It’s a pretty scary world online these days and a lot of folks are not aware the risk of going online. Having proper web security doesn’t just mean installing some plugins if you’re on WordPress and hopefully nothing happens. If you get a flu shot and going to a room of 500 people who have the flu every single day, you’ll eventually have the flu.
Then there’s the support when building a custom CMS for your website. Since websites are also dynamic, as I said before, then you have to worry now about the upkeep of that CMS. Is it coded to proper standards? And what language was it coded on? Can you reach out to the developer if there’s a problem and immediately get it resolved? If a back door is there and a hacker finds it and exploits it, what’s the response time of your developer?
There are a lot of questions and issues that come with running a website these days that did not come with running a static website in the 90’s. WordPress simplifies that. If Uber, Glad (as in the trash bags), and The Walt Disney Company use it, you can too. See Businesses that use WordPress here.
A Brief History, Don’t Listen To Critics
WordPress began in 2003 it was an evolution of http://cafelog.com/. After all WordPress’ roots are from the blogging sphere. After some doing WordPress was the successor and now everybody could easily install WordPress on their hosting account and publish content.
Then began the rise in popularity of WordPress. With that popularity came the attempts to bring WordPress powered websites down by malicious hackers.
Ever since this occurred in 2009 WordPress has been shaking off the critics that it’s not secure. The truth is that it is secure and the problem is not the core of WordPress, the problem is users now and unskilled or newbie plugin developers and Themers (those who make WordPress themes). No offense is intended, I’m simply pointing out what is a known issue. Commercial Themes and Plugins are not on WordPress.org, therefore are not held to the standards that can protect users by the way. They are a pure product sold for mass product sales to recoup cost of development.
But I’ve blogged before about proper code, and WordPress. If you think you are getting a deal with that designer, think again. Long term costs are more costly and you could end up with a website that ripe for an attack.
How Secure Is Your Host?
Passwords don’t just exist on your WordPress site when you log in, the passwords also exist on your database installation as well. If you’re not on a secured host, hackers can get to that database install then, once they have the username and password to the database they can do whatever they want.
Shared hosting is not secured hosting, it’s secured for the hosting provider. But for you it only is as secure as you make it on your install with a massive cocktail of plugins (contact us for some recommendations). That’s pretty dangerous in the hands of a person that has never run a website before and is trying to do it yourself.
Secure passwords can be tough to come up with. WordPress natively helps you with this but it can become a pain to remember the gibberish that it gives you of numbers, characters and letters. Therefore, people usually pick their favorite animal, child’s birthday or other insecure choice. Don’t do this.
WordPress has a lot of tools with in it that are not explored by users because they just don’t simply know about them. That is why we exist that is our mission is to help you with that.
Digital Hero, Ask Questions and Get Answers
Starting this month on YouTube I am creating a video series called Digital Hero. The purpose of this video series is to give you, the user, the opportunity to send in questions about WordPress, SEO, web design other related service that we provide and then I’ll answer them or the other team will within a couple of minutes. Subscribe here.
There is not one silver bullet with a WordPress website, or any website, to keep it secure or to have it make you money or fix whatever it is that you need. The various needs or customers cannot be listed here, but there it is a very big world out there and we’ve been navigating it for almost 10 years.
If you’re interested in some of the silver bullets that it could take tune in on YouTube and subscribe to Digital Hero and send in your question by the comments below. And as always share and subscribe to our blog here.
