WordPress Security: A Complete Guide to Securing Your Site

Securing a site is easy, right? All you have to do is use a complex and long password, and that’s it. No hacker will be able to crack the password. But is it though? Is WordPress security that simple?

Even if a hacker can’t crack your password, does that really ensure your entire site is secure? If you believe that, then you probably never heard about backdoors, malware injections, or the dozens of other vulnerabilities that can bypass your /wp-admin page.

But don’t worry, you’re not alone. Many website owners believe a strong password is their golden shield, yet their site is still compromised. Even though they never shared their credentials with anyone.

So in this guide, we’ll try to explore what actually makes a WordPress site secure. We’ll discuss the practical steps you need to take to truly protect your website. We’ll cover both plugin-based solutions and code-based protection methods. Let’s dive in, mate.

What Is a Backdoor?

Backdoors are code snippets that have been placed with other functions and masked with some real functionality to bypass authentication or encryption to inject malware into any system.

These are the hidden threats most site owners don’t know about. And the scary part is that there is no handy way to detect these. Finding it takes a lot of time and expertise in manual code review.

Backdoors can be planted through compromised plugins or themes, unsanitized input fields, outdated software, or unsecured servers.

Once a backdoor is in place, a hacker can access your site whenever they want; it doesn’t matter how strong the password is. I know it sounds a bit overwhelming, but stay with me.

Two Approaches to WordPress Security

There are two main ways you can follow to secure your WordPress site: using security plugins or implementing manual security measures. Both approaches have their pros, and many site owners use a combination of both.

Here, we will discuss both point by point. Let’s explore both methods in detail.

Section One: Securing WordPress Using Plugins

A lot of excellent plugins are available to secure a WordPress site from the core. Here’s how to ensure your site security using trusted solutions.

1. All-in-one solution

As I mentioned, you have to be an expert on coding and understand a lot of things just to figure out what’s wrong is going on. That’s why a few companies take matters into their hands and build a comprehensive security plugin to secure the site in every way.

These plugins are capable of real-time malware scanning, providing firewall protection (WAF), preventing brute force attacks, limiting login attempts, enabling two-factor authentication, sending security alerts and notifications, managing blocklists, and the list goes on.

Here are a few WordPress security plugins you can consider:

• Wordfence Security
• Sucuri Security
• Solid Security
• All In One WP Security & Firewall

These are a few of the good plugins out there. They all provide extensive features and options to take care of security.

So that’s it, right? You do not need to read the rest of the blog. You can leave with peace of mind. But if you need to secure your site in your own terms, then keep reading. And we also share a few more things that you need to ensure that these WordPress security plugins usually do not take care of.

2. Two-Factor Authentication Plugin

If you don’t know what 2FA is, it adds an extra layer of security when logging into your site. Even if someone gets your password, they can’t access your account without the second code, which is usually sent to your phone or email and remains valid for only a few minutes. While most security plugins include 2FA, you might want a dedicated solution for more flexibility.

So here are a few recommendations

• WP 2FA – Two-factor authentication for WordPress
• Two-Factor
• Two Factor Authentication

These are some of the solid choices, but you will find more on the WordPress plugin directory.

3. Use a Backup Plugin

Back up your site. It’s not advice, it’s just mandatory. Because a server can malfunction anytime, it doesn’t matter if you’re using the best hosting in the world. So, backups are your safety net. If anything goes wrong (and trust me, it’s quite usual), you can restore your site to a previous working state.

Here is what you need to do. Schedule automatic daily backups of your site. Store those backups off-site, like in your local drive or cloud storage, like in Dropbox, Google Drive, or Amazon S3. Keep at least 7-30 days of backup history in your record. And most importantly, test your backups monthly to ensure they work.

There are a few plugins you can use to automate the process:

• UpdraftPlus
• SolidBackup
• BlogVault

There is another non-plugin option to back up your site. We will also talk about that. Keep reading.

4. Anti-Spam Plugin

Spamming is annoying. But it can also be a security risk. Spam comments often contain malicious links and sometimes scripts to inject backdoors. If your site has any types of form input fields, then you should secure those. 

Here are a few plugins you can try:

• Akismet
• Antispam Bee

But there is another way to handle the smapping. We have discussed that as well later on.

5. Login Protection

The most commonly attacked URL in WordPress is /wp-admin. Hackers go to that URL and try to log in with many different passwords. With a security plugin, not only can you change the admin login URL, but you can also limit the maximum number of login attempts. And to stop the bot’s attempts, you can add a CAPTCHA.

WPS Hide Login is a great plugin for this. You can easily change the admin URL to anything you like.

