is dedicated to my late father Bruce Cairns. Dad, I miss you very much. Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars make your business succeed.