Best Free WordPress Themes for Medical Business and Personal Blogging

Looking for the best free WordPress Themes? Why WordPress? It is because there is no doubt that WordPress is the most popular and preferred Content Management System platform on the internet.  WordPress has grown in popularity due to the development of its CMS themes that have been created for sites running on WordPress.  Their themes are so straightforward to set up and are the preferred themes for many websites such as blogs, personal websites, portfolio sites, and business sites.

Best Free WordPress Themes

That said, high-quality WordPress themes are not always easy to come by.  This post will provide you with the best themes that have amazing features that will amaze you.  So, let’s go over WordPress themes you should consider for your website.

The Shapely Multipurpose, Full-Screen Theme:

The Best Free WordPress Themes

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This free WordPress theme is so incredible to work with and will improve your web development projects.  Not only is it beautiful but convenient that combines high performance with outstanding graphics.  Adding to that, it is designed to be compatible with all platforms including iOS, Android, Windows, phones, laptops, desktops, and tablets.  It supports high-resolution optical displays and will give you sharp graphics, text, and pioneering vector icons.  This product is flexible for all field enterprises.  You will discover how compatible your website will be with its plugins including Google Analytics, Yoast SEO, Contact Form 7, and Gravity Forms. Shapely has become the most popular choice for a free WordPress theme and will probably continue to be for some time to come.

The Illdy Multipurpose, Flexible Theme:

The Best Free WordPress Themes

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Illdy is a very flexible, unconventional WordPress theme that has been designed and developed for quite awhile now making it the most an all-inclusive WordPress theme available.  Illdy is a potent theme providing a WordPress Live Customizer along with tons of designed widgets, ready to use beautiful icons, and WordPress shortcode.  This theme offers many different layouts and templates.  The theme is excellent for stylish, sophisticated websites of all kinds with robust features that are immediately available and you never have to worry about writing so much as one single line of code.  It works beautifully with all platforms, devices, screen sizes, browsers, and locations.  Your website will always look crisp and clean no matter where someone is viewing from.  Illdy has Contact Form 7 support, Yoast SEO, plugin integration and amazing NextGen Gallery technology.  The only thing you have to do is add your content and then sit back and be impressed!

The Tyche Theme For Shopping & Clothing:

The Best Free WordPress Themes

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This theme is exclusively designed for shopping and clothing niches with tons designing directed toward sales along with a banner and a shopping cart.  You will also have free shipping and subscription log in accounts available for your use.  Tyche is also compatible with the WooCommerce plugin.  It’s designed with titles including Featured, Trends, Most Wanted, and the list goes on.  You will have clean code and a very smooth colored design, and you can easily customize this theme at will!

The MedZone Theme For Medical Niches:

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This WordPress theme is designed for medical institutions and clinics and is perfect for all therapeutic & Medical niches. The WordPress MedZone theme offers a very professional tone for representing an organization.  It also has staff pages, recent posts, and online stores.  You will have a straightforward menu for a blog, layout, and visible sidebar.  MedZone blends technology access along with real-life patient treatment.  It also provides an excellent emergency call system along with an ambulance service.  You will even have quick access, specialized icons that will reflect your services. MedZone is optically ready and designed with amazing Google Fonts.  It gives you a very responsive layout that is flexible for all screen sizes.  You will have unlimited content pages and can set up your appointment formats.  Clients can quickly log in to their accounts, and this theme is WooCommerce and WPML ready! Translate text for your patients and set up your stores quickly and easily.  You will have free, continual updates and support.  The medical world should not overlook MedZone!  Utilize their icons to highlight your most relevant services.

The Newspaper X For Magazines:

The Best Free WordPress Themes

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This beautiful, free WordPress theme has been developed exclusively for magazines and is available for immediate download.  This theme is a bootstrap based theme that is very manageable using WordPress Customizer.  It offers features such as a fantastic banner for placing ads and has four groups that are separated in grids.  These grids include editorial, latest news, world news, and events.  Its search bar will let you quickly view posts and allow you to communicate both on high or low levels.  You will be able to quickly find reference pages for blogs and even a bar with social media buttons.  This is easy to use, simple theme that will never let you down.

