This post will look at What Are The Best Plugins For WordPress?
A WordPress site is the best way to make money online as an affiliate marketer. I realise that many people who want to start affiliate marketing at home have little or no money to spare. That is why I am going to concentrate on FREE PLUGINS to get you started.
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Why Do You Need Plugins For WordPress?
You don’t actually need to install plugins, but since they are free, you should think about it.
Plugins for WordPress can help improve the look of your site, make it more secure from hackers, get more followers and improve the number of sales from your site
What WordPress Plugins Can Stop Hackers?
As the popularity of trying to make money online has increased, so has the number of hackers. Hackers try to steal your data, put unwanted adverts on your site and can even render your website un-accessible.
You therefore need to stop hackers. There are some great FREE WordPress plugins that can do this for you.
WordPress Hide Plugin To Hide Your Site
Many WordPress sites get hacked because the hackers know where to find your website and what to look for. They look for clues. One of the easiest clues to find is plugins.
How Do You Make Your WordPress Site Invisible To Hackers?
The video below will show you how to install wp hide and set everything up. After doing this, people will not know your site is a WordPress site and so hackers will move on to easier sites to hack.
Please note that the icon for WP Hide And Security Enhancer has changed since this video was made.
You can check if your WordPress site is invisible after following the video above by typing in your WordPress web site URL into the site below.
Is your WordPress site Invisible?
Let us look at another free way of securing your website from hackers. It will let you know if a hacker has got into your site and changed anything. It also gives you the ability to block hackers if they have accessed your WordPress website.
How To Install And Set Up Wordfence On Your WordPress Site.
To find the Wordfence plugin go to plugins on the left hand menu of your WordPress site, click on it and then go to add new.
Next type in WordFence Security – Firewall & Malaware Scan. Click on the image that is shown above.
I have provided you with a video showing you how to set everything up.
What is Akismet and Why You Should Start Using it Right Away
Askimet is a way of controlling “spammy” comments. This can have an adverse effect on your website if it starts to get popular. Once people see they can post any comments it can start attracting the interest of hackers. They know the website isn’t properly monitored.
To overcome this problem WordPress has installed Askimet. The problem is that you have to set it up!!!
WordPress have kindly provided an installation guide for users. You can see it below.
How To Set Up Askimet On Your WordPress Site.
How To Choose A Secure WordPress Theme?
Choosing a WordPress theme is easy. Just go to your WordPress dashboard, click on Appearance in the left-hand menu and then click on Themes. All the available themes will show up. Picking a secure theme is a bit more difficult.
Themes are an easy way for hackers to take control of your website. The best way to hide your theme is with wp hide as mentioned earlier in this post. If you don’t want to install wp hide, here are a few precautions.
Do not necessarily choose the most popular themes. These can be a target for hackers.
What Theme Should You Choose To Beat The Hackers?
Hackers take advantage of flaws in the coding of WordPress themes. The best way to avoid this is to make sure that you install the latest update. You will see when it was last updated on the themes page.
Make sure that the theme is updated regularly.
Why You Should Not Have Too Many Themes?
WordPress does not limit the number of themes you can download. Many people download many themes to see what they look like. These themes are then saved to the theme directory on your website. The problem is that the themes can be a target for hackers.
To make it harder for hackers, only keep the theme you are using and a second theme as a back up in case there is a problem with your site theme.
How Else Can You Secure Your WordPress Plugins?
Although this is not a plugin, there are some steps that every person with a website should take.
Choose a secure password. Do not use name. These can be easily overcome with bots. Your best option is to use a password generator.
There are many available online. The one that I use is called LastPass.
Once you have got a password I would recommend that you save it in a text document on your computer so it is easy to access. I would not recommend saving automatically to your computer. These places are easily hacked.
How To Secure Your WordPress Details?
You would not go out of your house and leave your front door unlocked.
Why do it with your WordPress Site?
I am going to show you how to make your site more secure to stop giving hackers an easy way to access your site.
Easy Way To Secure Your WordPress Login Details
The WordPress LogIn panel is the front door to your site. If you don’t make it secure it is like leaving the front door open when you go out.
I will show you how to change your user name and passwords to more secure ones.
How To Disguise Your WordPress User Name?
Anything you can do to make it difficult for hackers to get inside your site the better. A lot of hackers will move onto easier sites if they can see you have taken precautions to secure your site.
Lets look at how to disguise your username.
To do this, click on users in the WordPress side bar as show above and then profile.
The following page will appear.
Next go down to the Nickname area near the bottom. Then select a password from the password generator as shown earlier in this post.
The nickname can be a series of numbers and letters. The more random the better. No one will really see them. Make sure you save these in a text document as described earlier in this post.
The screen shot above is an old login in case you are thinking about hacking my site.
Then just save the information.
Next we will look at changing your password. By default is is admin and every hacker knows that.
When your first set up your WordPress site you would have received an email with your original login details. I hope you still have that email.
However, there are also other ways.
WordPress has provided a guide for you. You can view it below.
How To Change Your WordPress Password?
Adding plugins is a great wat to improve your site but they are useless if they get hacked. That is why I have concentrated on security issues.
I hope you found What are the best plugins for WordPress? useful.