Looking for essential steps of security in maintenance for your WordPress website?
Website hacking can be stressful and time-consuming. It not only affects site traffic, and sales revenues but also hurts Google search engine rankings. Specifically, WordPress websites are targeted by bots and hackers.
According to the latest report from Verizon, 43% of cyber-attacks target small businesses because the small business environment is more vulnerable than in larger companies. It is crucial to take the precautionary steps to keep your website healthy.
Below, we have listed website maintenance checklist to protect your WordPress website.
Implement these security tips regularly to keep your website secured from hackers and bots.
1. Scan your site
Running daily security scans on your WordPress website to catch potential issues is the best approach to keep your site secured. It helps you to find any unusual activity happening that can harm your website’s performance.
Do you know, a simple WordPress security scan could protect over 43% of websites on the internet?
The benefits of having regular security scans on your WordPress website are :
- Helps to find security vulnerabilities
- Keep your WordPress core, themes and plugins secured
- Detect malware, viruses, and suspicious IPs
ManageWP is one of the best tools to enable automatic scans for your WordPress website. For manual scans, Sucuri SiteCheck is one of the main anti-malware services for WordPress.
2. Backup your website
Enabling WordPress website backups is the most basic step for creating a safe website. Taking regular backups of your WordPress website means that your site can be completely restored after any problems and crashes. It copies all important files and saves them to any external source.
Benefits of taking regular website backups are :
- Keep your website safe from human errors.
- Roll back to an older WordPress plugin/theme version easily
- Restore a Compromised Website to Avoid any Website Migration-related issues.
ManageWP is one of the best tools to enable automatic backups for your WordPress website. For taking manual backups, you can use any of the best WordPress plugins i-e : UpdraftPlus
3. Check the activity log
An activity log is a chronological/ sequenced record of all actions performed by website users. It helps you to monitor suspicious online behavior on your WordPress website.
The benefits of having an activity log on your WordPress website are :
- Helps to troubleshoot any technical issue
- Allows you to gain real-time editorial control of your site
- Identify suspicious behavior & malicious WordPress attacks
- Meet regulatory compliance requirements
- Keep a log of everything that happens on your WordPress
WP Security Activity Log is a popular WordPress plugin for monitoring activity logs of WordPress websites and multisite networks in real time. The free version is robust enough to keep track of all the essential logs.
4. Update your website
Website security is the primary reason for keeping your WordPress site up to date. You can increase the chances of risks when you neglect WordPress updates for your website.
According to the State of the Internet report from Verisign, 52% of all WordPress vulnerabilities are caused by out-of-date plugins.
The benefits of updating your WordPress core, plugins, and theme are:
- Increased website security
- Repair bugs
- Features and functionality improvements
You can easily check your website’s updates from your dashboard. Redirect to WP Dashboard > Dashboard > Updates. Before updating anything, Make sure to take your website’s backup first.
5. Check the search console
Adding your WordPress site to Google’s Search Console actually benefits you in SEO but it can also help to make your site secure. Google’s Search Console flags any detected malware on your site and checking it from time to time helps you to fix the issues in time.
Key benefits of using Google Search Console are :
- Improve your website’s search appearance
- Make HTML improvements
- Increase organic search traffic
- Monitor link reports
- Crawl your website
Follow the steps below to get started with Google Search Console:
- Sign in to Google Search Console
- Add a property and choose your property type
- Verify domain ownership
That’s all! Now, your WordPress website is ready to get started with Google Search Console.
6. Block malicious IPs
Blocking malicious IP addresses in WordPress is the most effective way of dealing with spam. You can even block an entire geographical area if you are experiencing repeated attacks coming from the common region.
Reasons to block IP addresses in WordPress are :
- Spam comments
- Hacking attempts
- Cross-site scripting
You can find malicious IP addresses on the WordPress website in two ways:
- Find the IP address using the WordPress comments panel
- Find IP address using raw access log
A security plugin like MalCare simplifies the process and blocks IP addresses automatically for you. You can block all problematic IP addresses from the country, using MalCare’s geo-blocking feature.
7. Real-time monitoring
Real-time monitoring allows you to monitor activity on your WordPress website as it happens. It makes sure that your website stays permanently online and available for your visitors
According to a study, 97% uptime – which actually looks not so bad, equates to a yearly downtime of 11 days? Downtime is extremely bad for SEO as well.
Benefits of real-time monitoring include:
- Avoid losing potential customers
- Website’s uptime and downtime history
- Performance reports from multiple locations
Three ways to review the real-time monitoring on your WordPress website are :
- In the WordPress dashboard by using the MonsterInsights plugin.
- On the WordPress website front end by using the WP-UserOnline plugin.
- In Google Analytics
Conclusion
Wrapping up! When it comes to your site maintenance and management, security should be at the top of your priority list. If a hacker gains access to your database, then you can lose all of your website files and compromise sensitive user information.
Make sure to keep your WordPress website secured by keeping the website, plugins, and themes up-to-date and turn your WordPress site into a valuable asset!
Additionally, follow the above-mentioned website maintenance checklist to keep your WordPress website fast, and secure, and keep intruders away from your site.
If we have skipped any essential WordPress security tips in this website maintenance checklist, mention them in the comment section below.
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