With the recent release of WordPress 4.0, named “Benny”, the question about updating your website has to be asked. Updates to WordPress, and its themes and plugins are not only extremely important to the overall operation of your website, but they also provide valuable patches to security vulnerabilities and loopholes.
The importance of security
Security is the most important aspect of your website. Whether it be a blogging website, or an ecommerce shop for selling clothing, security on your website should not be taken lightly. There are many ways to ensure that your website remains as secure as possible. Here are a few of the most important:
- Strong Passwords – Whether it be a customer login or a shop admin, the password that is used with this account needs to be secure. With the recent “iCloud Hacking” just last week, Apple Inc. claims that their systems were not at fault, but the passwords of those involved were not strong enough. To ensure that this does not happen to you, ensure that you use long passwords, including capital letters and symbols such as “!” and “$”. This will greatly improve the strength of your password. Although not as easy to remember, these will ensure that your account remains secure.
- Perform regular updates – When using a Content Management System (CMS) or website publishing tool like WordPress, it is important to understand that you must perform regular updates to maintain the security of your website. You might think that it is not important, but these updates can prevent unauthorised access to your website that can leave your website unusable, and unsafe for visitors. Tools such as “iThemes Security” can be used to enforce security, and also to inform you when updates become available.
- Use Managed Hosting – Managed Hosting offers many important security benefits over hosting your own website. Not only does this mean that you don’t have to worry about updating your website, this also means that in the event of your website being compromised, it is already backed up, and will be scanned for vulnerabilities, patched, and will be back online before you even know what has happened. Managed Hosting will also automatically scan for, and fix vulnerabilities, and will proactively install security updates – so you can sleep easy at night.
Website security may seem like it is overrated and unnecessary, and many website owners will set a website up and leave it at that, not knowing that there website needs to be updated to patch security vulnerabilities. It is not until their website is compromised that the majority of website owners will start to take website security seriously. With a little extra time and knowledge, you can ensure that your website is safe, secure, and running at its full potential.
