WordPress Development: Simple Hacks and Plugins

WordPress is becoming one of the most reliable ways of launching sites. WordPress commands a 61.8% market share among the CMS. Powering more than 30.3% of the top 1000 websites, WordPress makes it very effortless to manage large sites with extremely high-performance requirements.

There is a plugin for every requirement out there. To be exact there are nearly 54,000 plugins with 1.5 billion total downloads. It is important to hire WordPress developers to implement plugins for your site.

Even though WordPress actively encourages users to upgrade to the latest version, not all users have actually done so. Majority of users still use the old version. All users who are apprehensive about upgrading their website are endangering their security and putting confidential information of users at risk.

Here are top hacks and industry best practices for WordPress Developers

Limit login attempts

Security is one of the major woes for WordPress sites. By default, WordPress does not put a cap on login attempts. This allows anyone to try guessing passwords until they get it right. In order to control this menace, it is important to install plugin that allows setting limits on the number of failed attempts a user can make to login.

Adding Custom CSS to a WordPress Theme

WordPress site owners may need to add custom CSS to your site, allowing changing the appearance of things on your WordPress site like colors, margins, and font sizes. The simplest method to add custom CSS to any WordPress theme is by visiting the Appearance » Customize page in your WordPress admin. This will help launch the WordPress theme customizer and you will observe your website’s preview in the right panel.

Immediately click on the ‘Additional CSS’ menu in the left panel to expand it. You will notice a plain text box to add your custom CSS. Immediately, you add a valid CSS rule and see it applied on your website’s live preview pane.

Sticky Floating Navigation Menu

Sticky floating navigation menu comes at the top of the screen as and when a user scrolls down. Select few WordPress themes have this feature as an option in settings. In case you have a theme without this option, then you can try this method. First step would involve, installation and activation of the plugin.

Upon activation, go to the plugin’s settings page located under Settings » Sticky Menu. Add the CSS class of your navigation menu and save changes.

Remove WordPress Version Number

WordPress adds the version in your website’s header. However, some consider it as a security liability. While the simple solution is to keep WordPress updated. In case, you want to remove the WordPress version number, just add given code to theme’s functions.php file or a site-specific plugin.

Top WordPress Plugins

OptinMonster

OptinMonster is one of the most powerful lead generation software for marketing agencies, bloggers, eCommerce websites, and small businesses. If you want your email list to expand, augment your website conversions, and decrease cart abandonment, then OptinMonster is the best option. With drag and drop campaign builder, OptinMonster makes it super easy to create beautiful, effective, high-converting options that are mobile-friendly.

• Integrated A/B Testing
• Device Targeting
• Page Level Targeting
• Geolocation Targeting

Sucuri

Sucuri provides an option to clean and protect websites, giving a complete peace of mind by securing all your websites. The focus is towards fixing hacks and preventing possible future attacks. Right from restoring the site completely to removing any malicious code in your website file system and database, Sucuri is the key to safety.

• Submit blacklist removal requests on your behalf.
• Repair SEO Spam that can cripple your brand in terms of value. With support from an experienced seo removal company, you can mitigate damaging spam signals and maintain a healthy website profile. Ensure your website appears right in search engines.
• Website firewall (WAF) blocks attacks by providing filters to malicious traffic, as well as stopping hackers from ruining the speed up your site.

All In One WP Security & Firewall

While WordPress is taking security very seriously, All in One WP Security & Firewall helps to instill extra security measures and firewall to your site by using a security plugin that enforces industry best security practices. The All In One WordPress Security plugin will take your website security to a whole new level. Written and designed by experts, it is easy to use and understand.

It minimizes security risk by assessing vulnerabilities, and by implementing and enforcing the latest recommended WordPress security practices and techniques.

• Login Lockdown keeps your WordPress site protected against brute force attacks
• Force logout capabilities
• Blacklist specific IPs or IP ranges
• Security dashboard that shows important info like failed login attempts, account activity, and users online

UpdraftPlus

UpdraftPlus is a trusted WordPress backup, restore and clone plugin. Whether it is hacking, server crashes, shady updates or simple user error can ruin your WordPress site. It keeps your WordPress site safe and installed now. UpdraftPlus conducts complete manual or scheduled backups of each WordPress files, databases, plugins and themes.

• Offers the flexibility to set Backup schedules every 4, 8 or 12 hours, daily, weekly, fortnightly or monthly.
• Restore backups directly from your WordPress control panel.

Yoast

Nearly 20,000+ WordPress users can’t all make an error? That’s the number of user people have given the Yoast SEO plugin a 5-Star review in the WordPress plugin repository. With 5 million WordPress users installing on the websites, Yoast SEO does it all. If people can’t find you in search results, they can’t buy from you, right? Search Engine Optimization (SEO) helps you connect with the people who are looking for your products and services.

Yoast SEO helps you with brand awareness, site traffic, social media, pay-per-click ads (PPC), lead generation, and simply about everything that you need to keep your business growing.

Conclusion

We hope this blog provides you interesting hacks and tools that will enhance the WordPress development process, making it streamlined and robust.

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Albert Smith

Albert Smith, Marketing Manager at Hidden Brains, drives brand growth with innovative strategies in web, mobile app, and software development.