Hack Proofing WordPress – Step 1

One of the things that has kept me from starting a blog has been the fact that I’m very much a computer geek and therefore… I like to know what I’m doing before I jump in. Seems kind of counter-productive because as a programmer I spend hours and hours whittling away at code and sometimes, I have no clue as to what I’m doing

So invariably along with figuring out how to backup in case of disaster, getting hacked is a major issue for me. If you had a look at my server logs on several of my dedicated servers managing websites for hundreds of clients, you would see that literally every minute of every day, there is someone trying to get inside my systems. And if you’re on a shared hosting account, you are oblivious to this fact. So doing whatever you can to keep hackers at bay is well worth the time invested in securing up the fortress.

Step number one, should be when you create your wordpress blog, by default WordPress wants to name your tables with a wp_ in front of your name (something like wp_rickthomas), don’t do it. Change the wp_ to something dumb and make a note of it… like pp_ or qr_ or something that can’t easily be guessed based on the name of your site.

That’s step one. I’ll post more under hacking  and blogs as I have time and determine the best practices.