Securing a WordPress blog is something that many bloggers don’t pay enough attention to. Being the most popular blogging platform in the world, WordPress is getting more attention by hackers and spammers. If you think that you’re chances to get hacked are very low, you’d better think again. If you don’t take precautions in time, sooner or later you’re going to have problems.
Being free, easily usable and safe, plugins is the best way to secure your WordPress blog whether you’re an advance coder or a simple user. In the first part of the “Essential Plugins for every WordPress Install” series I will cover a list with essential plugins to secure your blog and optimize your databases.
Security & Hacking Prevention
Login LockDown
This plugin keeps account of the IP addresses and time-stamps of the failed log in attempts. Login Lockdown then disables the log in function if it detects a lot of attempts within a short period of time from the same IP range. This helps to prevent brute force password discovery.
Requires WordPress 2.5+.
WP Security Scan
WP Security Scan is a very good plugin that checks the WordPress installation for security vulnerabilities and suggests corrective actions.
Requires WordPress 2.5+.
AskApache Password Protect
This plugin adds multiple layers of security to your blog. It is nice that it doesn’t control WordPress or mess with your database. AskApache Password Protect is specifically designed and regularly updated specifically to stop automated and unskilled attackers attempts to exploit vulnerabilities on your blog resulting in a hacked site.
Requires WordPress 2.7+.
Database Backup and Optimization
Another very important thing to do to keep your blog secure is backing up your databases on a regular basis. Keeping backups of your blog ensures you that even in the worse case scenarios you can get up and run again in no time. Be sure to keep your backups in a safe place.
WP-DB-Backup
WP-DB-Backup allows you easily to back up your core WordPress database tables and save the files on your server, download to your computer or send them to your e-mail.
Reguires WordPress 2.0.3+.
WP-Optimize
WP-Optimize is a database cleanup and optimization tool. It allows you to remove post revisions, comments in the spam queue, unapproved comments within few clicks without the need of phpMyAdmin. Additionally you can rename any user name to another user name too.
Requires WordPress 2.7+.
Hope you make good use of these plugins and always remember to secure and backup your WordPress install.
Check out “Essential Plugins for every WordPress Install – Part II: Anti spam and SEO“.
