Wordpress Security for Webmasters 2017

In 2016, it was estimated that only 44% of web traffic was genuine human visitors to a site. The other 56% was made up of bots, hacking tools, scrapers, and spammers. With an estimated 30,000+ websites being hacked every day, website security has to be be a main concern for anyone running a website, no matter how small. Securi (a top internet security service) releases a quarterly report on hacking attempts. Their data from the third quarter of 2016 suggested that Wordpress made up 74% of all infected websites. Hacked sites can be used for a variety of purposes, such as redirecting your traffic, stealing customer details, deleting files, changing your login details to lock you out, sending spam emails to millions of people, SEO for the hackers site, and so on. And don't think that your small, insignificant site is safe from hackers. To a hacker, a site is a site. They'll use computer software to scan millions of websites for vulnerabilities and then attack the soft targets. There is no softer target than a newly setup Wordpress website that's run from someone's bedroom. There is obviously good reason to be concerned about your website security. However, I don't want you to think that Wordpress is an insecure platform that should be avoided, it isn't. Wordpress is actually very secure and if a security hole is found, it is usually plugged very quickly by the Wordpress security team and pushed out to all Wordpress installs - automatically. The real security issues come from the people running the websites. They often don't have enough knowledge to make educated decisions about the content they put on their site, the plugins they use, or the themes they install. This book has two aims: 1. I want to give you the knowledge you need so that you can understand where the main threats come from. With that knowledge, you will understand how your administrative actions can affect the security of your website. This knowledge gives you the power to stop hackers. 2. I want to give you a step-by-step solution to make your website as hackproof as possible. We'll install a single Wordpress plugin and go through the entire setup process. Simply follow along on your own site as I secure one of my own. If you are not very technically minded, don't worry. This book assumes no technical ability and no programming skills.