We are well aware that WordPress websites are there in large numbers on the internet. Data shows that at least 90,000 attacks are executed on these websites every minute. Have you ever heard of brute force attacks? It is one of the most commonly used attacks to crack open the way into a website. And 5% of the web attacks work by brute force attacks. So it is essential to tighten the login security by hiding the WordPress login page.
The login page is like a locked door to a website, and hackers are the lockpickers, and it is crucial to prevent brute force attacks by hiding the WordPress login page. But how exactly does brute force attack works? How can you hide your WordPress login page? Find out more in this article.
Why Should We Hide The WordPress Login Page?
If you buy something precious and don’t want someone to steal it, what would you do? You pack it up and safely place it in a locker in your bedroom. You add a complicated pin to the safe so that no one will be able to guess it easily. Now consider the same, but the precious thing is your website and, the locker is the login page.
However, assembling a set of characters and figuring out the login credentials is easy for a hacker. Hence, we must provide additional protection to the login page.
How Do Brute Force Attacks Work?
A brute force attack is more like a trial and error method. In this attack, the hackers will guess the usernames and passwords of the websites. This type of attack will involve multiple login attempts. They try all the possible credentials until they can gain access to your website. Brute force attack will be extremely easy for the hackers if you use a username like “admin” and a password like “1234”.
The more complex the credentials are, the harder it gets for the hacker to succeed with the brute force attack. However, we can never compromise the safety of our website. So, adding another layer of protection by hiding the WordPress login page will be helpful.
How To Hide The WordPress Login Page?
Hiding the WordPress login page is very simple and doesn’t take much of your time. WordPress security plugin Hide My WP lite is a free version of the premium plugin Hide My WP. We can easily hide the login page of any website with the help of the Hide My WP lite plugin. We can hide the login page in two ways; hide by changing the wp-admin URL and hide using a specific key.
Hide The WordPress Login Page Using Hide My WP
Follow the below steps to hide your login page:
1. Select the plugins section on the left of your WordPress and choose the “add new” option.
2. Search for “Hide My WP lite” in the search query on the right side of the page.
3. Once you find the plugin, install it.
4. After the installation is complete, activate the plugin.
5. Now, go to the installed plugins under the plugins section. Find the Hide My WP lite plugin and select on settings.
6. The settings page will show you the two ways in which you can hide your login page.
7. If you want to hide the login page using the URL path, select the “Hide using the path” option.
8. Once you select the option, you can add a custom tag “Xyz” to the URL, like an extension, at the Login URL query box. For example, if your website URL is https://examplewebsite, then after customizing the URL path, the new URL will be https://examplewebsite/Xyz/.
9. Now save settings. However, do not forget to store the URL somewhere safe. So that you don’t lock yourself out of your website if you don’t remember the URL.
10. If you want to hide your login page using a specific key, select the “Hide using specific key” option.
11. Add a key of your liking to the login-specific query box. Suppose your key is “1234”, the new URL will be https://examplewebsite/wp-login.php?hide_my_wp=1234
12. If someone uses a wrong URL path or key, you can redirect the person to a 404 page or any page of your liking because you can customize the redirect page as well.
If you liked the Hide My WP lite, you would find the premium plugin Hide My WP useful too. Cyber attacks are not just limited to brute force attacks. Various other attacks can seriously impact your website and, you might face dire consequences. Here are some features of the Hide My WP plugin:
- It lets you hide or rename the themes and plugins folders.
- It can hide your WordPress.
- It helps you change WordPress permalinks.
- It will help you hide the login page of your website to prevent brute-force attacks. This feature will help you set up a login query and login key.
- It has a firewall that can block attacks like SQL, XSS, CSRF, read arbitrary files, and brute force attacks.
- It informs the user about:
- Value (How they hack you?)
- Page (Which plugin did they use?)
- Impact (How dangerous is that?)
- IP/ users (Where are they from?)
- It will assist in hiding or renaming WP-admins.
- It will disable direct access to PHP files and directory listing.
- It will let you minify HTML and CSS.
- It will allow you to change anything in your source code.
- It has anti-spam included.
Summing It Up
- Brute force attacks are common attacks that hackers use to force entry into a website. This type of attack involves guessing the usernames and passwords of a website to gain access to it.
- Not taking good care of how we manage our login page can result in brute force attacks. To prevent this kind of attack, we must hide the WordPress login page.
- Hiding the login page of a website is uncomplicated by using the Hide My WP lite security plugin. The hide My WP lite plugin will allow us to hide the login page in two ways. One is by using the URL path, while the other is by adding a specific key to the URL.
- Hide My WP is an advanced security plugin that will protect your website some various security threats. It gives all-day protection and blocks lethal attacks, including brute force attacks.