There are so many great things about WordPress. It is so easy to add new content to your website using the WordPress platform. You do not require any technical skills or experience to do this. Just add your content (including videos and images) and hit the “publish” button and your new post or page is live on the Internet.
Themes and Plugins
It is very easy to customize the look and feel of your WordPress site by installing a new theme. There are thousands of WordPress themes available both free and paid. You can easily find a theme that fits with your business and avoid paying expensive web designers to create one from scratch for you.
There are thousands of plugins available too. These are custom software add-ons that will enhance your WordPress site. If you want to add a contact form to your WordPress website (very important) then there are several free plugins available that will allow you to do this very easily.
Plugins exist to enhance the SEO capabilities of your WordPress website so that you have a better chance of your content ranking in Google and the other search engines. You can turn your WordPress installation into an e-commerce store using a special plugin or you can create a membership site in minutes with a free plugin.
There are WordPress plugins available that will display social sharing buttons on all of your posts and pages. You can get plugins that will allow you to create sales pages and squeeze pages that do not use the header, footer or the sidebar of your WordPress installation. Other WordPress plugins will help to reduce spam comments.
The bottom line is that there are hundreds of thousands of WordPress themes and plugins available to enhance the look and feel and functionality of your website. This is a good thing of course, and there are people developing new themes and plugins all of the time.
There truly is a lot to love about WordPress. It allows you to create a new website that has a great deal of functionality in a very short space of time. You do not need to know anything about HTML or any other kind of coding. Anyone can install and setup a great looking WordPress website.
WordPress can be Vulnerable to Hackers
Every day, thousands of WordPress websites are hacked and used to send spam or to publish a phishing page to collect sensitive financial information for example. A hacker can basically take control of your WordPress site if you don’t protect it and do whatever they want with it.
Here are the 4 most common reasons why WordPress installations get hacked:
- WordPress and themes are out of date
- Plugins are out of date
- WordPress login password is weak
- Hosting environment offers little or no protection
You have control over the first three of these things. It may seem that you cannot control the last item on the list – no protection from your hosting environment – but if you choose the right host such as PlusPlus Hosting that offers Imunify360 protection with all of our premium hosting packages, then this is in your control as well.
Out of date WordPress, Themes and Plugins
The number one reason why WordPress websites get hacked is because the core WordPress and/or the installed themes and plugins are out of date. When you use themes and plugins for your WordPress website you run the risk of introducing vulnerabilities. Creators of themes and plugins often update them to plug any vulnerabilities that they have spotted or are notified about.
If there is a new version of a theme or a plugin available then you will be notified of this in your WordPress dashboard. You need to take action promptly here and update the theme or the plugin to the newest version.
News of vulnerabilities with WordPress themes and plugins spreads like wildfire online. There was an example of this with a famous contact form plugin where hackers were able to exploit the vulnerability and gain complete access to WoprdPress sites where the owners had not updated the plugin to the newest version.
Weak Login Passwords
You will know that to gain access to the backend of your WordPress CMS you need to login with a username and password. Most people leave the username as “admin” and will then use a weak password such as “12345”. It will not take a hacker long to get into your WordPress website and take control of it if you do this.
Use another username that will be hard to guess and a strong password to protect your WordPress installations. Hackers often use bots to try to login to your WordPress site and these will try many different combinations. It is easy to tighten up the security of your WordPress logins so do this today.
Web Host offers no Protection
A lot of web hosts (including some very popular ones) do not protect their servers from malware attacks properly, if at all. One day you check your WordPress site only to find that the home page displays an error message you don’t understand. The same happens when you try to log in.
Your web host tells you that your WordPress site has been hacked and contains malware. They will fix the problem for you for a ridiculously high price. If you pay them to fix the problem there is nothing to stop your WordPress installation getting hacked again because there is little protection for the web servers.
At PlusPlus Hosting we really care about our customers’ WordPress installations. With all of our premium packages we offer Imunify360 protection which prevents our web servers, and your WordPress sites being attacked with malicious malware.
We provide your WordPress website with several layers of security through the use of Imunify 360. It will block malware attacks and you will have the peace of mind that it is working for you 24/7. While other web hosts just don’t seem to care about the WordPress installations of their customers, we do everything that we can to protect your sites.
Find out more about Imunify360 and our premium hosting plans here.
