Adjust WordPress username URL: On the internet, there are 60 million WordPress websites. It is no surprise that the most common CMS is WordPress. Being common attracts positive as well as bad publicity. And speaking of inadequate focus, every day, WordPress websites appear to undergo 90000 hack attempts every minute. Therefore, irrespective of whether the platform is large or small, hack attempts on the websites are inevitable.
In order to hack a WordPress website, hackers use several methods and brute force attack is one such technique. Hackers repeatedly send HTTP requests to wp-login.php for these types of attacks before access is obtained or the server crashes. By making multiple repetitive HTTP requests, they congest the hosting server ‘s memory. And if the attacker does not succeed in reaching the website, the server is always forced to its capacity, which may lead to a possible collapse.
A effective brute force attack gives the WordPress dashboard admin access to hackers. The admin field is a WordPress operated website’s administrative centre. The platform will be entirely managed by someone who has direct access to the admin. Hence, it is necessary to defend your admin area from external hack attempts.
To secure your WordPress admin login page from imposing a single username, using a solid password, and introducing 2FA two-factor authentication, there are many things you can do. Changing the current WordPress login URL to a new personalised admin URL is one of the most recommended ways to avoid attacks on the login tab. Exactly how does it help? Let ‘s explore it!
Changing WordPress Username URL: Rewards
Protection Against Brute Force Attacks
One of the most common forms of hack attempts made on WordPress websites were brute force attacks. It requires guessing the login credential combination before the right combination is discovered. Hackers need to know three things successfully to pull off an effective brute force attack: username, password, and the URL of the login page.
Username and Password
It’s easy to see that having solid passwords and special usernames is good practise. If it’s easy to guess the code, so the hacker just has to work on cracking the password. But a special username makes the hacker ‘s work a lot more complicated. Similarly, using powerful passwords will protect against attacks by brute force. The attributes of good passwords are as follows: the password needs to be very long and a mix of higher, lower and special characters can be used. Using passphrases that are 15 characters long, many security experts prefer. The catch is, login pages usually do not allow passphrases to be used.
Preventing the use of familiar terms or publicly known information is one of the things to prevent when creating a new password. Any of the first guesses that are attempted during brute force attacks are familiar terms. And if you happen to be directly hacked, the hackers can go to considerable lengths to find out about your username and password from the information on your website.
Login Page URL
Normal awareness is the layout of WordPress files. This ensures that even an outside customer has some understanding of the site’s internal workings. “In this situation, all WordPress websites have a default login page that looks like this:” www.example.com/login.php. This simplifies a hacker ‘s work because they know how to find your login page and can initiate an automatic attack quickly. Therefore, it would be hard to reach your home page if you change the WordPress login URL. Programmed autonomous bots execute most brute force attacks. They will move on to a new goal after being unable to locate the website login page.
Hides WordPress Vulnerabilities
WordPress has more than 60 million websites, making it the most popular WordPress platform on which to create your website. WordPress is not absolutely healthy, in spite of its popularity (and also because of its popularity). Rather than any other CMS, hackers attack WordPress.
In view of WordPress ‘s success and open-source existence, reports about a flaw spreads like a wildfire. And this flaw is being abused by malicious hackers who initiate attacks on hundreds of thousands of WordPress websites. Your login page acts as an identification card that informs hackers that your WordPress site has been created. You effectively isolate yourself from established WordPress core concerns if you modify the default admin URL.
Rebrands the website for login
You have to admit that if you own a membership website, the registration page that allows members access to your website is a little underwhelming, given they pay good money to access it. Rebranding the login page would be a smart move from a company and customer loyalty viewpoint. To make it much more aesthetically appealing, you should adjust the default login page.
This are the reasons that virtually all plugins in WordPress support modifying the default URL for login. It is a fair measure of protection.
Given its potential profit, your domain is not necessarily secure after you update your WordPress username URL. Let’s take a look at some of the pitfalls associated with this unique security measure to highlight this point.
Change WordPress login URL: Disadvantages
Does Not Reduce Server Load on Site Server
The page will be loaded over and over again while your WordPress login page is under attack. Your server services are exhausted by this. Your default login page is not found when you change the WordPress login URL (where you effectively rename wplogin.php), and the website generates a 404 error. This is normally regarded as a lightweight reply. This means a lightweight reaction that does not absorb server properties. The fact, though, is that WordPress always implements most of its codes on the page, even though a page is not identified.
That’s just how it works on WordPress. Thus, the energy end up getting depleted. Therefore, despite what other people may think when you configure the WordPress login page URL, the load on the server of your website does not decrease.
It is not very hard to locate a new URL
The theory is that this stops a hacker from accessing your login page when you update the WordPress admin URL. There are some WordPress plugins that help you do that, including WPS Hide Username. It provides a URL for an auto-generated login page. Chances are, the same URL is used for a website using the same method. Chances are that the hacker knows the URL format this method indicates. This means the hacker can detect it right though you cover your site’s username. Therefore, even after modifying the WordPress username URL, the WordPress site is not inherently covered in any way.
Other Possible Repercussion
Another concern that emerges by switching the default login URL to a custom URL is whether users are not adequately informed. Sudden improvements without previous data to your username URL will prove to be quite inconvenient. Stuff will add to confusion with many users locked out. It could have cost you a couple of days of work. It is your duty to post information about the latest WordPress login page URL. Send an email notifying users about the latest custom login URL if you do want to go ahead and update the WordPress login URL. Sending email updates on the flip side of the same situation can prove to be a tragedy if the hacker already happens to have a credible WordPress user account on your website. Changing the WordPress username URL seems useless in this situation.
We hope that this article has helped you determine whether or not you want to update your website’s WordPress URL. It would certainly add to your protection to have a custom WordPress login URL.
We have a reference ready if you decide to update your WordPress login page URL.
How to change the URL of your WordPress Login Page?
We use the WPS Hide Login plugin to modify the URL of the login tab. The plugin has over 30,000 active installations and over 700 five star ratings at the time of writing this.
Step 1: Update and activate your WordPress website’s WPS Hide Login plugin.
Step 2: Go to the WordPress dashboard after you have triggered the plugin. Just scroll down. Pick WPS Hide Login from the WordPress Settings.
Step 3: Under the ‘Login URL’ option, type your current login URL. Then ‘Save Updates’ then.
It’s that. Your username URL for WordPress is new now.
Completion
That said, one of the many ways to obtain a stable WordPress login and protect your WordPress website is to adjust the WordPress login tab.
Other protection tips or steps you can take include using SSL certificates, introducing two-factor authentication and HTTP authentication, modifying the database prefix, blocking WordPress theme and plugin editing, stopping users from downloading and upgrading themes and plugins, imposing FTP use, modifying protection keys, hiding the ‘wp-config.php’ file, prohibiting IP addresses, blocking IP addresses, and changing security keys. But you have to backup the site before applying any of these strategies. You can easily recover a backup to get the site up and running in no time if anything goes wrong. For more WordPress guides on our blog, stay tuned.