9 Practical Tips To Secure Your WooCommerce Store

Unlike a physical store, an online store offers more opportunities to attract visits. Visits that end up in sales and bring you more profit. But, with it, you also have more possibilities of being attacked. Certain people with not-so-good intentions can carry out particular actions in your online commerce that you are not going to like.

You might overlook those actions, but they can harm you, your visitors, and your business for a long time. As they say, It's better to prevent than to cure. And "everything that has to be done" is what we will teach you in this article.

Note: Implementing the tips given below, you will not offer a hacking-proof online store, but you will add extra security that will come in handy if someone tries to breach.

#1 Choose A Quality And Reliable Hosting

Although it may seem wired, many people insisted on setting up an online platform with WooCommerce on very unreliable servers. Those that are strangely cheap and took weeks to answer an email. Results? An eCommerce store with poor loading time and poor technical characteristics that any hacker can access.

So, how do you make the right choice? Well, any server will fail to satisfy one parameter or the other. We recommend focusing on two main things :

• Quality support service

• Quality technical characteristics (SSD disks, specialization in WordPress, etc.)

Tip: Value quality over price. Go for top-notch premium servers over cheap. The price you will pay will offer a very high return on investment in the long run. Also, like the hosting, only go for a reliable woocommerce design agency.

#2 Use Passwords That No One Can Guess

Forget about the old password naming formulas - password1234, qwerty1234, your street name, number, etc. Today there are many solutions to generate and manage super-secure passwords. Do a search on Google for an online password generator and look for a good password manager, so you don't forget any. Use the tool to generate one for you but don’t use it as it is. Do some amendments like change a digit in the middle or beginning. And under no circumstances use the same password for everything.

#3 Hide the Author's URL

The first thing that a hacker will do is try to crack a user’s password with an author, editor, or admin role. When creating a new user in WordPress, the URL is always the default:

yourdomain.com/domainname/username

Ideally, in this case, enter the WordPress database of your WooCommerce, and edit the user_name (role name) in the wp_users table.

#3 Keep Everything Up-to-date

Here we are not only referring to updating all the plugins and the template or framework you use to the latest version. But also carry out all the necessary actions to keep the "core" of your WooCommerce healthy on a daily basis.

This means that you have "up to date" all these actions:

• Update your plugins.
• Update WordPress itself.
• Remove products that you do not use.
• Update your template.
• Fix bugs.

Note: if you have customized any plugin or template, if you update them and have not re-added the custom code to the new versions, whatever you have "customized" will be lost.

For example, always remember to use a child template to make changes to the CSS in said "child theme,” plus any changes that PHP requires in the functions.php file of the same child theme.

And in general, when updating, do not go "blindly" updating. Check the new versions especially, if they are vulnerability updates. Also, ensure that they are compatible with the version of WordPress you are using. The best thing is to only go for the security updates. For the rest, if they are not very important, do not update them.

Expert Advice: Take help from a woocommerce development agency if necessary.

#4 Use Competent Security Plugins

There are many plugins related to the security of your website. There are even security services that you hire monthly, and they take care of everything.

Depending on how much you want to spend or how important your website is, decide which specific plugin or security service you want to use. We are not putting any security plugin name here so as not to confuse you. But what we can tell you is that, whichever you choose, keep only that one. That is, do not use several security plugins on your website at the same time, thinking it will be more secure.

#5 Keep Constant Backups

If your hosting makes daily, weekly or monthly backups, perfect. But we also advise you to do them yourself, especially if you have a lot of activity on your website or make important changes to it (development and updates).

For this, you can use any backup plugin or do it manually by downloading files and databases from your server, from cPanel, and phpMyAdmin.

#6 Don’t Be So Obvious

Do not use obvious administrator usernames like "WordPress first" or “admin” or the “name of your store.” These are easy to guess and one of the first things hackers try. Well, most of you might know this, but this was important to mention for those who missed this security measure.

#7 Use Professional Templates With Live Support

If you have read several articles of ours, surely you have an idea of ​​how little we like the theme templates sold in marketplaces. It’s not that they are not good, but they have always given us problems in the long run due to lack of quality in code.

Focus on customer service and the support of the tools you use for your clients or your website.

Avoid templates that are super attractive and attractive at first glance, but then you see them "without makeup,” They are another template completely different. And there is nothing you can do about it as they don’t have a customer support window. And even if they have, they do not respond.

Advice: Focus on learning to use a specific framework, and become an expert on it. Or hire a reliable wordpress woocommerce agency and let them work for you.

#8 Embrace SSL Certificates

Adding SSL certificates to your WooCommerce online store is essential, especially when paying for your products. When your customers take their credit cards out of their pocket, the least they expect is the security of their credentials over your server. Also, if you don't have an SSL certificate, Google already warns (very subtly) your customers that your website is "not secure."

Adding SSL certificates is sometimes tricky. Here, the good support or customer service of the hosting that you hire comes into play.

#9 Disable Pingbacks And Trackbacks

Read this support article on WordPress pingbacks and trackbacks by Wordpress if you don’t know what they are. After reading, you will understand why it is good to disable them as a security measure. These elements, or let's say, these WordPress functionalities, leave doors open to possible external attacks on your website. Besides, if you use WooCommerce as the central element of your website, you will not need these functionalities at all.

#10 Limit Login Attempts

There are specific plugins like this one (WP Limit Login Attempts), which limit login attempts in your WooCommerce store. This is good against “brute force” attacks, in which a robot continually tries to enter your website by trying different usernames and password combinations.

# 11 Use A Secure Database With A Changed Prefix

This is, of course, very obvious, but we must remember it anyway. By default, WordPress creates the database with the prefix wp_. You can change this during installation or after the installation is complete. Some security plugins come with this option incorporated. However, we recommend changing it manually from the beginning if possible. Because mostly, there is a configuration error with such security plugins.

Lastly, A Bonus Tip: Enable Two-Step Authentication

If you are not satisfied with a username and password that are very difficult to guess, we recommend using the 2FA. Two-factor authentication is something not new for WordPress. The functionality is the same as the two-step authentication of an email login. To know how to enable it, there are many tutorials on the Internet on this.

Conclusions

With an online store, you can have thousands of customers if you have the right strategy to reach the maximum number of possible leads. However, you must also take care of its security with these key takeaways:

• Your WooCommerce store is your temple that helps you earn your daily bread. Don't settle for leaving it at the WordPress default security.
• If you get involved a lot with your website, hire any WordPress consultant to do a small "audit" every then and now.
• Create a backup copy of your website, and install this copy in another WordPress installation.

"Play and experiment" by using the above eleven tips, and you will have a more secure WooCommerce than before. See you in the next one!