13 Security Tips for WooCommerce Stores Beginners

Running a successful online business involves tons of labor. you'll always be adding products, fixing bugs, and conducting marketing activities. Plus, you'll be worried about your site’s security, as online theft is on the increase.

Security of your eCommerce store must be of top priority, because it involves people logging in and entering their personal details.

For many, WooCommerce is employed to make entry-level online shops. consistent with Built With stats, WooCommerce holds quite 42% of the market share. because the rule goes: the upper the market share, the larger the probabilities of getting hacked. Therefore, it's essential to harden the safety measures of WooCommerce stores.

In this tutorial, we are getting to re-evaluate security measures that you simply should fancy secure your WooCommerce store.

if you haven’t build your WooCommerce store yet check this detailed guide about the way to found out your WooCommerce Store.

1. Keep Everything Updated

WordPress occasionally gets a serious version release after every four months. It also gets regular security fixes as vulnerabilities are detected within the existing core.

It is not always necessary to upgrade to latest version release of WordPress. for instance , if you're currently using WordPress 4.

6.x and WordPress 4.7 is released, it's going to not be compulsory to update to latest version.

However, it's necessary, though, to implement the foremost recent security releases (e.g. WordPress 4.7.2, the last digit “2” indicates security patch version) because it contains major security patches. you'll find complete lists of WordPress versions here.

Apart from updating the WordPress core, you ought to also keep your themes and plugins updated to repair any vulnerabilities in them. Our friends at MalCare has written an in depth guide to update WordPress safely.

2. Use Security Plugins

There are many WordPress security plugins available that help tons in improving the safety of your website. it's recommended to use only one of them on your site. Using multiple security plugins will have dire consequences, like breaking your site entirely.

Some of the highest WooCommerce security plugins that we recommend are:

1. MalCare Security Solution

2. iThemes Security

3. Sucuri Security

4. beat One WP Security & Firewall

5. Wordfence

3. Use Strong Passwords

Most websites get hacked because they use weak passwords. Passwords like “password”, “helloworld”, “myname”, and even alphanumeric combinations are considered weak passwords because a Brute Force Attack can easily crack the username and password combination of your website.

To encourage stronger passwords, WordPress comes with a built-in feature “Better Passwords” that generates a robust password for its users.

4. Use a special Username Than “Admin”

Like passwords, using commonplace admin usernames, like “admin” or “storename”, may be a bad practice. Combining a robust password with an admin username that's hard to guess can provides a hard time to hackers.

To change your current “admin” username, you'll got to create a replacement admin user and log in thereupon and delete the old “admin” account.

To do this, log in to your WordPress admin, navigate to User -> Add New, create a replacement account and assign Administrator from available WordPress user roles. then , sign off and log in with the new admin account and delete the previous account and associate all previous posts to the new admin user.

5. Hide Author URL

Each time you create a user you get a URL like websitename.com/author/myname. Finding usernames from authors’ archives eliminates one step from hackers checklist. He just must crack the password.

It is recommended to vary the authors’ archives URL from the username. It are often easily changed by customizing user_nicename under the wp_users table.

6. Use a Secure Hosting

Along with making your WordPress application secure, it's critical to protecting your hosting server if you've got your servers by adding firewalls, using strong SSH username and password, and changing permissions on critical files amongst other things.

If you're hosting your ecommerce store on a hosting provider, confirm that the host is using server-level security. Cloudways provides managed WooCommerce hosting. What meaning is, we lookout of the server security and nullify any attack on servers. We also provide SSH and SFTP access and confirm all the communication between you and our servers is encrypted.

7. Add SSL Certificates

Adding SSL to your WooCommerce store is important , especially on the checkout and account login and creation pages. As sensitive information is being exchanged between the user and website, it's vital that the knowledge travels over an encrypted channel. Google Chrome also starts marking Non-SSL sites as Not-Secure.

Adding SSL on your website could be complicated on many hosting providers. On Cloudways, you'll quickly add an SSL on WooCommerce store. that's not all; you'll have many SSL-protected stores on an equivalent Cloudways-managed cloud server.

After SSL is installed, navigate to WooCommerce -> Settings and enable “Force Secure Checkout”.

8. Always Keep Multiple Backups

Keeping backups of your websites must be amongst your top priorities. you ought to always keep multiple backups of your site. it'll offer you a peace of mind, as you'll easily restore your bug-free website quickly.

You can automate WooCommerce backups by employing a UpdraftPlus plugin and make a backup policy.

On Cloudways, we have already got a backup system, and therefore the good thing is you are doing not got to pay extra for it. By default backups of all of your websites are taken once each day , but you'll set the frequency of backup storage. We even allow hourly updates. Plus, you'll easily restore your website to the previous version by just clicking a button.

9. Use a Premium Theme with Support

If you're serious about your ecommerce business, then it's better to take a position during a Premium theme that comes with technical support and frequent updates. you'll find top-of-the-line WooCommerce themes on ThemeForest or WooThemes or buy directly from popular theme providers, like TeslaThemes.

10. Disable Edit Files from Admin

Another security measure you'll take is by disabling the Edit files from the WordPress admin. If a hacker gains access to your WordPress admin, you don’t want him to edit the files freely from the admin panel.

You can easily disable the edit files option for all users by adding the subsequent line of code to your wp-config.php file.

1. define( ‘DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT’, true );

11. Limit Login Attempts

Many security plugins that i discussed include the likelihood of limiting login attempts. Restricting the amount of login attempts to your admin panel will block attackers and is that the first line of defense against the Brute Force Attacks.

12. Disable Pingbacks and Trackbacks

You don’t got to use this feature for your WooCommerce store. it's better to disable them, because it are often wont to perform low-level DDoS attacks or send automated spammy notifications to your website.

To disable trackbacks and pingbacks, just add the following line of code to .htaccess file.

13. Use a Secure Database Password and Change Database Table Prefix

Just like using a secure WordPress admin password, it is necessary to use a secure MySQL database password and username.
Also, you can change the default “wp_” WordPress database prefix to something else. Changing the prefix is a small security measure.

13 Security Tips for WooCommerce Stores Beginners