Chapter 6. 10 Must-Do WordPress Tasks

WordPress would be pretty safe, straight out of the digi-box, but if it has an Achilles heel, that's its popularity, making it an irresistible target for hackers. They see the swathes of default-set sites as a wheel of fortune. They also know how it works and how to attack it.

In response, what we have to do is to up the ante.

But you know all that, so let's get on with it. Here's the order of play:

1. Locking it down

2. Backing up the lot

3. Updating ... shrewdly

4. Neutering the admin account

5. Correcting permissions creep

6. Hiding the WordPress version

7. Nuking the wp_ tables prefix

8. Setting up secret keys

9. Denying access to wp-config.php

10. Hardening wp-content and wp-includes