11 Reasons – Responsible For Hacking of Your WordPress Website

WordPress is the most popular web designing software with a market share of 33%.

Since WP is having the largest users base it only natural that it will also fall victim of hacking.

Despite that most of the hacks are repelled. While new measures are constantly developed.

Most of the time WP websites get hacked due to the poor maintenance by the users. And being hesitant to spend some money on more powerful plugins or solutions.

 

  1. Insecure Web Hosting

As mentioned earlier, both the users and WP are to be blamed.

But in this case, if the web hosting is done through unsecured servers or cheap servers it will compromise the total security of the website.

To prevent this you have to host the website in a WP server. You can also get a managed WordPress hosting provider.

 

  1. Using Weak Passwords

This affects not only the websites but also every person on this planet who has ever used the internet. But it may not affect them as drastically as your website if a hacker gets through your weak passwords.

He will get complete access to:

  • Your WordPress admin account
  • Web hosting control panel account
  • FTP accounts
  • MySQL database used for your WordPress site
  • Email accounts used for WordPress admin or hosting account

The only way to ensure that it never happens to you is that create a large password or you can also use some the password generating software like “Last pass” and so on.

 

  1. Unprotected Access to WordPress Admin (wp-admin Directory)

The wp-admin page is the most attacked area of the WordPress. It literally contains all details of the admins, passwords and even an option to reset the password.

You can add another layer of security on the wp-admin page. So that all the parlor tricks of hackers won’t work.

Once again having a safe and large password would be handy.

 

  1. Incorrect File Permissions

These are rules used for governing your website by a web server.

Making sure that you have given all the permissions correctly is crucial.

All your WordPress files should have 644 values as file permission. All folders on your WordPress site should have 755 as their file permission.

 

  1. Not Updating WordPress

Updating your WP won’t cause any damage to your website rather it protects your website from external unwanted entities.

And the most important reason for updating would be the fact that new features will be added to your site along with multiple bug fixes.

So keep calm and update your website.

 

  1. Not Updating Plugins or Theme

It’s the same as the above. Updating the core software won’t be sufficient you should constantly update your theme and plugins.

Since most of the bugs and flaws can be found in plugins and in themes.

 

  1. Using Plain FTP instead of SFTP/SSH

FTP is quite old. It is used to upload all the media into your sites. But the passwords in FTP are no encrypted and that is worse than having a older version of WP.

Instead, you can use SFTP or SSH.

 

  1. Using Admin as WordPress Username

For many websites, routers and other devices with admin access are always given the initial username for the administrator as admin. People won’t change that and that compromises your security.

So do change the admin username ASAP-

 

  1. Nulled Themes and Plugins

Don’t ever download themes or plugins from a third party website who giving it for free.

They might be giving the theme as free but they will also include so malware with that will destroy your site.

In worst cases, a Trojan will be integrated to the themes which can then steal not only yours but every single detail of every customer that used your services through spyware or keylogger.

So beware of those scams and buy only the first party themes or plugins directly from them.

 

  1. Not Securing WordPress Configuration wp-config.php File

Similar to the wp-admin page wp-config.php file contains the credentials of your WP account.

So secure it by encrypting it.

 

  1. Not Changing WordPress Table Prefix

WordPress uses wp_ as a prefix for the tables it creates in your database. You get an option to change it during the installation. Please do change the prefix. It will give hackers a hard time finding the actual server.

Lastly, as you can see that most the points point towards the users and their common mistakes, which are making wp’s reputation worse. So be sure to follow all the tips so that no one will get into trouble.

 

Secure your WordPress website with SFWP Experts, a San Francisco’s reputed WordPress website design agency.