Plugins make life easy for WordPress users. A popular CMS platform like WordPress is also a popular target for hackers, so security is not something to be taken lightly. Besides hardening your WordPress site, installing the right combination of security plugins can help make your site secure from malicious attacks.
There are myriad of plugins available for security, and no two are alike. Each of them helps secure your site in a slightly different way. It is a good practice, however, to keep the number of plugins to a minimum and only install those which are absolutely necessary, to allow for better site functionality. Keeping that in mind, we are going to provide you information about three security plugins that when combined provide pretty comprehensive security to your WordPress site.
Sucuri
wplearninglab.com/go/sucuri/
Sucuri is one of the best security plugins on the market. It scans your entire site as soon as it is installed. It scans your sites automatically every hour and sends you email notifications for anything you need to know about such as malware on your server, outdated plugins or compromised plugins. You can do a free scan of your site to see if it’s healthy: Sucuri site scan.
Bulletproof Security
Bulletproof Security has been known to be very effective in preventing RFI, CRLF, CSRF, XSS, Base64 and SQL Injection attacks. It has a simple configuration and provides regular updates. The maintenance mode gives you a lot of control over who can access your website and who to block. It protects your website by running the .htaccess files before any other script on the website, thereby locking down all the critical PHP files and keeping them secure from any malicious attacks. This plugin is free and has a 4.8 out of 5 star rating. There is a premium version also available.
iThemes Security (formely Better WP Security)
The plugin, formerly known as Better WP Security, is now iThemes Security. This is one of the top security plugins that you we recommend you install as soon as you publish your site. Hackers take advantage of the fact that a lot of users neglect to apply security measures straight away. It hides most of the site’s essential and vulnerable data, changing paths and links where required, and securing the site from some of the most common brute force attacks.
These three plugins are generally known to be compatible with each other. However, it is important to make sure that they are also compatible with any other plugins you have installed on the site. Also, always make a backup of your site before you go ahead and install these or any other new plugins on it.
2 thoughts on “Best Plugins for Securing your WordPress Site”
Hi
I watched your video on how to migrate my subdomain to my main domain and it worked great. : )
I have a question if you know how to hide what WordPress theme you are using? I know of a site that was built using X-Theme but when I have checked the code using View > Source in Chrome, there is no mention of ‘theme’. I did notice the other files paths such as ‘plugin’ and ‘wp-content’ were still visible.
Was just wondering if there is a plugin that can hide this info, as it may be handy if I have built sites for clients using X-Theme or Divi but want to hide the theme.
Thanks
Hi Paul,
They may have used this plugin: WP Hide & Security Enhancer (link to repository). I’m recording a tutorial for this plugin next week. Basically, it allows you to change the paths to theme files and folders and plugin files and folders.
It’s a pretty straightforward plugin. I’m sure you can figure it out without my upcoming tutorial 🙂