Blaskan Is The WordPress Theme For Bloggers:

The Best Free WordPress Themes

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This theme is female-oriented that leans toward lifestyles and other similar topics that women like.  Blaskan is bootstrap based and offers a clean, minimal approach.  Its white color design is perfect for pictures to stand out from.  It also has an author’s area for readers to enjoy along with a 3-column layout for posts that are in a box form.  This is the perfect theme for bloggers who want to incorporate images and still have a clean, streamlined design.

Activello Is A Clean, Simple Theme For Bloggers:

The Best Free WordPress Themes

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This WordPress theme is flexible for blogging while maintaining a simple format.  It is ideal for fashion, food, travel, photography, and other similar kinds of websites.  Activello is very responsive and is mobile-friendly because it’s build using bootstrap frontend framework.  Its full-sized slider is an excellent feature for showcasing your content.  It comes with many options available through WordPress Theme Live Customizer.  It supports all of the most popular premium, free WordPress plugins including Contact Form 7, Yoast SEO, W3 Total Cache, Gravity Forms, WP-Rocket, Jetpack and many, many more!  This theme is e-commerce-friendly and ready because of its built-in WooCommerce support.

Sparkling Is A Free WordPress Theme:

The Best Free WordPress Themes

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You will get a very sophisticated looking site that can be viewed beautifully on any mobile device thanks to its fluid layout and sharp designing. It offers tons of excellent features that you only find on premium WordPress themes.  It supports robust plugins including Gravity Forms Yoast SEO, Contact Form 7, W3 Total Cache and so many more!  You will have a full-screen slider, so you to place your photos and other relevant content.

Breviter WordPress Theme:

The Best Free WordPress Themes

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The Breviter theme has been created with great detail for those who are bloggers or those who are highly creative.  This theme is specifically for those who have original very creative content and want to express their thoughts in a different light.  There are many styles for all different kinds of posts that you want to choose from to communicate to others.  Place your blog-posts in just the right light for your many different effects.  The elements in Breviter are clean and sharp while maintaining a light, airy feeling, and matching the design.  You want this theme if you ‘re going to give your site a new look that is fresh and clean.  This theme offers unique galleries, images, links, and videos to engage your visitors quickly.  Check out Breviter; you will not be disappointed!

The NewsMag Lite Theme:

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This is the perfect solution if you are looking for new ways to showcase your online magazine.  This theme is so flexible that it will work for any niche or market out there.  NewsMag Lite has been developed with tons of fantastic demo website templates that work beautifully for any possible online magazine!  It’s ever so easy to use and even more comfortable to love! These fantastic demo templates can be stunningly customized to fit exactly what you are looking for with integrated features, making your incredible magazine stand out from the crowd.  You will also have unlimited sliders and carousels to showcase your excellent content or featured articles in an engaging presentation.  You will have Google fonts and premium SEO settings that are built right into the theme.  Discover custom logos, and translation abilities that are immediately ready to use.  You will be provided with total WooCommerce support and so many other incredible features.  Web designers from any level of skills can quickly get the most out of all the features available with the NewsMag Lite theme!  On top of all that, it’s free!

Allegiant – The Flexible, Professional WordPress Theme:

The Best Free WordPress Themes

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This theme is flexible, fast, modern, and trendy while offering cutting-edge technology!  This extremely responsive free multipurpose theme will give you a compelling platform for creating an engaging website that will cover many different interests and applications.  You will be given a broad set of tools to help everyone with all different levels of skills and all walks of life.  You will quickly set up and customize your website to reflect your business, blog, or social outlet with excellent quality. Allegiant is a chosen favorite for all businesses because there so many avenues to quickly create your business development including a built-in team member ability to introduce your business’ talented people to your targeted audience with elegant presentations very smoothly.  You will have excellent portfolios that all you have to do is place your high-resolution images, engaging products, and even your professional accomplishments to offer the masses. You will have total control over your layouts and will give you effortless fine-tuning with absolutely no coding experience!  Change around your headers, customize your plugin post styles, sidebars, and everything else with the greatest of ease.  Allegiant has been created on bootstrap making it very responsive along with excellent compatibility for every single device.

