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Lessons Learned! Take Your WP Blog Security Seriously!

Last night was a great experience with a live webinar from WPSecurityLock! The event was “WordPress Security Webinar: Six Things You Need to Know”. It was hosted by Regina Smola.

Some of the folks on the call were new friends from the recent NAMS convention in Atlanta. We were attending the webinar to learn about securing our blogs and sites. From a poll taken during the event more than half of the attendees had been hacked or had some problems with security.

Here is the key thought for you to take away from my lessons learned; If you are are running a self-hosted WordPress installation on a hosting service, you MUST secure your blog!

Here’s my story…

Last evening, while listening to the webinar and taking notes, I decide to try some of the tips “real-time” and ended up with a login page with errors and unable to login to administer the blog! OUCH!!! This happened near the end of the Q and A portion of the webinar, so Regina graciously offered to assist in helping me fix my site. Over the next hour or so, I quickly learned that she is a true expert in WordPress and we uploaded, downloaded, renamed and tweaked in a valiant attempt to get the login page fixed. Bottom line was it was getting to be a long night and we agreed to adjourn until the next day. Regina emailed me some things to try today and I worked through them in a step by step fashion. However, my login page was still busted.

Flash back a couple of days…. I recently installed an anti-virus plugin to test and had received an email warning to check my blog for suspicious activity. Perhaps I should have paid attention. Now on to the good news!

I was able to turn things around this evening using my iPhone! Yes, there’s an app for this too! I was able to use the WordPress app on my iPhone to access my blog and login and change themes. (I was suspicious that the theme I was testing was the culprit). So after changing the theme I was able to login successfully from by browser. I did not realize how happy I would be to see my that familiar WP Dashboard. Hurray!

I cannot express to you how much I appreciate the help and persistent patience from Regina. She is a true professional and has the heart of a teacher. If you need help installing and securing your WordPress blog, do not hesitate to use her expertise.

So learn from my miscues and get serious about your WordPress Blog Security!

What steps are you taking to secure your site?