WordPress Security Hardening & Audit.
Access control, plugin auditing, file permissions, firewall rules and monitoring — closing the specific holes that WordPress sites actually get compromised through.
WordPress compromises are rarely sophisticated. The overwhelming majority come from three causes: a known vulnerability in an outdated plugin, a weak or reused admin password, and a shared hosting account where a neighbouring site was compromised first.
That is good news, because all three are addressable without exotic tooling. Security hardening for WordPress is mostly discipline — keeping things current, limiting what an attacker can reach, and noticing quickly when something changes.
An audit tells you where you actually stand, ranked by real risk rather than by what a scanner plugin decides to flag red.
WordPress security work.
Access control
Admin accounts audited, two-factor enforced, roles tightened, login attempts limited.
Plugin & theme audit
Every installed plugin checked for known vulnerabilities, abandonment and unnecessary privilege.
File permissions & paths
Correct ownership and permissions, PHP execution blocked in uploads, sensitive files protected.
Firewall & rate limiting
WAF rules, bad-bot filtering and rate limits on login and XML-RPC endpoints.
Integrity monitoring
File change detection so an injection is noticed in hours rather than months.
Database & config hygiene
Table prefix, debug settings, exposed backups and credentials in the wrong places.
How I approach it.
The uploads folder should never execute PHP
A huge share of WordPress compromises end with a PHP file written into wp-content/uploads. Blocking PHP execution in that directory takes one server rule and turns a successful upload exploit into a harmless file sitting on disk. It is the highest-value single hardening step.
Abandoned plugins are the real risk
A plugin that has not been updated in two years will not receive a fix when a vulnerability is found in it. Auditing for abandonment matters more than counting how many plugins you have — one unmaintained plugin with a known hole outweighs twenty current ones.
Least privilege for users and for PHP
Most sites have more administrators than they need, often including a former developer or agency. Meanwhile the PHP process frequently has write access to files it never needs to modify. Tightening both limits how far an attacker gets after any initial foothold.
Detection beats prevention
You will not close every hole, and a compromise you find in three hours is a nuisance while one you find in three months is a data incident. File integrity monitoring and login alerting are cheap and they change the shape of the worst case.
The process.
Listen
A 30-minute call to understand the problem behind the brief. The fix is often not what you first ask for.
Quote
A real number tied to a real scope — never a copy-paste price list. Sent within 24 hours.
Build
I work in staging, in your repo, with commits you can audit. I send a daily update so you are never wondering.
Deliver
Smoke test together, document, deploy. Then I stick around to catch the edge cases.
What you get with me.
- Prioritised written audit ranked by real risk
- Admin account review and two-factor enforcement
- Plugin vulnerability and abandonment audit
- PHP execution blocked in uploads and correct permissions
- Firewall rules and login rate limiting
- File integrity monitoring with alerting
Questions, answered.
Is a security plugin enough on its own?
It helps and it is not sufficient. Security plugins are good at monitoring and rate limiting, and they cannot fix an abandoned vulnerable plugin, weak credentials or wrong file permissions. Those need doing directly.
Will hardening slow the site down?
Properly done, no — several hardening steps make it faster by blocking bot traffic that was consuming resources. Poorly configured security plugins can slow a site, which is part of what the audit checks.
How do I know if I am already compromised?
Common signs are unexpected admin users, modified core file timestamps, unfamiliar files in uploads, outbound spam, or search results showing pages you never created. The audit checks all of these.
Is shared hosting inherently unsafe?
Not inherently, but a poorly isolated shared environment means a neighbour's compromise can become yours. If the audit finds weak isolation, moving is sometimes the honest recommendation.
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Read moreNeed this built?.
Tell me what you need. I send a real quote based on your specific project — never a fixed price for a problem I have not heard.
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