Ascendant – The Multipurpose WordPress Theme:

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Due to its excellent flexibility, Ascendant will help you create any type of page from small businesses, portfolios, or blogs.  It is so incredibly adaptable for whatever you are looking for.  Unlike some other themes, Ascendant will offer you several versions to try out – free, pro, or subscription.  Its design is mobile-friendly with a responsive layout every time.  You can play around with the header, the multiple sidebars, and footer to get just what you want.  Ascendant provides WooCommerce compatibility which makes this theme a perfect pick. You will also receive incredible help to set up its many shortcodes to add many unique menu options. The shortcode is specifically for WordPress that will let you do some amazing things such as creating items or embedded files that would typically take a lot of code and experience! This theme is the perfect solution to get started quickly and smoothly.

Sentio WordPress Theme:

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Sentio is a wonderful, brilliant, creative WordPress theme for blogs.  This theme is quite elegant for bloggers everywhere. If you are looking for a theme that spells creative, this is for you!  It is very modern, lightweight, and offers a very responsive interface that will engage your audience with your content.  You will grab their attention with unique posts and specific, individual styles.  Its typography will enhance every single page and the posts that you have to offer.  You will get your message across in an engaging, practical way all the time.  Sentio is an excellent choice for those who want a thoroughly modern look.  Whether you are creative or just an original user, you need to look into Sentio, you’ll be glad you did!

Affluent – The Ingenious, Full-Featured WordPress Theme:

The Best Free WordPress Themes

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This theme has been developed with a broad range of creative capabilities.  It is designed for businesses and commerce to create an online presence for their brands and projects.  This is a chosen favorite among many entrepreneurs because of its smooth, visual, and elegant design that shows a true nature to an owner’s brand in a very memorable way that will grab the attention of customers and potential customers very quickly. Affluent offers sophisticated layouts and setting for portfolios that you can tweak and change around to showcase your projects and brands just the way you want.  This theme is perfect for your marketing endeavors for your products and services and present to your growing online audience.  Affluent offers a WooCommerce eCommerce plugin suite and functional online shopping templates that you can activate with a single click.  Your products will go live very quickly, helping you make your sales.  If your business goal is attracting new customers in a concise period, you should check out Affluent!

Conclusion

Thanks for checking out our list of the best free WordPress Themes currently available on the market. For questions or feedback, please drop us one in the comment section below. Cheers!

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How To Speed Up Your WordPress Site With Caching Plugins & Free Tools

If you are looking to ‘Speed Up Your WordPress Site’; you have landed in the right place. We are going to share with you some information that will help you to speed up your WordPress website, load pages much more quickly, provide a better user experience, and help to improve your SEO. Unlike generic tips for improving the speed of your WordPress, this is an extensive look at WordPress performance optimization.  You will discover why speed is so critical and what is causing your WordPress to slow down.  You will learn the steps you need to take to improve your WordPress speed right way!

Speed Up Your WordPress Site

We will discuss various topics in this post to help you understand why the speed of your WordPress Site is essential.  We will go over the basics for WordPress, easy to follow steps for speeding up our site, installing plugins, the best practices for optimization, how to update our WordPress site on a regular basis, how to create the best images for your site, and fine-tuning your speed with advanced steps. So, why is speed so important for your WordPress Website? Research has shown that the average attention span of viewers has significantly dropped from 12 seconds to 7 seconds. These stats are vital for your website.  You have almost no time to show your visitors what you have to offer on your site and then convince them to stick around.  If your website is slow, you are going to lose visitors to your site even loads up! According to further studies, significant sites such as Google and Amazon have shown that so much as a one second delay in a page loading can cost a 7% loss in conversions, 11% fewer pages being viewed, and a 16% loss of visitor satisfaction. In case you are unaware, if your website is slow, it will cost you money and ranking.  Google and other search engines are penalizing slower sites by lowering them in search results.  In turn, this will lead to less traffic on your site. Bottom line, if you want more traffic, potential customers, and revenue from your site, you must see to it that your WordPress is fast! Unfortunately, many people who are new at having their websites have no idea how slow their information is loading on computers  You must know how to check your WordPress Speed because if you don’t, you are making a terrible mistake!

