WordPress still dominates the global CMS market, powering websites for businesses, publishers, eCommerce brands, and institutions of all sizes. This level of adoption also makes WordPress one of the most attacked platforms for cyberattacks.
In 2026, WordPress isn’t optional or only handled by developers. Now, it’s a core operational issue that can severely affect brand trust, search visibility, and customer data. Implementing and understanding modern WordPress security tips is vital if you want to protect your website from ever-evolving threats without sacrificing performance or usability.
This article provides a list of the 12 best security tips for WordPress websites, focusing on practical and sustainable strategies that demonstrate how popular WordPress websites will be managed and maintained in 2026. Rather than applying tips based on fear, we will emphasize risk reduction, layered defenses, and how to proactively maintain everything.
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Why WordPress Security Tips Require a Proactive Approach in 2026
WordPress, at its core, has never been as secure as it is right now. But most successful attacks don’t exploit WordPress itself; they target:
- Outdated plugins and themes.
- Weak authentication practices.
- Excessive user permissions.
- Poor hosting configuration.
- Lack of monitoring and recovery plans.
In 2026, attackers rely on automation by scanning millions of sites daily for known vulnerabilities. This means even small WordPress websites with low traffic could be targeted.
Effective WordPress security is not about achieving perfection. Instead, it’s about implementing WordPress security tips that can help you reduce overall risk, limit exposure, and ensure a fast recovery if something goes wrong.
Security Tip #1: Keep WordPress Core, Themes, and Plugins Updated
One of the most important WordPress security tips by far, and also one of the simplest, is to keep every single moving part updated.
The majority of WordPress security breaches come from outdated themes, plugins, and, in some cases, WordPress itself. When developers release updates, they are often patching issues such as SQL injection vulnerabilities, cross-site scripting (XSS) flaws, privilege escalation issues, and even authentication bypasses.
Attackers are always checking plugin changelogs and exploit sites that fail to update quickly.
To avoid any of this, you should have some things set.
- Enable automatic updates for the WordPress core.
- Auto-update trusted plugins and themes.
- Remove unused plugins and themes completely.
- Test major updates in a staging environment.
Treat updates as a mandatory step every single week rather than an optional change. This WordPress security tip alone can significantly reduce the percentage of attacks to your website.
Security Tip #2: Strengthen Login Credentials and User Roles
Weak credentials are a common entry point for attackers due to how simple it is to interact with and intercept them. Implementing strong authentication controls is one of the most effective WordPress security tips available.
Some common authentication weaknesses include reused passwords, shared admin accounts, excessive administrator access, and a lack of login monitoring.
In 2026, credential stuffing, which is where leaked passwords from other breaches are tested automatically, is a major threat to many different WordPress websites.
There are several recommended actions we recommend you take care of as soon as possible:
- Require strong, unique passwords.
- Avoid generic usernames such as “admin.”
- Limit administrator accounts to the sections that they need to access.
- Assign users the lowest role required.
Proper role management is important if you want to reduce as much damage as possible, even if an account is compromised.
Security Tip #3: Enable Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)
Two-factor authentication is now the bare minimum when it comes to online security. It is no longer an advanced or complex feature as it was years ago.
2FA is a must because it asks users to verify their identity with a second factor, which can be several things:
- Authentication apps.
- One-time passcodes.
- Hardware security keys.
This means that even if a password is compromised, 2FA won’t let attackers enter your website. 2FA should be applied to several things, including administrator accounts, editors with publishing access, and users with potential access to sensitive information.
The best part about 2FA is how simple it is to set up and how little it ultimately affects your website design-wise and performance-wise.
Security Tip #4: Choose Secure, WordPress-Optimized Hosting
When talking about advanced WordPress security tips, hosting is one of the biggest and most underestimated factors. Many site owners only focus on plugins and passwords while ignoring the security of the server itself. In reality, your hosting environment forms the foundation of a WordPress website’s security.
Even a perfectly configured WordPress installation can be compromised if the server on which it runs is insecure. Hosting-related vulnerabilities generally include:
- Shared environments where one compromised website affects another.
- Outdated server software, such as PHP, MySQL, and web servers, is a concern.
- Poor isolation between accounts.
- Lack of server-level firewalls.
- Delayed patching of known vulnerabilities.
Attackers frequently exploit hosting weaknesses because they are allowed access to multiple websites at the same time.
