Tips and Tricks – How to Secure WordPress
By Lee Thompson in Development, Technology, Tips and TricksAs a hobby, I dabble in WordPress, so I thought I’d share a few security features I use to secure my WordPress blogs as soon as they’re installed. Nothing in this blog will be earth-shattering, but because security is such a priority, I have no doubt that it will be useful to many of our customers. Often, the answer to the question, “How much security do I need on my site?” is simply, “More,” so even if you have a solid foundation of security, you might learn a new trick or two that you can incorporate into your next (or current) WordPress site.
Move wp-config.php
The first thing I do is change the location of my wp-config.php. By default, it’s installed in the WordPress parent directory. If the config file is in the parent directory, it can be viewed and accessed by Apache, so I move it out of web/root. Because you’re changing the default location of a pretty significant file, you need to tell WordPress how to find it in wp-load.php. Let’s say my WordPress runs out of /webroot on my host … I’d need to make a change around Line 26:
if ( file_exists( ABSPATH . 'wp-config.php') ) { /** The config file resides in ABSPATH */ require_once( ABSPATH . 'wp-config.php' ); } elseif ( file_exists( dirname(ABSPATH) . '/wp-config.php' ) && ! file_exists( dirname(ABSPATH) . '/wp-settings.php' ) ) { /** The config file resides one level above ABSPATH but is not part of another install*/ require_once( dirname(ABSPATH) . '/wp-config.php' );
The code above is the default setup, and the code below is the version with my subtle update incorporated.
if ( file_exists( ABSPATH . 'wp-config.php') ) { /** The config file resides in ABSPATH */ require_once( ABSPATH . '../wp-config.php' ); } elseif ( file_exists( dirname(ABSPATH) . '..//wp-config.php' ) && ! file_exists( dirname(ABSPATH) . '/wp-settings.php' ) ) { /** The config file resides one level above ABSPATH but is not part of another install*/ require_once( dirname(ABSPATH) . '../wp-config.php' );
All we’re doing is telling the application that the wp-config.php file is one directory higher. By making this simple change, you ensure that only the application can see your wp-config.php script.
Turn Down Access to /wp-admin
After I make that change, I want to turn down access to /wp-admin. I allow users to contribute on some of my blogs, but I don’t want them to do so from /wp-admin; only users with admin rights should be able to access that panel. To limit access to /wp-admin, I recommend the plugin uCan Post. This plugin creates a page that allows users to write posts and submit them within your theme.
But won’t a user just be able to navigate to http://site.com/wp-admin? Yes … Until we add a simple function to our theme’s functions.php file to limit that access. At the bottom of your functions.php file, add this:
############ Disable admin access for users ############ add_action('admin_init', 'no_more_dashboard'); function no_more_dashboard() { if (!current_user_can('manage_options') && $_SERVER['DOING_AJAX'] != '/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php') { wp_redirect(site_url()); exit; } } ###########################################################
Log in as a non-admin user, and you’ll get redirected to the blog’s home page if you try to access the admin panel. Voila!
Start Securing the WordPress Database
Before you go any further, you need to look at WordPress database security. This is the most important piece in my opinion, and it’s not just because I’m a DBA. WordPress never needs all permissions. The only permissions WordPress needs to function are ALTER, CREATE, CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES, DELETE, DROP, INDEX, INSERT, LOCK TABLES, SELECT and UPDATE.
If you run WordPress and MySQL on the same server the permissions grant would look something like:
GRANT ALTER, CREATE, CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES, DELETE, DROP, INDEX, INSERT, LOCK TABLES, SELECT, UPDATE ON <DATABASE>.* TO <USER>@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY '<PASSWORD>';
If you have a separate database server, make sure the host of the webserver is allowed to connect to the database server:
GRANT ALTER, CREATE, CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES, DELETE, DROP, INDEX, INSERT, LOCK TABLES, SELECT, UPDATE ON <DATABASE>.* TO <USER>@'<ip of web server' IDENTIFIED BY '<PASSWORD>';
The password you use should be random, and you should not need to change this. DO NOT USE THE SAME PASSWORD AS YOUR ADMIN ACCOUNT.
By taking those quick steps, we’re able to go a long way to securing a default WordPress installation. There are other plugins out there that are great tools to enhance your blog’s security, and once you’ve got the fundamental security updates in place, you might want to check some of them out. Login LockDown is designed to stop brute force login attempts, and Secure WordPress has some great additional features.
What else do you do to secure your WordPress sites?
-Lee