The Pingdom Tool:

Speed Up Your WordPress Site Because you visit your site on a daily basis, today’s browsers will store your website in caches and automatically collect this information as soon as you put in an address.  This, in turn, will make your site load very quickly.  On the other hand, someone visiting your site for the first time, will not have the same luxury.  Users in different geographical areas will experience something completely different as well.  Therefore, it is highly recommended that you test your site’s speed using a tool like Pingdom.  This is a free online tool where you can check your site’s speed from many different locations! You might be scratching your head because you performed a speed test but haven’t a clue what a good speed is!  By general rule, a good pace is under 2 seconds!  The faster you can make your site operate, the better.  Just an increase of a few milliseconds here and there will shave off as much as an entire second of your load time. You might wonder just what causes your site to slow down.  When you perform a speed test, you will receive recommendations to improve your speeds.  Unfortunately, most of the language is technical and very difficult for beginners to understand.  However, it is important to understand what slows down your site because unless you have this knowledge, you will not be able to improve your site’s performance or allow you to make better decisions. Here are some of the leading reasons why your WordPress site is running too slowly: Your Page Size  – this is usually caused by images that are not optimized for the web. Configuring Your WordPress – your site is not offering caches pages that will lead to an overload on the server which in turn will either cause your site to crash or slow down significantly. Your Web Hosting – This is when your hosting server is not correctly configured, causing your site to slow way down. Your External Scripts – this includes ads, front loaders, and many other factors which will have a significant impact on your sites speed. Bad Plugins – if you have plugins that are poorly coded, it will affect your site’s speed. Ok, so now you know what causes your site to run too slowly so how are you going to speed it up? Your shared web hosting server is a critical factor in your site’s performance.  An excellent hosting server such as BlueHost will take the added measures to optimize your site’s performance.  A shared hosting can have issues as well because you are sharing with many other website owners.  There might be someone whose site is bringing in tons of traffic which can affect the entire server’s performance, causing others to run too slowly. You might want to opt for using a WordPress hosting service that comes with configurations to run on WordPress.  These services also offer automatic backups, WordPress updates, and other advanced security steps to protect your site.

Easy Steps For Speeding Up Your WordPress Site:

We realize that performing changes to your site configuration can be a pretty scary thought, especially for beginners!  You are not alone!  We have worked with literally thousands of WordPress users to improve their sites’ performances. You will be shown how to speed up your site with just a few clicks, and there is no coding required.  If you know how to point and click, you can do this!

Get A Caching Plugin:

WordPress pages are built very quickly whenever someone visits a page or a post on your site.  WordPress must be able to run various steps to find the needed information, put everything together, and then display this information to your visitors.  This can involve many steps that will slow down your site when you have quite a few visitors on your site at the same time.  A caching plugin will make your WordPress site go from 2x to 5x in speed.  Your caching plugin will obtain a copy of the page after it first loads and then provides that cached version to every user instead of going through the whole page generation process every time. There are tons of caching plugins out there for WordPress, but one of the very best is WP Super Cache Plugin.  It’s not difficult to set up, and your visitors will notice the difference right away.  That said, if you are with a managed WordPress hosting service, you will not need a caching plugin, they will take care of it for you.

Images:

Speed Up Your WordPress Site There is no doubt that pictures are essential for a website.  Images will increase a visitor’s interest and keep them engaged.  Adding to that, colored images will cause approximately 80% of people to continue reading your content. Unfortunately, images that are not optimized will cause more harm than good.  These photos will significantly slow down your site.  To prevent this, use a good photo-editing software to optimize your images first.  Using a good software will give you the option to format and compress your pictures to a recommended size.

Image Formats Such As JPEG and PNG:

You might not know the difference between these two forms of images, so here they are: Jpeg is a compressed file format which will reduce the quality of your image but is a great deal smaller than a Ping format.  Ping formats are not compressed, and if you try to compress them, you will lose quality.  A ping format that is not compressed will deliver a much higher quality to the image.  The downside, it’s a huge file, so it will take longer to load.

