No-one wants to see their blog hacked, a random message on the home page, messages deleted, links to unsavory websites across the website and so on. So it is essential that you take a few sensible safety precautions with your blog to protect it.

As the most popular blogging platform seems to be WordPress, I’ll talk from the WordPress point of view, but on the whole the safety issues will apply equally well to any blogging platform that you use. With some platforms, for example Blogger, you won’t be in control of various aspects like most recent versions, but there are plenty of tips that apply.

1 ) Keep Up To Date
If a new version of the blogging software is released, it is for a reason. There may be new features, but there may also be extra security releases. So update your blog to the latest version of the software as soon as you can, especially if you are on a version of WordPress older than 2.8.4 as there is a worm that can attack these versions.

2 ) Protect Your Machine
The same also goes for your own machine, keep the virus protection up to date and a firewall running. Try to avoid using unsecured wifi networks and internet cafes that you aren’t sure about.

3 ) Maintain Your Username
Everyone who uses WordPress knows where the logon screen is – many themes actually link to it! And the default user id is Admin, so it is quite easy for hackers to run a script against your blog that starts trying likely passwords.

To prevent this, sign on as admin, create a new username with an admin role, sign off, sign on as the new username and then delete the standard Admin account. When you delete it, you should get the option to move all posts over to your new name. Now hackers have to guess username and password.

4 ) Create An Author Username
If you might be posting from third party wifi networks and computers, then setup a new username and just give it author access. Use this whilst you are away and if the networks aren’t as secure as they can be and someone gets the logon details, they can only edit the new posts and submit new posts. Earlier posts and the admin of your blog is secured.

You can move the posts back to your main username once safely back on a secure computer.

5 ) Change Your Nickname
The biggest clue that you haven’t deleted the Admin user is that all posts are from Admin. To prevent hackers from working out your new admin user name from looking at name attributed to the post, go to profiles and give your username a different nickname. Then in the next box choose to display your nickname, rather than the username.

6 ) Don’t Use Obvious Passwords
If your username is unguessable then you are a long way there, but also make your password strong. Look at the indicator when you type in the password. A combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers and maybe a few odd keyboard characters.

7 ) Don’t Display Versions
Remove from the footer of your theme any displays of version of theme or WordPress that you are using. If you are late updating to the new version, you don’t want to be telling hackers!

8 ) Spam Protect Your Blog
Make sure that the Akismet pluggin is installed, activated and you have entered the key to run it. But don’t give spammers a clue about how successful Akismet is at detecting their spam by displaying how many comments it has blocked.

9 ) Use A Backup
Search the plugins database for a backup plugin that works for you and use it regularly. If you are hacked, then as long as you have a few of the most recent versions of the blog backed up you will be able to recover all posts and settings.

And lastly, keep reading about security as when new security loopholes are found, someone somewhere will plug them. If you want to keep up with the latest on How to Prevent Someone Hacking Into Your Blog or you just want to find out more about starting a new blog, then do call over to our website for more up to the minute information.

Keith Lunt

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