(Image Credit: Eric Martin)
With Halloween now upon us, many people will be out trick or treatin’, partying up while looking half dead or simply enjoying a good horror flick with friends.
But nothing can be worse for a semi-blog geek than to return from the festivities to discover that your blog is haunted. Translation: there are “unexplainable happenings” within your blog, as well as without.
Here are a few simple tips to help keep the foul, trollish, hacking spirits out.
Keep Your Blog Fresh (Upgrade Often)
Nothing is more repelling to a ghoulish hacker than an updated WordPress blog. If you have not updated your blog to the latest version, then you might as well invite the devils through the front door (via password).
Upgrade early, and upgrade often, as you can always fix your widgets and plugins later (as you can always replace incompatible plugins with rivals who are staying up to date!)
Keep It Simple–Unless Its Your Password
There is nothing more pleasing than to hear a foul spirit unable to break in through the front and back doors! (plus the windows too!)
Never, ever, use words under five letters, and always use numbers AND special characters like %$#@^&* with your password.
Bonus: Install the Login Lockdown plugin, which will help prevent beasts using brute force from breaking in “by chance.” (Ancient wisdom via Make Tech Easier)
Trolls, Goblins And Spam Ghosts (Oh My!)
Are you receiving the same daily compliments upon every blog post from a site that is 100 characters long? Do you have mysterious readers who just happen to randomly link off topic–to only disappear into the ether?
Unless you want to offend the wizards at Google, you better install some anti-spam protection in order to keep the haunted spirits out.
By that I don’t mean CAPTCHA, as its spells are utterly useless against human spam zombies and A.I. warlocks.
Install Askimet or WP-Spam free (my personal favorite) today!
Never Sleep–Unless You Have WP-Security Scan Installed
Lets face it, you are only human. There are only so many blogs, tweets and emails one can read regarding blog vulnerabilities out there.
Since most of us have better things to do than constantly remain vigilant against the ghoulish fiends who out number you, it might be wise to install the WP-Security Scan plugin, wisdom I first learned from Tutzone.
WP-Security Scan will hunt your blog for any signs of weakness, and then report back to you with necessary actions to take to make your site more secure.
Seek Out Wisdom (Both New And Ancient)
There is always more ways to keep your site from becoming the home of devlish hackers, ghoulish trolls and the numerous spam zombies roaming the net looking for fresh victims.
If anyone else has any suggestions for newbie’s (and those not so new) feel free to enlighten us all with the WP-Craft of your choice.
