WordPress, Security

Security is a huge buzz word on the internet because of the many threats to privacy that exist in the online world. Here are a few things you can do to protect your privacy when you use WordPress. This list is by no means complete or exhaustive, just a few basic ideas. If you need serious privacy protection….well, you probably shouldn’t be building any website, much less a blog.

• Change your admin password frequently. Make it something unique and hard to guess.
• If you create an email address for posting, make it very unique and very long, containing no actual dictionary words, and an ugly combination of numerals and letters. You don’t have to remember it — just make an entry in your email address book for it.
• IMMEDIATELY upon installation, disable the Ping-O-Matic option in Options -> Privacy or Options -> Writing -> Update Services. There is an option during installation to disallow search engines from your site. This disables the ping function. Say yes! You can always change it later when and if you want to use Ping-O-Matic or other update services.
• Make changes to your theme, .htaccess and plugin files on your local computer, and upload them via FTP. Don’t allow WordPress to make changes for you. This isn’t really security against external attacks, but rather protection against user error. There is no “undo” button in WordPress after you hit the Update button.
• If you don’t have any authors or users on your blog besides yourself, go to Options -> General and disable the Membership settings (uncheck both boxes).
• If you permit comments on your site, visit Options -> Discussion and decide what security options you wish to enable.
• Enable the Akismet plugin. It’s well worth getting a free WordPress API key (takes a minute or two to sign up) for the spam protection you will receive.

This is just a quick overview of some very basic security measures. Comments and additional suggestions are welcome.

Leave a Reply