Today I finally did something to secure my blogs. Like so many others I just used “admin” for my user plus my password. Except everyone uses “admin”… and the hackers do know that. So all they need to get into your blog is the password. And most of us are not too clever with coming up with hard to break passwords.

Now if you’re like me you probably know that “admin” is not secure but after you make a blog you have no idea how to change that “admin” to something more secure. It’s the only User that you can’t make a change right on the dashboard. Which is a bummer since it seems like the only way to fix it is to start all over.

Why You Need to Secure Your Blog

And that’s no picnic either. I’ve had to do it more than once when someone hacked my blog in the past. Now I use a backup system so at least I can recover quickly. But still, that’s extra work. And since we only have so much time in the day having to backup takes out other work we could be doing.

And if you’re like me you probably have to watch the videos that come with any backup system to remember how to do it. Right now I’m using two different backup systems. The first is Backup Buddy and the other is WPTwin.

The downfall with Backup Buddy is the license is only for one year. Now my Backup Buddy still works but I get that little notice saying the plugin is out of date. I actually like Backup Buddy best for backing up my blog since it’s real easy to use to recover my blog.

I’ve even used it to move my blog from http://themultimediaguy.com to http://bchambers.com recently. Made moving real easy.

WPTwin also will let you backup your blog plus is easy to create a new blog with all the same information as your original one. This is really a good tool to clone your blog and sell it to others.

You can check out Backup Buddy at http://boblikes.info/backup and WPTwin at http://boblikes.info/cloneit

Secure Your Blog

Now back to the issue of securing your blog… there are a number of things you need to take care of to protect your blog. Changing your login User name is only one of them. I got a program called WPSecure from Jason Fladlien and Wil Mattos. Well worth the cost to have peace of mind when you log off from your blog.

Just one of the things I learned from Jason and Will was that there is a simple plugin for WordPress that allows you to change your “admin” login. Called “Admin Renamer Extended”, I used this plugin to change my user name to something that others are not using. You can find it in your WordPress Dashboard by going to Plugins > Add New > and searching for “Admin Renamer Extended”.

There is a caution since this plugin has not been updated for about two years. It will probably tell you that it’s not compatible for your copy of WordPress. What you need to do is have a test blog that you can use with this plugin to make sure it will work with your main blog. And of course, you will want to backup your blog before making any changes.

If you’re interested in more items to protect your blog you might want to checkout Jason and Wil’s program at http://boblikes.info/wpsecure This is a video training program that gives you step-by-step directions on where to get the tools you’ll need (most are free) plus how to install them.

I hope this helps you secure your blog. Stopping hackers is worthwhile. And if you make your blog harder to hack than others those hackers will move on to easier pickings.

And I do highly recommend some type of automatic backup system for your blog… one that automatically backs up your blog without you doing anything.