In April, my blog, Leaving Work Behind, was hacked. Despite having preventative measures in place, my site was still vulnerable and I lost a significant amount of traffic and potential income. Since then, I have taken steps to increase the security of my site and prevent future hacks.
The first thing I did was to verify that I had been following the steps outlined in my recent post on securing your WordPress website. These included updating themes and plugins, ensuring recent backups, changing default profiles, and checking for security plugins.
Next, I installed VaultPress, an automated backup and security solution for WordPress. While it cannot guarantee site security against hackers, it can guarantee easy restoration. I also managed my profiles, creating only necessary administrator profiles with unique passwords and deleting them when no longer needed.
I changed all sensitive account passwords, including Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, hosting accounts, and Amazon Associates. Additionally, I upgraded to SFTP to encrypt data transfers and considered the suitability of my hosting solution.
Ultimately, keeping your site secure is more important than anything else. Hackers will not go away any time soon, so taking reasonable measures to protect your site is crucial for the long-term security of your online assets.
