Unless you downloaded your plugins from a third-party source, you can easily update your plugins by selecting the plugins you want to update. Using too many plugins slows your site down it also introduces another potential access point for hackers to access your site.Įven if these plugins are disabled, they stand a chance of compromising your site. If the plugin changed owners before the latest update, you might want to look for a more secure plugin to take care of the tasks your old plugin handled. Your plugin may have unwanted extra features that the developers didn't advertise on their plugin page. The vendor has a terms of service and a privacy policy. If a developer hasn't updated their plugin in a long time, it will have vulnerabilities that hackers will expose to gain access to your site. The developers are actively pushing updates and security patches. If anything has a chance of going wrong, you'll find out about what went wrong in the review section. There are a lot of reviews, and almost all of them are 4-5 stars.ĭouble-check the ratings and reviews of each plugin. Look at the number of installs before you add it to your site.
Plugins and themes become deprecated, obsolete, or have bugs in them that leave your entire site wide open to bad actors.įor each plugin you want to install, look at this list of criteria to ensure this plugin is relatively safe to use: The plugin has a large install base. Here are some tips you can follow to keep your WordPress site safe from intruders. However, you don't need to be a tech wizard to keep your WordPress site safe. This lack of priority leaves users running old plugins that now have a variety of security holes.
To make matters worse, many WordPress users don't update their plugins as often as they should. WordPress engineers are working with plugin vendors to patch the leaks, but the responsibility ultimately lies with a constellation of independent development companies. The problem isn't with the core WordPress engine, but with the plugins people install on their sites.