6. Use Activity Log Plugin

Securing your site is one thing, but keeping a log of what’s happening on your site is vital for so many reasons. Especially when you are running a business website. So, it’s basically beyond WordPress security; it’s business security.

We have used a few plugins for this that you can try too.

• WP Activity Log
• Simple History
• Activity Log – Monitor & Record User Changes

7. Database Optimization Plugin

If your WordPress website is busy and constantly updated with new content and pages, it’s likely to accumulate junk files in the database. That’s why it’s important to clean it up periodically to keep your site fast and healthy.

The plugins below will help you to clean the database right from the WordPress dashboard, instead of the hosting panel, with automation.

• WP-Optimize
• Advanced Database Cleaner

You have to understand that it’s the cache that accumulates in your browser. It accumulates in the hosting server.

8. Keep everything updated

All plugins and themes,  including the WordPress core, release security updates from time to time. So, always try to keep everything updated and make sure you’re using the latest version.

However, don’t just update everything right away.

Here’s a standard practice you can follow: Create a duplicate of your site on your local server. You can use the All-in-One WP Migration and Backup plugin for that. Then, update your plugins and themes one by one, and check if anything breaks. Once you’re fully sure everything is working perfectly, go ahead and apply the updates to your live site.

Section Two: Securing WordPress Without Plugins

Now we will discuss methods without using any plugins, or that cann’t be done with a plugin. To be honest, it can feel a bit overwhelming, but don’t worry, it’s not that hard.

1. Manually Secure wp-config.php File

For any WordPress site hacker tries to find the wp-config.php file. Because it contains sensitive database credentials. It’s the easiest approach. And hacker can access the file from the browser. So, here’s how to protect it:

Add this code to your .htaccess file:

<files wp-config.php>
order allow,deny
deny from all
</files>

These snippets ensure that no one can access wp-config.php directly via a web browser.

Move wp-config.php: You can move it one directory above your WordPress root folder. WordPress will automatically find it there, but hackers will have a harder time accessing it.

Change security keys: Visit https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/salt/ to generate new security keys and replace the existing ones in wp-config.php.

/**#@+
 * Authentication unique keys and salts.
 *
 * Change these to different unique phrases! You can generate these using
 * the {@link https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/salt/ WordPress.org secret-key service}.
 *
 * You can change these at any point in time to invalidate all existing cookies.
 * This will force all users to have to log in again.
 *
 * @since 2.6.0
 */
define('AUTH_KEY',         ',:q=^yp&MIjJgp&j :n|O73R7xj-E=2 #bfL0~B-Zm91-64AJa[eYzii|#-;dUDf');
define('SECURE_AUTH_KEY',  '-iik8rI5NMUxWWF$pEr~j5g|?zO5}rDF0xv7M&j ][mh~U^oQUt*gQTwu.+;+pU+');
define('LOGGED_IN_KEY',    'e+Ws+L<@,Bo@=*_4Dh,[<Kg)BeX@8S_RkNk6XXKU+=WhB78Ly</9s*FK]w%&pGvK');
define('NONCE_KEY',        '<|F2Yx$B6bZ7|:O<bjMPikOr|Y%~|P=BpA|w&1v/uO~EUKP~PUU!yrT7.f;Z@s-9');
define('AUTH_SALT',        '5!Qk@Va`2GhgAY kw.BF[|=LxDn;/Ooc%.u9cM:jtb)7qEfjsV~qy9ovd<wk[V|~');
define('SECURE_AUTH_SALT', 'Mpq(U,=vGZhg/nN5WLkdHh0e+{O`8Xpn@f`,94ueme,EZ89b]T7#D(d@PmjP|pju');
define('LOGGED_IN_SALT',   'S; Wlq3 55bCbtr;X#Y-JJoRZ8rlEr>jx-4x%h_B9uB1)E,IhU]:%kaWMjJy;b_P');
define('NONCE_SALT',       'VFm-C(u0qBl]L!Su3||-)+xyK|md1pUt#UbrINc-3]=[N|yhiM~w`!JF*7:e/VKD');

/**#@-*/

2. Set Proper File Permissions

For WordPress security, you can set permission controls, who can read, write, or execute a file or folder on your server. Incorrect permissions can let hackers modify your files to upload malware, or even delete your website.

Here are the recommended permissions for a WordPress site for full security. 

Directories (folders): 755

• Owner can read/write/execute
• The group and public can read/execute, but cannot write
• Example: wp-content, wp-includes, wp-admin

Files: 644

• Owner can read/write
• The group and the public can only read
• Example: theme files, plugin files

wp-config.php: 440 or 400

• The owner can read (and optionally write)
• The group/public cannot access at all
• This file contains sensitive information like database credentials, so it should be very restricted

You can update the permission very easily via FTP using FileZilla,

1. Connect to your server.
2. Right-click the file or folder → File Permissions.
3. Enter the numeric value (like 755 or 644) or check the boxes to allow read/write/execute as needed.
4. Click OK to apply.