How To Choose The Right Format For Your Images:

This is pretty straightforward.  If your images have a lot of different colors, go with a Jpeg.  If your images are not that complicated and transparent, go with a Ping. If you do not know how to optimize your images using favorite editing tools such as Photoshop, they have step by step guidelines to help you get your images optimized for the web.

The Best Practices For Performance Optimization:

After you have installed your caching plugin and have optimized your images, you will quickly discover how much faster your site will load.  But, if you want to bring your site to the highest level of speed that is possible, you should look at the practices listed below. These steps are not technical, so you do not have to worry about getting involved with coding.  But using some of these recommendations will prevent your site from slowing down.

Always Have Your WordPress Site Up-To-Date:

Each time you update WordPress, you will get new features and fix any security issues that might come along.  That said, your WordPress theme and plugins need regular updates as well.  As the owner of your site, you are responsible for making sure your website, WordPress theme, and plugins are updated to the very latest versions.  If you stick with outdated versions, you are running the risk of your site slowing down and leaving your site vulnerable to security issues.

Excerpts:

WordPress, by default, will show the full content of each article on your homepage and archives.  This information will significantly slow down your site by showing categories, tags, and other pages.  Another problem, if visitors are viewing articles on these pages, then they have no reason to visit the actual article.  In turn, this will reduce the time your pages are displayed, and the time visitors will remain on your site. Therefore, to speed up your loading time for archive pages, you can quickly set your site to display excerpts instead of the full article.  Just showing a summary will also entice visitors to go and read the entire article.

Paginate Your Comments:

If you are getting a lot of comments, that’s great news!  But, loading all those comments will affect your site’s speed.  In WordPress, just go to Settings, choose Discussion, and then check the box for “Break Comments Into Pages.”

Content Delivery Network:

Earlier, we discussed users are in many different geographical locations and can experience unusual loading times on your site.  The location of your hosting server can have an impact on your site’s speed.  If your server is located in the United States, visitors from the U.S. will experience faster loading times than someone in Germany. Content Delivery Network consists of many servers from around the world.  Each one will store “static” files that make up your site.  These files never change such as images, CSS, and JavaScript.  This is totally unlike WordPress pages that are “dynamic.” If you opt for a CDN, each time someone visits your site they will get those static files from whatever server is closer to their location.  Because CDN is doing most of the work, your hosting service will also be much faster.

Do Not Directly Load Videos To WordPress:

Bad Mistake!  Videos will cost you bandwidth, and you could be charged overage fees by your hosting company, even if you have unlimited bandwidth.  Hosting videos will increase your backup sizes and makes it very difficult to restore WordPress from the backup. Use a video hosting service such as YouTube or Vimeo.  They will take care of working with your videos because they have the massive bandwidth to work with.  All you have to do is copy the URL to your post, and you are all set.

Theme Optimization For Speed:

When you are looking for a great WordPress theme, you need to pay close attention to its speed optimization.  Some grand themes are wonderful to look at but are poorly coded causing your site to slow up.  You’d be better off going with a more straightforward theme and then add proper plugins to get the features you want. Look for premium WordPress theme shops such as StudioPress or Themify that offer great themes that are well-coded and are optimized for speed. I hope this information has helped you understand the importance of increasing your WordPress site’s speed and how you can make it happen.

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A Quick Guide to Publishing WordPress Plugins in the Plugin Directory

The WordPress Plugin Directory is massive, with more than 50,000 free plugins. Should you be publishing a plugin in the WordPress Plugin Directory as well? You probably should, as that would put you in touch with the massive WordPress community and allow you to benefit from a number of free tools and services, such as the plugin description, active installs, stats, support forums, changelogs and much more.

