It seems the hackers have made their way back to my client’s blogs (insert heavy sigh here!). In light of that, I have a few new favorite plugins that may help.

1. Bad Behavior which is just an anti-spam plugin. There are many good anti-spam plugins out there, but this one does it’s job so I’m happy with it.

2. Login Lockdown locks someone out if they get the user name/password wrong too often. You can set the amount of attempts you want them to make (I chose 10 because I tend to change passwords, then forget what I change them to, lol). You can also decide how long you want someone locked out for.

3. Firewall blocks hack attempts. The email alert is pretty scary, but you’ll be glad to see that this plugin is doing it’s job.

4. Bulletproof Security This one protects your site from common hacker attempts. It takes a bit of setting up and may be a bit complicated for many.

After all that, if a hacker does make their way into your site, you can use:

5. WordPress File Monitor which notifies you whenever a file has been changed on your site. You have to watch the emails the first few weeks and whitelist any changes that your system should be making (error-logs, for example). Then when a real hacker has added a file or changed a file, you’ll know immediately. This doesn’t stop hackers, but it allows you to fix what they did before it does any damage.

I install all these plugins on all my clients’ sites. Just recently I “got” to see the Firewall in action when an attempt was made on a client’s site. You know the saying about an ounce of prevention beats a pound of cure…

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