As the most popular blogging system online, WordPress is used for more than 60 million web sites.
An accessible interface, built-in SEO tools and commendable security make it an ideal tool for bloggers. Despite the WordPress system’s tireless efforts to improve security, the popularity of WordPress has made it an interest point for hackers throughout the world.
As a result, WordPress users would be wise to implement security plugins that take WordPress’ security to the next level— out of the reach of even the most experienced hackers.
Akismet
When your blog becomes indexed by search engines, it also opens it up to comment spammers. These types of spammers often leave nonsensical comments with links, in order to boost the search engine rankings of their own site or product.
As your blog grows in popularity, you will see even more of these comments. It’s impossible to rid of them entirely unless you want to disable commenting, so Akismet provides a quick and easy solution. It acts as a spam filter for your comments, checking them against their web service to see if they resemble spam or not. Akismet may not catch every single spam comment, but it’s one of the best WordPress plugins for comment spam prevention you will find.
Wordfence Security
It’s very commendable that Wordfence Security is free, and it has received universal acclaim for being an enterprise-level security plugin with an impressive number of benefits, including firewall, malicious URL scanning, live traffic analyzer and anti-virus scanning.
It also enables users to utilize a two-factor authentication when logging in, requiring both the user’s cell phone and web login. This significantly curbs the number of hack attempts on their blog. Wordfence acts as a continuous monitor of all threats; it’s truly the consummate WordPress security plugin. An added bonus is that the plugin’s support forum is very responsive, answering 43 of 44 support threads in the past two months.
BulletProof Security
An alternative to Wordfence is BulletProof Security, a plugin that prevents against a wide variety of hacking attempts in addition to providing login security, monitoring and a top-tier .htaccess security that stops hackers immediately in their tracks. Since .htaccess files are processed before any other files on a blog, BulletProof takes the immediate approach of safeguarding them. No manual configuration required also makes it an ideal choice for new users of WordPress, who may find the many features of Wordfence too daunting.
Anti-spam
While Akismet is the most popular comment spam prevention plugin, Anti-spam is rising through the ranks as a respectable rival. With an easier installation than Akismet, which requires signing up for an API key, Anti-spam is ready upon installation.
No captcha, moderation queues or options provide the simplest form of comment spam prevention for WordPress users. So if you have a blog about unique homes and a reader writes a great comment about the innovations of their luxury log home, you can be sure that it won’t be marked accidentally as spam.
WordPress File Monitor Plus
The most obvious example of a trespassing hacker on your blog is the deletion or addition of files on your server. WordPress File Monitor Plus notifies you whenever a file is added, deleted or altered in any way, sending an e-mail to the specified administrator. Additionally, multi-site support and the abilities to exclude specific files and directories from the scan make WordPress File Monitor Plus the best of its kind.
One of the best aspects of these WordPress security plugins is that many of them can be used simultaneously. Utilizing a spam comment filter (Akismet, Anti-spam), a consummate security plugin (Wordfence, BulletProof) and a file monitor (WordPress File Monitor Plus) in conjunction will prepare your blog for even the most advanced hackers, who – with these plugins installed – will find it very difficult to break into your blog.
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