Do You Want to Know the Basics of Blog Security?

Whether you’re just writing about your kitten Fluffy’s daily adventures or update a serious corporate blog for shareholders, your blog’s security should be something to consider. Hackers and other unscrupulous people may want to break into your blog for many reasons – whether for fun or to steal your files and passwords or to turn your popular blog into a marketplace for male performance enhancement drugs. Take for example the case of blogger Robert Scoble, whose popular blog, Scobleizer was hacked. Scoble lost about 2 months worth of posts, and the attack on his blog actually exposed a vulnerability in WordPress’ security system. So everyone should at least know the basics of blog security.

Whatever the reason, make sure you’re protected by keeping the following tops in mind:

Practice common sense – never, ever share your passwords with ANYBODY, keep your software updated, and always back-up your files. These are the basic things everyone should do, yet still not all of us follow.

Be careful of installing themes and plug-ins – it’s fun to play around with your blog and put all sorts of bells and whistles on it, but every user should be wary of all software readily available on the web. Don’t just download and install – do some basic research on the authors and make sure you have an anti-virus installed. Also, by installing tons of plugins, you could potential slow down the loading time of your blog.

Manage your permission wisely – while most blog programs have a good default permission settings, it’s still good to give it a once over to check who can do what on your blog (especially if you have multiple bloggers on one site.) Decide who really needs authoring privileges and who needs admin privileges (for the latter, it really should only be you.)

Install security software – depending on your type of usage, you should install some sort of software that will keep your blog sealed tight! For personal blogs, then some free software already offered by your service provider should be enough. There’s probably no need to invest in industrial-strength plug-ins that record IP addresses of everyone who logs in or monitors your blog 24/7, unless your blog becomes very popular or you deal with corporate blogs or fairly controversial topics.

These are just some of the beginning steps you can take when thinking about blog security. There are other advanced tips and tricks you can do behind the scenes and with your code (which we’ll be discussing in another blog post.) Remember not to be too careless with your blog and minimize your exposure to security risks.

If you have other security tips, I’d love for you to share them in the comments section.

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About the author

Terri Brooks helps entrepreneurs “overcome the overwhelm” of using online and social media marketing for their business. She understands their fears and feelings of confusion when it comes to marketing on Facebook, Twitter and blogs and shows them ways of Tasting The Internet…One Byte at a Time.