Basic Tips For Securing Your Website From Hackers
When you are looking to build a website it’s important that you lock down your hosting account. You don’t want to publish anything that is going to cause you detriment. That being said, make absolutely sure that you look into a few tips that can help you secure your site for the better. These tips are common sense to some, and will definitely help you keep the wrong element out of your website. Trust that these tips are going to help you move forward, as they are some of the most well known in regards to securing any website.
Change Your Password
Passwords are easily stolen today. Millions of people set up a website and assume that they are safe with a normal password. Don’t let yourself become stagnant in changing things up. Instead, make sure that you are changing things up often. Every month at least, and in some instances, ever few weeks. This is not too much when you are looking to keep your website away from hackers. If you don’t lock things down early and often, people will eventually find that you are not secure. Hackers are smart, and they look for vulnerabilities everywhere. A simple website, can get hacked if the password is stale or easy to figure out. Be careful how you set this up, and change things up on a regular basis.
Use this Free Random Password Generator
Back Up Your Database
When it comes to setting up a website, you will most likely add a database. Whether you put it together yourself, or you install a content management system for your website, you will need a database. This is very important, back it up. You need to back up your website as well as the database that it is connected to. If you do not do this, you are going to end up losing out on the protection that comes when something goes wrong. Whether the host provider gets hacked or you are dealing with a vulnerability that you didn’t see coming, it’s important that you look at locking things down by simply having a backup. This is common sense, and will help your website through the years that you have it hosted with any major provider.
Backing up your database is simply good practice as a website owner. You should never depend on your web host to make backups for you. Always store a local backup of your database.
Update WordPress Often
WordPress is a powerful to use with your website. If you are going to have this installed, make sure that you update it often. Some people have been running old website options through WordPress and they still work. However, if you are going to end up with something a bit larger than a simple one page website, you will need to establish a better update schedule than every few years, if at all. Some people do in fact isolate older options because they think they are more stable. However, that is wrong. Don’t allow your website to get antiquated with an old content management system. Update your WordPress installation as new patches are released to ensure your website is not overrun by hackers down the line.
WordPress now has auto-updates built in making it simple to keep up-to-date. Simply login to your WordPress Dashboard and you should see an Update button when updates are available. Be sure to backup your website before making any updates so you can reverse the changes if something breaks.
Get An SSL Certificate
There are a lot of tools that you can use when you are building a website. One of the most powerful is that of SSL certificates. This is a tool that you can get from your host and have it installed on your page. When you have this on your website, information that is getting pulled through the server is encrypted. It is encrypted so that you can see it and no one else can. This helps lock things in place, and helps get information protocol going through various stages within your page. If you’re going to work with e-commerce options, this is a very crucial element to have in place. Don’t lose track of the importance of an SSL certificate for any major website you may want to publish.
You don’t need a fancy SSL certificate. A simple Rapid SSL certificate will do the job and it will cost you roughly $20/year.
Don’t Use Too Much Scripting
When you’re working with any sort of website design, make sure that you don’t use too much scripting. Many people over do it with the scripting of their page because they can. Don’t think that the latest and greatest elements are found with PHP, JavaScript, and more. Instead, use light languages and HTML updates that are congruent with the protocols of tech standards today. If you use too much scripting, you will end up with a problematic position and your website could suffer in a lot of different ways. Furthermore, the loading time of sites that have heavy scripting is usually terrible. If you want a snappy website, don’t use heavy scripting across all the pages.