Publishing WordPress Plugins

You will be notified every time there is a new version available and can carry on with the upgrade directly from the WordPress Plugins Screen. Your plugins will be prominently placed in the search engines as well. You can get a lot of free traffic from the WordPress plugin directory as well, which is another thing that goes in its favor. Isn’t that what you are looking for as a developer? Let’s quickly consider the things to be kept in mind when adding your plugin to the WordPress directory… Coding – Read the Plugin Guidelines very carefully before you get started. It has everything you need know about what is allowed and what is not concerning the coding. Make sure that your code is readable and can be understood by other developers. Add comments to the code. Choose WordPress functions rather than PHP functions wherever possible. Features – It always helps to have a genuinely unique plugin from the marketing perspective, even if your plugin offers the same set of features as some of the other plugins, make sure to differentiate it by making it easier to use and providing better accessibility.  Support – The WordPress Plugin Directory has a large community and a popular forum, be sure to participate in it regularly. You will get valuable advice and tips. Updates – It is essential to update the plugin regularly, add a few changes whenever needed. But don’t make a habit of it as that would confuse your users.  Licensing –  Most WordPress plugins are released under the GNU General Public License V2. You should publish your plugin under this license as well. Read this article on GPL licensing to know more. The Plugin Structure – Your plugin will be stored in the SVN repository of WordPress.org. This means anyone can look for a copy, but only you, as the author of the plugin will have the authority to check in. Once the plugin is published, you can either edit or delete existing files or add new files. You can then upload the changes to the server easily. All changes made will be tracked through the method of subversion, which means you can always get the older versions later.  Plugin Assets – The plugin assets are the icons, headers, and screenshots of the plugin. These are PNG or JPG images which you will find on top of the plugin page. The file names of each image will depend on its height or width. The Plugin Header Comment – The plugin header comment is how WordPress finds out that the file is a plugin. It consists of the following fields.
  • Plugin Name
  • Plugin URI
  • Description
  • Version
  • Author
  • Author URL
  • License
  • License URL
  • Text Domain
  • Domain Path

Conclusion

This is just an introduction to the WordPress.org Plugin Directory. Publishing your plugin in this directory is the best way to distribute your work, get free traffic, higher online visibility and contribute to the WordPress community. Hope you’ve found this information useful. In case if you have any questions, drop us a comment below.

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Best Free WordPress Security Plugins For 2018 To Protect Your Website

Are you searching for the best free WordPress Security Plugins to protect your website? You are in the right place! Check out our compiled list to know more!

Best Free WordPress Security Plugins

Website owners are always looking for the best security to protect their sites, their products, and their customers.  Hackers are still looking for ways to get into sections, and one of the leading weaknesses that allow hacking are the passwords.  That said, here are some of the best WordPress security plugins to help you protect your site.

All In One WP Security And Firewall:

Best Free WordPress Security Plugins

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What makes this a great plugin is how user-friendly the interface is for those who are not great at security settings.  The plugin also includes a password tool to help you create a secure password.  It provides a login lockdown feature that will block IP addresses from continually attempting to log in. The firewall feature will block malicious scripts from harming the coding on your WordPress site.  It will prevent hotlinking of images and fake Googlebots from getting on your site.

Wordfence Security:

Best Free WordPress Security Plugins

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This plugin has been used by more than one million sites and offers a free protection from hacks and malware.  One of its features is a two-step authentication which will prevent brute force attacks and strengthens security for users.  If you are concerned that your site has been infected, it has a feature that will scan and let you know.

Antivirus Site Protection:

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This plugin was created to do thorough scans of website files.  It will detect trojan horses, worms, backdoors, fraud tools, adware, spyware, hidden links, rootkits and much more.  Once identified, it will remove the offensive attempts.  Its virus database is updated on a daily basis and any attempts or threats will be detected, allowing you to view them in your admin area and will send you an email to let you know. Your data is scanned using its Siteguarding.com API.

Google Authenticator

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This plugin uses a two-step process when a user logs in to a site.  In the first step, along with entering the username and password, it also authenticates text, mobile apps, and voice call.  Another feature allows it to support security keys plugged into the USB port. The second step is only used once per device; you do not have to worry about it again.  The only time you would use this stage again would be if you log into a second device.

