Security tips for your Joomla website
August 20th, 2014
Website security has become the talk of the internet. With security loopholes discovered almost every other day, we know you’re concerned about your website. We recently shared a few easy ways to secure a Drupal website and this time we want to talk about a few tips to secure your Joomla website.
Tips to secure your Joomla website
1] Updates: Your Joomla website and the supporting extensions should always be updated. Updates add more features or a security patch which is essential for your website in order to block any possible loop holes. These updates are generally very easy to install and won’t take much of your time. Think about this, it’s easy to update your website and it’s components than to figure what caused your website to crash and rebuild it again. Remember to take a backup before you apply the updates.
2] Delete unwanted extensions: Keep only those extensions that are required for your website, the rest need to be deleted. Many beginners tend to try a lot of extensions to see how it will help them with their website. Only a few extensions end up actually giving value to the website, the rest are just lying there with absolutely no additional benefit to the website. They simply take up your hosting space and can also become a potential threat to your website if they are not regularly maintained (updated).
3] Use strong login details: We are all aware that we need to set up strong passwords to secure the login page but we also need to setup an equally strong user name. The default usernames are generally ‘admin’ or ’administrator’ which are vulnerable to brute force attacks. Think of usernames as passwords and make it strong and not easy to guess. This way you’re adding another barrier for an attack on your website’s login gateway.
4] Setup right permissions: A very important tip to secure a Joomla website is setting up correct permissions for your website’s files and folders. We recommend setting the permissions of the folders to 755 and the files to 644. If you’re not aware on how to make changes to the permissions then you can check out this blog post. Never use 777 for either your files or folders as this gives read, write and execute rights to everyone.
5] Security extensions: If you need an easy solution to take care of your website’s security then you can utilize one of the many security extensions available. You can try jSecure security extension, which covers a lot of security features that you will need to secure your Joomla website.
These tips should be good enough to give you a head start in securing your website. We would love to know of any security tips that have worked like a charm for you. Don’t forget to share them by leaving a comment below.