In 2026, WordPress-optimized hosting goes well beyond performance tuning. Secure websites generally have good account isolation to prevent lateral movement between websites, server-level malware scanning to pinpoint threats before WordPress loads, automatic patching, real-time intrusion detection that flags suspicious activity, and more.
From a security POV, picking the right host is one of the most important WordPress security tips due to how much it reduces risks before WordPress even loads.
When choosing a hosting service, you can pick between three options:
- Shared hosting: Higher risk due to shared resources and limited control.
- VPS: More control, but security depends on configuration and maintenance.
- Managed WordPress hosting: This is the best balance between security, performance, and support.
For almost all businesses, managed hosting provides the best bang for your buck while having the strongest baseline security added.
Security Tip #5: Implement a Web Application Firewall (WAF)
A Web Application Firewall (WAF) is a core component of modern WordPress security strategies since it acts as the gatekeeper between your website and incoming traffic.
A properly configured WAF can block known malicious IPs and bot networks, stop brute-force login attempts automatically, prevent SQL injection and XSS, rate-limit abusive requests, and even filter suspicious traffic.
Since most attacks are fully automated nowadays, a WAF can stop a significant percentage of threats without you having to intervene at all.
There are three main WAF layers you should consider:
- CDN-level WAF: Filters traffic before it reaches your server. It’s great for DDoS mitigation.
- Server-level WAF: Protects the hosting environment directly and integrates with server logs.
- Application-level WordPress WAF: Understands WordPress behavior and blocks any suspicious requests in the CMS.
One of the best WordPress security tips is to combine multiple layers of security to create defense in depth instead of only relying on one tool for everything.
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Security Tip #6: Harden wp-admin and Login Endpoints
Protecting your login and admin areas provides you with an immediate risk reduction. The /wp-login.php and /wp-admin/ endpoints are generally targeted by automated bots that attempt brute-force attacks, use credential stuffing, and even username enumeration.
Login pages are generally targeted due to needing minimal technical skill to attack, being publicly accessible, being testable at scale using automation, and they can give full website control if compromised.
Even unsuccessful attempts can degrade performance by consuming server resources.
To meaningfully secure WordPress admin access in 2026, you should consider going beyond basic protection.
- Limit login attempts: This blocks IPs after several attempts that end in failure.
- Add login delay mechanisms: This directly slows down automated attacks.
- Enforce HTTPS-only admin access: This prevents credential interception.
- Restrict wp-admin by IP (if possible): This is especially useful for internal teams.
- Enable detailed login logs: This helps you figure out both failed and successful attempts.
Security Tip #7: Enforce HTTPS and Protect Data in Transit
HTTPS is no longer an optional choice; it’s foundational to WordPress security, privacy, and trust. Without HTTPS, attackers can:
- Intercept login credentials.
- Hijack authenticated sessions.
- Inject a malicious script into pages.
- Manipulate form submissions.
Browsers now warn users if a website they’re about to visit is insecure or not, which can directly impact bounce rates and conversions. This is why we mentioned earlier that having HTTPS is no longer optional at all.
If you want to fully secure data in transit, then you’ll want to do this:
- Force HTTPS site-wide, not just on the login pages.
- Automatically redirect HTTP requests.
- Secure cookies and an authentication token.
- Eliminate mixed content issues.
- Ensure SSL certificates renew automatically.
When it comes to modern WordPress security tips, HTTPS provides benefits for security, SEO, and user trust.
Security Tip #8: Build a Strong Backup and Recovery Strategy
Backups are often seen as a safety net, but in practice, they are a core security control. Even when applying strong WordPress security tips, failures occur due to several reasons, such as zero-day vulnerabilities, human error during updates, plugin conflicts, hosting outages, and malicious changes by compromised accounts.
If you don’t have a quick and reliable way to recover your website, then this process will be slow, expensive, and impossible at times.
A modern WordPress backup system should include:
- Daily automated backups.
- Off-site or cloud storage (one that is not on the same server).
- Incremental backups reduce server load.
- Multiple restore points.
- Routine restore testing to confirm integrity.
Treat backups as part of your WordPress security posture, not just a disaster recovery tool.
Security Tip #9: Monitor for Malware, File Integrity, and Suspicious Activity
If prevention is the first line of defense, monitoring is the early warning system. Monitoring is often the difference between a minor incident and a full-scale breach with SEO, reputational, and legal consequences.
