How We Secure WordPress Websites

We support quite a few WordPress websites, and one thing that stands out is how rarely we have problems with hacked sites.

That does not mean WordPress is impossible to hack. It is not. WordPress powers a huge part of the web, and any widely used platform is going to attract people looking for poorly maintained websites, outdated software and weak accounts.

What it does mean is that you do not necessarily need some elaborate security setup to protect an ordinary WordPress website. A lot of the risk can be reduced by getting the boring things right and continuing to do them consistently.

There are a few things we care about before getting clever with security tools.

Start with the hosting

Security starts before WordPress even loads.

If the website is sitting on poor-quality hosting, you are already making the job harder than it needs to be. Good hosting gives you a better foundation for keeping the site maintained, isolated and recoverable when something goes wrong.

This is one of those areas where people often try to save a small amount of money and then spend considerably more time dealing with problems later.

The cheapest hosting plan is not automatically the best choice for a business website. You want a provider that takes infrastructure seriously, keeps the server environment maintained and gives you reasonable backup and recovery options.

That does not make the website invulnerable. It simply means you are not starting from a weak foundation.

Protect the people who can actually get into the site

A WordPress website can have the latest version of everything installed and still be compromised because someone gets access to an administrator account.

That is why multi-factor authentication matters.

If an administrator account requires more than just a password, stealing or guessing that password is no longer enough to get into the account. MFA adds another layer between an attacker and the administrative area.

This is especially important when several people have access to the website. Developers, marketers, business owners, content managers and agencies may all need access at different times.

The more people who can log in, the more important it becomes to treat those accounts as part of the website's security rather than as an afterthought.

Use strong individual accounts, give people the access they actually need and protect administrator accounts with MFA.

It is not complicated.

That is precisely why it should be done.

Be careful about what you install

WordPress itself is only part of the software running on a typical website.

Plugins and themes introduce additional code, and that means they introduce additional things that can go wrong.

This is why we prefer reputable plugins and themes rather than installing whatever happens to appear first in a search result or downloading software from questionable sources.

Every plugin does not need to be treated as dangerous. WordPress websites rely on plugins because they are useful. The problem is installing unnecessary software, keeping abandoned plugins around, or relying on products that are poorly maintained.

A website with 40 plugins does not automatically have worse security than one with 10. But every additional piece of software deserves a reason for being there.

If nobody knows why a plugin is installed anymore, that is probably a good reason to investigate whether the site still needs it.

Updates are not optional maintenance

One of the simplest things you can do for a WordPress website is also one of the easiest to postpone.

Keep WordPress, plugins and themes updated.

We generally treat plugin and core updates as a monthly maintenance task, or more frequently when an update needs to be applied sooner. The exact schedule can vary depending on the website and the software involved, but the principle is the same: do not leave an important update sitting there indefinitely because updating it feels inconvenient.

Security issues do not wait for your maintenance calendar.

That does not mean you should blindly click "update everything" on a production website without thinking. Updates can introduce compatibility problems, particularly on websites with a lot of custom functionality. A sensible maintenance process should include backups and enough testing to catch problems before they become bigger ones.

But there is an important difference between cautious maintenance and simply never updating anything.

The latter is not a security strategy.

It is an invitation to accumulate problems.

A security plugin can be useful, too

There are situations where adding a security plugin makes sense.

A tool such as WP Remote can help with managing and monitoring WordPress websites, depending on the setup and features you use. The point is not that installing a security plugin magically makes a website secure. It is another layer in the overall maintenance process.

That distinction matters.

Security plugins can be useful, but they should not become an excuse to ignore the fundamentals. If the administrator account has weak protection, the hosting is poor, plugins are being installed from questionable sources and the website has not been updated for months, adding a security plugin does not suddenly fix the underlying problems.

Security works better as a system than as a single product.

Most WordPress security is maintenance

This is the part that is easy to underestimate.

There is nothing particularly exciting about checking whether a plugin needs an update. Nobody is going to write a case study about how they successfully enabled MFA on an administrator account and went home.

But that is often what keeping a website secure looks like.

Choose decent hosting. Protect administrator accounts. Be selective about plugins and themes. Keep the software maintained. Keep backups. Add additional security and monitoring where they are useful.

Then keep doing it.

The biggest mistake is often treating WordPress security as something you install once.

A website changes. Plugins change. WordPress changes. People who have access to the site change. New vulnerabilities are discovered. Old accounts get forgotten. A plugin that was perfectly reasonable two years ago may no longer be maintained.

Security therefore becomes part of website management rather than a box you tick during the initial build.

That is also why we rarely find ourselves dealing with hacked WordPress websites when the sites are being properly maintained. The goal is not to create some impenetrable system that nobody could ever attack. The goal is to remove the obvious weaknesses, reduce unnecessary risk and make sure there is a sensible process for dealing with the things that inevitably change.

WordPress security can get complicated when you need it to.

For most ordinary business websites, though, the first line of defense is much less exciting.

Good hosting. Protected admin accounts. Reputable software. Regular updates.

And someone who actually remembers to maintain the website.