Login Page Security is important
Login page of a wordpress blog is actually very important to keep secure, but unfortunately most of bloggers do not really care about it.
I guess I know why it can be a problem when you secure your login page, especially those who have many blog article authors.
Keeping your login page always in guard can be achieved by using some useful plugins, which I have tested and using it personally in all of my blogs.
So far, I am very happy with the result of those plugins, because they do what they are intended to. (some of my posts that you might be interested: wp-security scan plugin review, security of a Fantastico installed blog, wordpress security, secure wordpress basic tips).
What are exactly the functions of those plugins? Those plugins actually limited how many times someone can try to login to your dashboard. For example, someone tries to get into your admin page using wrong password. For a specific settings, let’s say, after trying to get in for 4 times, and he failed, he will be locked out of your wordpress, and would not be able to get in again, no matter what.
Login Page – My own experience
Having these plugins, can be a bit issues if you have many authors in your blog.
It happened one day one of my Guest Author could not login to this blog’s dashboard, and I forgot I have done something to increase my login page wordpress security.
At first, I did not know what I have done, I wonder why he could not get into the author page.
Then I checked everything, and found out that it caused by my plugin setting that only allow someone to try getting into admin page for a specific times.
I then allowed him to log in manually and all was fixed.
There are many ways to secure your login page, including adding htaccess in your wp-admin folder, but this I will create a post in a seperate article. (related: wp-security plugin scan security)
But two basic plugins can already increase the security of your dashboard.
Two plugins to secure your login page
Now we move to, the two plugins, that I am personally using in all of my wordpress blogs that I have built.
Before you install these two plugins though, I strongly recommend, that you try in your local blog, since you have different plugins than this blogs.
Two posts that might be interests of installing wordpress offline, install wordpress on Mac, install wordpress on Windows.
So here are the two plugins to keep your login page secure:
This plugin is very useful, because it will lock automatically, depending on how you set it, if someone attempts to get into your dashboard.
I notice alot of bloggers use this plugin, and I do too. So far, I am very happy with how this plugin works, although a few times I am myself locked out because of this plugin.
If this plugin somehow locked yourself out, because you forget your password or something, you can disable it via FTP (related: using FTP wordpress) and rename the plugin, like, originally, lockdown folder will be renamed, as lockdown_1.
This will disable the plugin for a while, and then you can login, don’t forget to activate it again, once the locking time is over.
This plugin will record who tries to get into your admin page, and you will see the username they used, date and so forth.
I sometimes checked and there are actually quite a lot of people who really wanted to access my login page.
I strongly recommend that you try these plugins, (see how to install wp plugin tutorial) because they work well with wordpress 3.1.1, after a few days, you will actually see there will be some attempts to access your login page in your wordpress blog.