Many WordPress security issues are not clear at the beginning. Attackers often avoid big disruptions and instead go for small but persistent attempts. Common attacker goals include:
- Injecting hidden SEO spam pages.
- Adding backdoors for future access.
- Redirecting traffic conditionally (only from search engines)
- Harvesting credentials quietly.
- Using your server resources for botnets or cryptomining.
If you have no active monitoring, these activities can persist for weeks or months.
The first thing you should monitor is your file integrity. This helps you monitor changes to your WordPress core files, themes, and plugins. Since WordPress core files rarely change outside of updates, any unexpected modification is a strong indicator of compromise.
This is one of the most important WordPress security tips since it lets you know about breaches that antivirus scans alone might miss altogether.
Security Tip #10: Reduce Plugin Attack Surface Strategically
Plugins are, in essence, the core of WordPress, but they are also one of the main areas where attackers focus. In 2026, most WordPress vulnerabilities still originate from plugins, not from WordPress core.
But why are plugins such a liability? There are a few reasons:
- New executable code.
- Additional database interactions.
- New permissions.
- Potential conflicts with updates.
Attackers generally look for sites that have abandoned plugins, plugins with known CVEs, plugins with excessive permissions, and plugins that expose public endpoints.
This is why reducing plugins to the bare minimum you need for your website to run properly is an effective way to increase your security.
If deactivated plugins still exist on the server, then a potential vulnerability might exist in the plugin’s file, especially if you’re not updating it at all.
Make sure to fully delete plugins you are not using and clean the database tables left behind by those plugins.
Also, before installing any plugins, make sure you evaluate how frequently they update, if they support responsiveness, and their compatibility with the latest WordPress version.
Security Tip #11: Secure Configuration Files, Databases, and Server Permissions
Some of the most damaging WordPress breaches occur below the plugin level. Some configuration files and databases contain credentials that can compromise everything instantly if they are completely exposed.
Files such as wp-config.php contain:
- Database credentials.
- Authentication salts.
- Debug settings.
- Table prefixes.
If attackers gain access to this file, then full access to any part of your website becomes trivial.
Improper file permissions are a silent vulnerability. Secure setups typically apply different measures, such as restricted write access to critical files and read-only permissions where possible.
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Security Tip #12: Establish an Ongoing, Documented Security Maintenance Workflow
The most overlooked WordPress security tip is also the most important, and that is consistency.
Security failures rarely happen because, at some point, you skipped a step. This usually happens because:
- Updates were postponed repeatedly.
- Access was never reviewed.
- Logs were never checked.
- Backups were never tested.
In 2026, we must approach WordPress security as a living process. Websites continuously evolve as developers add plugins, users come and go, infrastructure changes, and content workflows expand.
A sustainable WordPress security workflow is not about constant manual effort. It’s about predictability and ownership. Someone should be responsible for reviewing updates, monitoring alerts, verifying backups, and responding to irregularities.
On a monthly basis, users should review WordPress core, plugins, and themes, not just update and forget them. They should evaluate them for relevance and risk. Security scan results and activity logs should be double-checked for anomalies rather than ignored completely.
This is generally where early warning signs appear, long before an incident becomes visible to users or search engines.
The team must also periodically review user access. WordPress sites naturally accumulate users over time, and leaving these accounts active increases the odds of credential-based issues occurring.
Many site owners also assume backups are only relevant and worth doing after something goes wrong, but in reality, backups are an integral part of their WordPress security. Remember, a site that you can restore quickly is far more effective than a site that relies only on prevention.
Get a Secure Website That Also Converts With Blacksmith
After going through this list of the top 12 security tips for WordPress websites, it’s clear that to have a website completely secure and ready for any attack, you need to work on it a lot. Applying all of these tips consistently can set you back dozens of hours every month if you’re not sure what you should be doing.
This is time you could be using on other aspects of your business, so now what?
That’s where we come in. Blacksmith is a Web Development Agency with a group of professional WordPress developers ready to create the perfect and most secure website for your business. From ensuring there is no accessible point of entry for attackers to adding features that will improve your website’s performance, we will work hard to make your website stand out and work well.
Still unsure if a brand-new website is what your business needs in 2026? Don’t worry, schedule a call with us, and we’ll provide you with a free brand and website audit. This way, we can show you the areas where your website might be susceptible to attacks and how we can fix them.