Brute Force Login Protection:

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This plugin does absolutely nothing but protects your site against brute force attacks using .htaccess.  For a specific period, this plugin will block an IP address if someone comes in with the wrong username and password.

The iThemes Security Plugin:

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Called initially ‘Better WP Security,’ this plugin was created by iThemes that creates themes and other plugins for WordPress.  This is an excellent tool for both beginners and those who are more advanced.  It offers a simple one-click installation and provides options to configure more advanced settings from your dashboard. Maintenance is effortless, and the dashboard gives users a checklist of security steps you can take which are rated from low to high priority settings. These are just 6 of the top ranking WordPress plugins for 2017.  We will be adding more very shortly, but in the meantime, these plugins will help you get on your way.  Whether you are a novice or advanced site owner, these tools will help you secure your site and give you great peace of mind.

Sucuri Security:

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It is a beautiful WordPress plugin that is a monitoring tool for specific activities and changes that can potentially harm your site.  It is not an easy tool to use and has been designed for developers and others that are experts in analyzing various logging information.  So, unless you understand coding and file systems, you might want to let someone else operate this tool. Other features in this plugin include scanning malware, monitoring security blacklist, and provides post-hack security steps.

Clef Two Factor Authentication:

<Update> The Plugin was shut-down in June 2017

It is an excellent plugin because it provides an exciting way to login to your site.  Have your Clef app open on your phone, hold it directly in front of your login screen, and then line up the patterns on both devices.  They should be able to detect each other so you can log in to your site. It is an excellent tool for people who can’t remember their passwords or want a more secure way to sign in.  This service has a free or pro version, and they have a mobile app that is available for both iOS and Android.

Bulletproof Security:

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This WordPress plugin addresses three major areas – login, firewall, and database security.  It has a beautiful one-click set up wizard which makes the entire process very quick and easy to set up.  In case if you are an advanced user, you will have access to a manual mode for further fine-tuning.  Its .htaccess security filter is designed to match nuisance and malicious attack patterns. It is an excellent feature for maintaining your website’s speed and integrity.

VaultPress Plugin:

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This plugin is a premium subscription service created by Automattic, the creators of WordPress.  The plugin makes it easy to back up your site on a daily basis or in real-time, syncing all your site’s content.  In addition to backups, the service will scan and remove any threats that are found in your files. You can choose either Backup or Security or get both.  The backup bundle runs $9 a month or $99 a year.  The Security bundle runs $29 a month or $299 a year.

Security Ninja:

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This is a quick plugin to scan your site for any issues.  It takes less than one minute to scan and then will give you a report regarding any security concerns along with links with explanations of the problems and how to take care of them.  It is user-friendly regarding security, but there are other more complicated features.  But in general, all you have to do is click “Scan Now, ” and that’s it! The beauty about this plugin, it will run over 50 different security tests including brute force attacks to ensure your site is safe and secure.  It is also capable of keeping your site safe from “wannabe” hackers, often referred to as “script kiddies.”  If at some point to want to go pro, you will get other features including Malware Scanner, Auto Fixer, Core Scanner, Scheduled Scanner, and Events Logger.  It is a very fast plugin that comes with an impressive list of features that will keep your site safe from all sorts of threats.

Acunetix Security:

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It is a free plugin that comes with a slew of tools.  Directly after activating the plugin, it will go to work searching for any site vulnerabilities.  Once it finds issues that are compromising your site, it will show you where you need to focus into.  The plugin also provides you with different methods to make your site even more secure. This plugin will help you change your password, create file permissions to protect your data, hide the WordPress version you are currently running on, and remove WP Generator META tag that comes along with the core code.  This plugin will make it almost impossible for a hacker to discover if you are a WordPress user or not. You can use this plugin to disable the error information on your login page.  This will make it impossible for a hacker to figure out whether a username or password is wrong.  Also, the plugin will backup your WordPress data.  You can’t possibly ask for more, and the beauty is, it’s free!

