Turn Your WordPress Blog Into A Lean, Mean, Fighting Machine!

WordPress is an amazing piece of blogging software. Unfortunately, its popularity and open source code make it a prime target for hackers and other troublemakers. Also, over time, WordPress can become bogged down by plugins and an ever-growing database size, which can affect the speed and performance of your blog. Because of these issues, I believe every WordPress installation should include at least these 5 plugins.

1. Limit Login Attempts

   Limit Login Attempts does exactly what it says it will. It prevents a hacker from using brute force attacks, a method of hacking which tries login after login until finding one that works, to break into WordPress. Limit Login Attempts will lock out an IP address after a certain number of failed login attempts and send you an email alerting you that a lockout has occurred. You have complete control over how many failed logins to allow and how long a lockout should occur.

2. Secure WordPress

   Secure WordPress helps to secure your WordPress installation by removing information that WordPress displays by default on your blog and in your admin section, such as your current WordPress version and plugin information. Hackers can use these pieces of information to figure out what kind of vulnerabilities you might have. Hiding the information won’t stop hackers, but it’ll make it harder for them to figure out the best way to break into YOUR blog.

3. Maintenance Mode

   Maintenance Mode isn’t directly related to blog security, but I think it’s an important plugin to have. It allows you to put your blog in maintenance mode any time you’re doing updates or making changes, so your readers won’t see a mess if one of your changes causes the site to go wonky. You, as the admin, can see everything, but the reader will only see the “closed for maintenance” page that tells them to come back in whatever length of time you have specified.

   Maintenance mode can indirectly help with security by keeping potential hackers from seeing error information that prints on the screen if a new plugin or theme doesn’t work out right. I always put my site in maintenance mode when testing a new theme or installing a new plugin.

4. WP-DB-Backup

   WordPress Database Backup allows you to easily schedule regular backups of your WordPress database and either store them on your server or email them to yourself. I can’t tell you enough how important it is to have regular backups. You don’t want one server crash or a nasty hacker to undo months or even years of hard work. Always, always backup your data.

5. W3 Total Cache

   W3 Total Cache is one of the best caching plugins available and it’s used by well-known bloggers such as Mashable, John Chow, and SmashingMagazine. As the description on the plugin page says, it “improves the user experience of your site by improving your server performance, caching every aspect of your site, reducing the download times and providing transparent content delivery network (CDN) integration.”

   Making sure that your site is performing well makes everyone happy. Your web host will thank you for keeping the load on the server down, your reader will thank you for pages that load quickly, and you’ll be happy because your readers are happy and they keep coming back.

6. Akismet

   Okay, make that Six plugins!

   Akismet gets installed with the WordPress installation itself, but I mention it here because it’s important that you activate it and use it as soon as your blog is installed. You’d be surprised at how quick spammers are at finding new blogs. I received my first two spam comments after only one blog post here at Bootstrap. Nobody even knew the blog existed yet, but spammers found me. Fortunately, Akismet blocked them both and I didn’t have to do a thing.

There are dozens and dozens of great plugins for keeping your WordPress blog in tip-top shape. These are just a few of the ones I like. There are many more that I’ve never tried and even more that I’ve never heard of. Just remember, too many plugins can cause just as much trouble as not having enough of the right ones. Start with the basics and add what you need when you need it.