WordPress Security

WordPress is a complex ecosystem of open source code from developers of custom plugins, widgets, and themes that extend the CMS core functionality. All of the code used in the WordPress platform is tested and peer reviewed by security professionals who include programmers from Automattic, experts at enterprise corporations in IT, and academics in computer science. 

Development companies offering WordPress solutions used by millions of websites in production regularly release security updates and patched code that must be applied to the installed plugins, widgets, & themes on a website.

With over 25% of the sites on the web running WordPress, there are also thousands of malicious scripts targeting outdated versions of the CMS with the ability to potentially inject malicious code onto a server.

Some of the customized web security solutions developed for the WordPress CMS platform include:

• User management including anti-spam filters
• Automated malware and anti-virus scanning
• Network intrusion with DDoS attack protection
• Single Sign-On & Two-Factor Authentication
• HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS)
• WordPress optimized firewall protection

Each individual WordPress website will need to develop a security configuration that is based on the particular network hardware & software installed on the web server.

Many hosting companies offer managed WordPress platform security which includes automated updates for the stack software as well as anti-virus, advanced firewall, anti-spam, and brute force intrusion protection. 

Taking advantage of pre-installed PaaS solutions for WordPress security on managed hosting plans can save a lot of time & money for independent publishers and small businesses.

WordPress website owners will also need to install and enable SSL encryption in order to comply with newly introduced web browser standards. On most webhosts this involves the generation of a set of unique public and private encryption keys for each domain on the server. 

Some SSL/TLS certificates may also require a dedicated IP address to operate correctly in all web browsers or use wildcard settings for multi-domain support. 

HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) will force https views in the web browser for all pages. Proper configuration of https settings is vital for conducting ecommerce transactions or managing user data with WordPress.

“It is important to schedule at least one MySQL database backup per day that can be used to restore a website in case of any errors.”

WordPress core & plugin updates can be automated on most servers, but it is still important to check the administration panel frequently and apply all third-party developer security patches to the installed codebase. WP site owners can benefit from the availability of a reliable web hosting with 24-7 technical support. 

Best practice is to make regular file and database backups of a WordPress website that can be used to restore services exactly in case of any data loss, server outage, or CMS script malfunction.

Because of the prevalence of automated spam & malware bots which can use the comments, sign-up, and login forms of a WordPress site as vectors for MySQL injection attacks, WP site owners need to install user management features on production websites to screen for potentially malicious activity. 

This can include establishing fake honeypot settings, Akismet anti-spam on new account registrations, captcha tests on forms & comments, etc. Other third-party modules are available for improving password, cookie, anonymous and registered user security for WordPress.

Here’s how to choose the best security for your website

Some managed WordPress hosting platforms include automated malware and anti-virus scanning of an installed codebase to search for corrupted scripts in file uploads. Others include advanced firewall support and protection for the WordPress login page in order to guard against network intrusions. 

This can also be accomplished by limiting the number of logins permitted to a user. Single Sign-On and Two-Factor Authentication plugins increase the level of WordPress platform security for popular sites with many registered users.

Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) requires the use of a code received by the user via SMS, phone call, or email. This can include integration of a third-party API service like Google, OpenID, Clef, or Stealth for user information verification. 

Single Sign-On (SSO) through Jetpack or other services allow users of WordPress.org to easily login to other domains with the same account information and password. Not all hosting platforms will support 2FA & SSO, requiring advanced web development skills to implement.

Automated file and database backup systems can be included as part of the stack software utility set offered by a web hosting plan, or set up through third-party plugins in WP administration. 

It is important to schedule at least one MySQL database backup per day that can be used to restore a website in case of any errors. File backup systems can be more complex and require more off-site storage space to maintain. 

There are a wide variety of competing products for file & database backup systems from software companies in the web hosting and WordPress development ecosystem.

Hosting Server Performance: Important Elements In WordPress Hosting

Web server hardware configurations are determined by processor speeds, the number of available cores, the amount of installed RAM, and the type of file storage options (SSD, HDD, RAID, etc.) that can provide different levels of web server performance at comparative price levels. 

With shared hosting accounts, a domain has access to just a small fraction of the total resources of a web server that may be simultaneously hosting thousands of other active domains. Low density servers with a guaranteed lower rate of registered active domain accounts can improve website performance, as well as premium hardware quality and network traffic optimization. 

PaaS/IaaS products like cloud hosting and managed WordPress hosting packages combine hardware & cloud data center optimization techniques with unique software tools and utilities that can be used to assist professional WP web development.

Many WordPress users are choosing to change from Apache web servers to Nginx for better performance times and support for more website traffic on the same hardware. When the number of simultaneous users exceeds what a shared hosting account will support, WordPress website owners migrate to VPS hosting or dedicated server plans. 

However, the largest WordPress sites scale to support far more traffic than even a single web server instance or VM can provide, leading to elastic cloud hosting platforms and network server clusters with load balancing & database synchronization. Advanced page caching with Varnish Cache & Nginx is available pre-configured on some managed WordPress hosting plans. 

Shared hosts often include the option for free CloudFlare CDN integration, which can further increase web server performance by caching frequently viewed or accessed pages internationally.

