10 Minutes That Could Save Your WordPress Website

WordPress is brilliant, and we love it. It’s the most popular CMS on the planet, but the fact that it’s so widely used also makes it popular with hackers.

And what do bored hackers do over Christmas?

That’s right – they trash your website.

We know. It happened to us a couple of years ago. Of course we had backups (thank goodness!) but we still had to spend the first two weeks of January making sure everything was super-secure. We learned a lot from that experience, and we don’t intend to repeat it.

But here’s the question – what would it cost you if you came back to work in the New Year to find your website is down or worse, hijacked?

If you don’t regularly update your WordPress installation and all of your plugins you risk giving a hacker access to your website. That can mean loss of business, or even being removed from Google’s search listing. And without clean, offline back-ups you could potentially lose everything and have to start all over again.

I know there are lots of pressures on your time, but sparing 10 minutes now could be the difference between maintaining the safety of your site and total meltdown.
[quote]Your ISP is not responsible for backing up your website – you are. [/quote]

Here’s a few things you can do immediately to deter hackers:

• Change your username and passwords. Choose long, random passwords and never use the same one twice.
• Never, EVER, choose ‘Admin’ and ‘Password’. (Yes, people really do that. If that’s you, change it NOW!)
• Delete any old, unused administrator accounts.
• Regularly update to the latest versions of plugins and WordPress itself.
• Delete all unused themes and plugins.

If you have a WordPress site and you rarely edit it – go and do this now.

If someone else made it for you, make sure they’re updating it regularly. Blaming someone else won’t make it come back.

For step-by-step instructions on how to update and backup your WordPress website, download your FREE booklet here.

If you’re worried about your site you can email us or call 01865 204200 for advice and details about our rock-solid WordPress website hosting and maintenance plans.