Also Read:

Why It is Critical To Update and Use The Latest Version Of WordPress

Why It is Critical To Update and Use The Latest Version Of WordPress

Wondering why you should always update to the latest version WordPress? Let’s face it, the last thing you need is to get up one morning and discover your site has been attacked and is left in ruins.  There are hacking approaches you should be aware of and know how to prevent this from happening to you. WordPress Security is an excellent platform for protecting your site to prevent hackers from turning everything into a mess if you know what you are doing.  Here are some tips to make sure you use this platform the right way.  WordPress has been known for making sites vulnerable to hackers, but nine times out of ten, it’s because the application is not being utilized correctly or you are running on an old version of WordPress.  In many cases, it’s due to weak administration, the lack of knowledge in proper security, and not using the best practices.  Any business can be hacked if you don’t utilize the best tools or are running on outdated versions of WordPress.

Why Latest Version WordPress?

WordPress has been given a bad name from time to time, but it’s usually caused by a lack of knowledge by those using this platform, not the product.  WordPress is running over 30% of websites and offers thousands of themes.  Due to its popularity, it has always been a target for hackers, but that doesn’t have to be if you know how to set it up correctly.  The security people at WordPress are leading experts that range from developers to security researchers.  So, let’s look at some of the security issues and how to prevent it happening.
Latest Version WordPress
Source: sucuri.net

The Backdoor:

The backdoor can become vulnerable to hackers who know how to get around security encryption and gain access to your website.  Once in, hackers can wreck servers and compromise many sites that happen to be on the same server.  Over 70% of infected sites have some form of backdoor entrance. In many cases, a backdoor appears as a legitimate WordPress system file but is not.  They get into databases by finding weaknesses in outdated versions of the platform.  That said, there are ways to prevent these actions. You can prevent this from happening by using various tools that will detect intrusions.  Having a two-factor authentication, blocking IPs, preventing administrative access, and preventing unauthorized execution of PHP will usually avoid threats of the backdoor.

Some Malware To Be Aware Of:

Latest Version WordPress
source: opensolution.org
Pharma Hacks inserts code into old WordPress sites and plugins.  It’s more of spam than your traditional malware.  It can cause search engines to block sites believing the site is distributing spam.  It includes backdoors in plugins and databases by injecting encrypted variants that must be cleaned up quickly once detected.  You can prevent this from happening by using a WordPress Hosting provider and using only updated WordPress installations, themes, and plugins. Brute-Force Login uses automated scripts to exploit weak passwords to gain entrance into sites.  Using a two-step authentication, limiting the number of attempts to log in, monitoring unauthorized logins, blocking IPs, and by only using strong passwords will prevent brute-force attempts. Malicious Redirects creates a backdoor in WordPress installation by using FTP, wp-admin, and other rules of conduct and injects redirection codes.  It is typically placed in WP files in an encoded form directing traffic to a malicious site.  You can use a free scanner that efficiently detects these malicious directs such as SiteCheck, Bots vs. Browsers and by paying attention to user comments.

DDoS Attacks

Latest Version WordPress
Source: Verisign
Denial of Service (DoS) is the most vicious of all of them.  It exploits errors and bugs in code to inundates the memory of the site’s operating system.  Hackers have done this to millions of sites that are using outdated versions of WordPress software with this DoS attack.  In some cases, even the latest version of WordPress can be put in harm’s way, but you can help avoid getting caught up in these actions.  There are thousands of sites being attacked each day.   Using some excellent recommendations can make it a little more difficult for hackers to harm your site.  In general, hackers are financially motivated and therefore less likely to hit small companies.  They lean toward larger enterprises by creating a botnet chain to attack. Keep in mind; there is no such thing as a perfect security system.  One, it’s entirely impractical and is relatively impossible to find.  What security will do, is reduce the level of risk by using the appropriate controls that are available. This will improve your chances of keeping the risks down and preventing you from becoming a target and being hacked. Above and beyond all else, always update your WordPress to the latest version. It will protect you more than any software and will prevent you from the enormous headaches you will face if your site is breached.

Conclusion

We will continue this post with relevant information as software is continuously changing with WordPress and keep you updated on newer threats that will arise. Visit WordPress.Org for the latest update information.

Also Read:

Best Free WordPress Security Plugins For 2018