“Even the DNS server response times have an impact in determining a website’s pagespeed and overall performance.”

Web server performance starts with premium hardware, which will influence shared, VPS, and dedicated server plans with higher benchmark levels of processing speeds. SSD storage performs on average 20x faster on I/O data transfers than HDD storage. Premium hardware must be combined with software stack optimization on the web server as well as load balancing on network traffic. 

Even the DNS server response times have an impact in determining a website’s pagespeed and overall performance. For the best results, it is required to do multi-level caching with WordPress on the MySQL database, PHP processes, and file storage that also includes compression of HTML, JavaScript, & CSS files served to web browsers. 

Memcached, OPcache, APC, Varnish Cache, & Nginx can be used together to scale WordPress to hundreds of millions of users per month. CDN services can be used to start web page load times in less than 100 ms.

Most of the major IT companies and web hosting are now offering cloud hosting and managed WordPress hosting plans as PaaS products that include advanced page caching, network load balancing, and web server performance optimization pre-installed/pre-configured at affordable prices for small business websites. 

High traffic WordPress sites that need to scale with elastic cloud servers have an increasing number of PaaS/IaaS options for production solutions available including public, private, hybrid, and managed cloud services. 

The combination of premium hardware, low density Nginx servers, multi-layered caching with Varnish, APC, OPcache, Memcached, etc., running WordPress under PHP 7.x settings with HHVM, and cloud load balancing on network traffic in the data center can combine to create the most optimized performance for high traffic websites that need to scale beyond 10 million monthly page views. 

Virtualization and elastic cloud replication of WordPress websites works together with version control to enable the publishing of continually new app code to market through distributed online WordPress programming teams.

Important Elements In WordPress Hosting

Calculating the bandwidth requirements for a WordPress website depends on the application, community traffic, amount of media embedded in the web pages, and many other factors. Most small single-user blog sites use less than 30 GB in monthly transfer. Popular websites built on WordPress regularly use between 100 GB and 1 TB of bandwidth per month. 

Most VPS and dedicated server hosting plans have upper limits of 5 to 10 TB of data transfer per month. Websites serving more than that level will need to pay extra for the bandwidth, depending on the account plan. Many web hosting offer “unlimited” bandwidth offers primarily targeted to low traffic site owners.

File caching, CDN integration, and CSS/JavaScript compression on HTML page requests can take further bandwidth strain off of web servers. Media streaming websites, software sites with frequent application download requirements, and image archives with large databases have all been built around custom block storage solutions integrated through APIs to lower cost service providers in the cloud. 

It is important for WordPress website owners to understand the difference between bandwidth transfers from the MySQL database and file transfers from the web hosting account storage partition, as well as how this difference can relate to the throttling of websites on shared hosting plans under peak traffic conditions.

Important Elements In WordPress Hosting

Cloud hosting accounts frequently offer a “pay as you go” approach to bandwidth which includes a fixed rate for each GB of transfer and billing only for the exact amount of data sent or received. This can be compared to the “unlimited” bandwidth plans of many shared Linux and Windows web hosting which allow for unmetered monthly file throughput.

Websites with more than 20-30 simultaneous I/O requests from users continually for more than 90 seconds will usually lead to a website getting temporarily “slashdotted” or taken offline on shared hosting due to the data transfer spikes. 

Since most shared hosting plans cannot operate without this feature, WordPress site owners who need to manage large traffic spikes are required to implement either a VPS/dedicated server solution with increased hardware resources or an elastic cloud hosting account that can scale automatically to manage the peak user traffic activity.

WordPress Installation Process Important Elements In WordPress Hosting

Installing WordPress largely depends on the provided system resources available to manage the web server and the experience of the administrator. In practice, WordPress can be installed either manually or through “one click” installers like Softaculous and Fantastico. 

cPanel users can access the MySQL Database tools, File Manager, FTP, and other utilities to install WordPress manually. Softaculous and Fantastico simplify the process by creating a MySQL database automatically and uploading the core WordPress release files to the server.

In order to manually install WordPress:

• Download the latest WordPress CMS release files.
• Upload the zip file via FTP to the web server root folder for the domain.
• Unpack the files using File Manager or the command line.
• Create a new MySQL database & user on the web server.
• Record the MySQL database name, user, & password.
• Open the domain root address in the web browser.
• Run the auto-installation script, entering the required information.
• Choose the admin account name & email address.
• Configure the site name, slogan, logo, & other settings.

cPanel users can navigate to Softaculous or Fantastico and skip the database creation steps above, entering the required administration information in a single installation screen. 

More advanced users can import an entire WordPress database into phpMyAdmin or use the command line & WP-CLI to manage new website installations.

After WordPress has been installed, a new website can be constructed by activating themes, plugins, and widgets to add new design. Use the WP Admin section to create new content, manage pages, create menus, or embed widgets in sidebars. 

WordPress offers almost unlimited flexibility in expanding for social networking, ecommerce, & blog publishing.

