How to protect your blog

This is a collaborative post

If you’ve invested the time in building a successful blog, it’s important you keep it safe. As someone who had to rebuild my site from scratch, trust me when I say, it’s not something I would recommend.

Building a successful blog can take time, but if you can create a readership, regular traffic and an engaged audience, you can soon benefit financially in the way of advertising revenue and affiliates, meaning your site can be working for you even when you aren’t actively promoting it.

Here are some things to consider when running a successful website:

Use strong passwords

This may sound obvious, but the more successful your blog is, the more attractive your site may be to potential hackers. Picking something like Password1 as your WordPress login is a surefire way to wave goodbye to your revenue stream. Instead opt for a combination of words, numbers, symbols and things that aren’t related to your personal information. Change it regularly and don’t write it down – if your memory is dubious, record mental prompts that can help you remember but won’t mean anything to anyone else/

Virus protection

Protect your hardware from viruses and attacks. There are some really clever viruses and trojan horses circulating at the moment and not having virus protection on your device can certainly leave your site susceptible to viruses that can leave your data, and even your access at risk. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to spend a fortune either – did you know you can actually get free antivirus for Windows, that will detect and quarantine viruses and other kinds of malicious software from your computer or laptop? Cybersecurity software is crucial and should be high on your list of website security essentials. 

Keep your software and plugins up to date

It’s important to keep a close eye on your wordpress dashboard, ensuring your theme, wordpress version and themes are all up to date. Old plugins sometimes become unsupported by the developer, which can leave them vulnerable to attack. Ensuring you always have the latest verison of wordpress can ensure any bug fixes and potential weak areas are fixed as soon as they’re identified.

Take Back ups

Either take manual back ups, or opt for a hosting provider that will do this for you. This way if changing the theme manages to unexpectedly corrupt your site, you can restore a previous version without having to worry about data loss. 

Use Two factor authentication

To keep your socials such as Instagram safe, ensure you make use of two factor authentication. This will not only ask for a password to login in to your socials, but also a security pin number, generated on your mobile phone using the authenticator app. This double layer of security makes it much harder for hackers to tap into your accounts. Without this, some bloggers have had their accounts held hostage, asked for ransom money to release or even others posing as them to try and reap the benefits.

Running your own website is a big responsibility and whilst blogging may seem easy, there is genuinely so much to think about when maintaining and growing a blog as a business, Don’t make rookie mistakes and protect the blog you’ve worked so hard to create.