3. Disable File Editing in WordPress Dashboard

By default, WordPress allows administrators to edit theme and plugin files directly from the dashboard. And sometimes this can be a security threat. To close this for all, add this line to wp-config.php;

define('DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT', true);

Place it just before the line that says “/* That's all, stop editing! Happy publishing. */“

4. Change Database Table Prefix

The default WordPress database prefix is wp_, which makes it easier for hackers to target your database.

You can change to a new installation for a fresh website. During installation, change the table prefix to something unique, like xyz123_.

$table_prefix = 'xyz123_';

It’s a bit tricky for existing sites.

1. Backup your database first
2. Use phpMyAdmin to rename all tables
3. Update the $table_prefix variable in wp-config.php
4. Update options and usermeta tables with SQL queries

Please note, this is complex for existing sites and breaks your site. If you are not confident, then you should hire a developer.

5. Disable XML-RPC

XML-RPC gives remote access to the WordPress site. But it can be exploited for brute force attacks. If you don’t use services that require it, like Jetpack or mobile apps, disable it now.

Add the snippets to your .htaccess file,

<Files xmlrpc.php>
order deny,allow
deny from all
</Files>

6. Disable Directory Browsing

The directory can be visible to anyone. This can give a hacker a path to inject a malicious script. To prevent people from viewing your directory contents, add to .htaccess:

Options -Indexes

7. Force SSL/HTTPS

It is safe to force SSL/HTTPS on your site. To add to wp-config.php:

define('FORCE_SSL_ADMIN', true);

8. Disable PHP Execution in the Uploads Folder

We’re getting into extra layers of security now. With this code, you can say, Hey server, don’t let anyone run PHP files from here. Only WordPress itself can handle that internally.

You need to create a new .htaccess file in wp-content/uploads/ with the below code snippets.

<Files *.php>
deny from all
</Files>

9. Secure Your Hosting Environment 

Suppose you are dealing with sensitive customer data. In that case, upgrading from shared hosting to a dedicated server or VPS (Virtual Private Server) provides significantly better security, control, and peace of mind.

10. Backups from the hosting panel

You can also create an automated backup from your hosting panel. Almost all hosting panel has this feature built in. You will definitely find documentation to create the automation on your hosting provider’s site.

Or you can also use FTP only if you are handy with it.

1. Connect via FileZilla or similar
2. Download the entire WordPress directory
3. Store safely off-site

11. Harden WordPress Security Settings

Now, if you want to lock every door possible on your site, then follow the steps below.

You need to add the code snippets below to the wp-config.php file.

// Disable file editing

define('DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT', true);

// Disable plugin and theme installation

define('DISALLOW_FILE_MODS', true);

// Force SSL for admin

define('FORCE_SSL_ADMIN', true);

// Limit post revisions

define('WP_POST_REVISIONS', 3);

// Set autosave interval

define('AUTOSAVE_INTERVAL', 300);

You have to add these just above the ‘/* That's all, stop editing! Happy publishing. */ ’ line in the PHP file.

What if WordPress security is compromised

Even if you take all the measures and precautions, hacks can still happen. Hackers are inventing new ways to get into the system. So what to do? Here is an action plan you can follow.

First of all, don’t panic. Stay calm and try to find the root cause. First, consider taking your site offline temporarily or putting up a maintenance page to prevent further damage. Next, scan your site for malware using online scanners or security plugins, and check for backdoors by looking for any suspicious files, especially in the wp-content/uploads directory.

Review all user accounts carefully and delete any unknown administrators. If you have a clean backup from before the hack, restore it. Change all passwords, including WordPress admin, database, FTP, and hosting control panel credentials.

Make sure to update WordPress core, all plugins, and themes to their latest versions. After cleaning, re-scan your site to ensure that all malware has been removed. Review your server logs to understand how the hack occurred, and contact your hosting provider, as they may have additional tools or backups to assist you.

Continue monitoring your site closely for several weeks to catch any signs of a recurring hack, and finally, implement additional security measures to strengthen your site and prevent future attacks.

Wrapping up

Securing your WordPress site isn’t a one-time task. It’s an ongoing commitment. The digital landscape constantly evolves, with new threats emerging regularly. What keeps you safe today might not be enough tomorrow.

Whether you choose the plugin route, the manual approach, or a combination of both, the important thing is that you’re taking action. But congratulations, you’re no longer one of those site owners who think a strong password is enough. Your actions can ensure the best WordPress security and a safe site for users.