• Important Elements In WordPress Hosting
• Managed WordPress Hosting
• What Is a Managed WordPress Hosting?
• Managed WordPress Hosting

Managed WordPress web hosting comes in a number of varieties and typically includes an optimized web server software environment with advanced page caching functionality and a suite of utilities. 

Some web hosting companies simply offer cPanel, Softaculous, and a LAMP environment, which is all many people need to install and manage a single-user WordPress site. Others offer a custom development subdomain for testing and staging WordPress websites as well as the WP-CLI command line utility tool. 

The most advanced managed WordPress hosting plans, from specialists like others include custom platform creation which offer Nginx servers, Varnish Cache integration, with additional forms of advanced caching like Memcached, OPcache, & APC pre-installed and optimally configured on premium hardware. Many of the specialist WordPress hosts also have a custom WP distribution or plugin developed for proprietary platform integration.

“Many times, web hosting companies are also offering premium hardware, low density servers, PHP 7, HHVM, free SSD storage upgrades, and other new features”

The advantage of managed WordPress web hosting plans is that they include the Varnish Cache & Nginx server configurations used to scale the largest websites in the world to support hundreds of millions of users at an affordable cost to retail clients on the PaaS product model. 

Where advances in “big data,” enterprise data centers, and devops support for the largest media websites in the world lead to best practices with WordPress hosting these companies then make the same software stack configurations available to small business owners and independent publishers under managed WordPress web hosting plans. Many times, web hosting companies are also offering premium hardware, low density servers, PHP 7, HHVM, free SSD storage upgrades, and other new features on their managed WordPress plans with HTTP/2, SPDY, CloudFlare, RailGun, etc. 

Since it can be quite expensive for businesses to hire experienced WordPress developers and systems administrators to build custom Nginx & Varnish Cache solutions, managed WordPress web hosting plans can be a good upgrade for site owners looking for better website performance and pageload speeds but who do not want to invest too much in custom web development solutions.

• Choose the best WordPress Hosting Provider
• Why Do You Need Managed Hosting?
• Managed WordPress Hosting

Managed WordPress web hosting plans offer enterprise-level solutions to website owners that make the latest innovations in cloud hosting, data center operations, and web server administration available under affordable costs to the retail consumer market through PaaS/IaaS product models. 

These plans synthesize the best practices for WordPress hosting based on industry support requirements and then simplify the required integration of the stack software & WP plugins to offer a low cost hosting product optimized for WordPress CMS sites.

There are significant performance gains on individual pageload speed and overall web server operations that can be found by hosting WordPress on Nginx web servers over Apache, which can be further compounded through multi-layered caching using Varnish Cache, Memcached, HHVM, APC, OPcache, etc. Managed WordPress web hosting plans present a completely integrated platform with premium hardware, load balancing on network traffic, reverse proxy server software, and multi-level caching for best performance of the CMS under scale. 

It often makes sense for small businesses and independent publishers to save the time, effort, cost, and experimentation required for custom solutions by buying the complete PaaS product from a managed WordPress hosting vendor, often at a price only slightly higher than standard shared Linux hosting with cPanel.

Managed WordPress Hosting

Where managed WordPress web hosting can make another strong impact is in enterprise-level support for high traffic websites and mobile applications. Outsourcing IT operations to the cloud can save money for businesses vs. the purchase and local expense of the hardware, as well as the cost of the in-house staff to manage the data center 24/7

Data security is important to every business, where professional data center managers at web hosting companies often can outperform through daily specialization in operations. Managed WordPress hosting platforms have been developed by the same people who are programming for the WordPress core codebase and who are supporting production operations for enterprise websites that need to scale to support over 100 million users per month at the highest levels of publication. The managed WordPress plans offered by web hosting and specialist agencies are tested under strain with client sites at these levels of web traffic. 

The same stack technologies, focused primarily on multi-level caching and Nginx, are then made available to anyone to improve their WordPress site operations at an affordable cost of entry. Managed WordPress plans outperform shared hosting plans by a wide margin and can be scaled with system resources like a VPS account to match the expected traffic requirements of a production website.

“The managed WordPress plans offered and specialist agencies are tested under strain with client sites at these levels of web traffic”

Some managed WordPress web hosting services also offer elastic cloud scalability that is available under PaaS/IaaS structures. Websites and mobile applications at this level of popularity and service use can consider the amount of money saved by using a managed WordPress service vs. building a custom hosting solution on VPS, dedicated, or elastic server hardware independently. 

When compared with the cost of employing qualified and experienced systems administrators to build out and maintain a complex WordPress site with Nginx & Varnish Cache integration, managed hosting platforms can save thousands of dollars for many website owners by offering these stack snapshots pre-configured. The integration of a development subdomain for testing and staging site changes can be another benefit of a specialist WordPress hosting plan.

In summary, for enterprise-level web development, cloud hosting, platform management, and advanced multi-layered page caching functionality, look for a managed WordPress hosting plan with built in Varnish Cache & Nginx integration, as well as options for Memcached, PHP 7, HHVM, & CDN support. By taking advantage of the pre-existing experience of some of the most qualified experts in WordPress development, online businesses can save a lot of time, money, trial & error by hosting their production websites on a managed WordPress cloud plan.