In this installment of this tutorial about keeping a wordpress blog secure I'll share tricks about wordpress accounts. Without further delay, let me start listing tricks you need to know to keep your wordpress blog from getting hacked, by a hacker or a programmer.
I would suggest to create at least one account in each category for yourself to get an idea about there abilities. It will also, help you in understanding how these type of accounts help keeping hackers away.
- Display Name & Login Name: Display name is like stage name, that is when a user writes an article on your blog and publishes it, the name shown to outside world is known as display name. Login name is secret and only known to admin and actual writer. When you create a new account for author or editor in your blog, make sure you have different identifiers (names) for display name and login name. In wordpress, by default, display name is same as login name. When you keep them different, it will make harder for hacker to guess login name. You can refer to previous episode (https://www.seoclerks.com/forum/th...ure-part-1.2757/) of this tutorial, to understand how to change username from display name.
- Wordpress accounts: You should know about various types of accounts wordpress offer to you as its customer. You need to use one or the other type of account based on requirement. Following are the pre-defined types of accounts in wordpress,
- Super Admin: The person who has access to everything ! It includes permission to access site network administration features. This role is handy if you have more than one blog under one account.
- Admin: The user who has access to all administration features (like adding new post, deleting new post, editing a post, installing plugins, etc.) within a single site/blog. So, if you have only one blog under one account, then Admin = Super Admin.
- Editor: A user with this type of role can manage (add, delete and edit) all the post in a blog. He/She will have the ability to modify others post as well. It is similar to moderator role in a forum.
- Author: User who can add, publish, delete or edit his/her post only. So, editor is just one step ahead in hierarchy. Similar to a normal user who post in a forum.
- Contributor: User who can add, delete and edit his/her post but not publish those post. It is similar to scenario which we see in moderated forums, were user post something and we see message from board that post will be published once moderator approves your post.
- Subscriber: A user who has only read only permission ! He/she can't modify any post wordpress blog.
- Super Admin: The person who has access to everything ! It includes permission to access site network administration features. This role is handy if you have more than one blog under one account.
I would suggest to create at least one account in each category for yourself to get an idea about there abilities. It will also, help you in understanding how these type of accounts help keeping hackers away.
- Use Different Accounts: Create a separate account, with lower permissions than admin like author account, for posting through public computers. Sometimes you might want to share a quick thought with your viewers, but you don't have access to your personal laptop or desktop. In these situations, you tend to use your friends pc or go to cafeteria to share your thought. Suppose you use your admin account and your friends pc or public pc is compromised, then you might loose your admin account and your blog as well. So, always use some account which has less permissions than admin to post through public PC/laptop.
The tutorial on keeping wordpress safe doesn't end with this installment. I'll come back with 3rd chapter soon. So, stay tuned to Webmaster Tutorials.
