Keeping your WordPress site secure is more important than ever. Trust me, it’s easy to let security slide but once your website gets hacked, it’s so hard to fix it and get it back to normal.

It would be smarter to protect your site from the get-go.

Now I know security might sound complicated. When I first started with WordPress, it was overwhelming to learn everything plus figure out how best to secure my site.

So I’ve created this comprehensive guide for you with that in mind.

It breaks down everything you need to do into easy-to-follow actions. The goal is to help you build strong defenses against attacks and malware. I’ll explain everything in simple terms and highlight the most important steps to keep your site safe.
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Do you need SSL for your website or can you do without it?

You absolutely need SSL installed on your site if you want to run a website these days. It’s so important that Google expects it to be the default state of a website.

If you don’t have a valid SSL certificate, Google and other search engines won’t even show your site in search results. So it’s unlikely anyone will find your site organically.

SSL has become mandatory because it makes sure any data sent to and from your site is encrypted, making sure that hackers can’t steal it.

If you look at the address bar at the top of this page on our WP101 website, we have a valid SSL certificate and you can view this by clicking on the barrel lock icon in the address bar. You’ll see that the ‘Connection is secure” along with a padlock icon.

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