How to install the Wordfence Security plugin

This article describes how to install the Wordfence Security plugin for WordPress.

Installing the Wordfence Plugin for WordPress Security

The Wordfence Security plugin provides many useful features to help secure your WordPress site. To install the Wordfence Security plugin, follow these steps:

1. Log in to your WordPress site as the administrator.
2. In the left-side pane, click Plugins, then Add New.
3. Search for Wordfence Security on the right-hand side.
4. Click Install Now on Wordfence Security.
5. Click Activate.

More Information

About Wordfence

Wordfence is a free WordPress plugin that provides enterprise-level website protection against malware and hacks. Wordefence features a firewall and malware scanner, built specifically by Wordfence, to help protect your site and keep it safe. Wordfence features a Threat Defense Feed that keeps Wordfence up to date on the best firewall rules, harmful IP address and malware signatures.

The Wordfence Firewall

Wordfence uses what is called an “endpoint” firewall. This is better than firewall alternatives because it runs at the server's level. That makes it much more difficult to break encryption, leak data and be bypassed. When you are choosing a security protection solution, you need to pick one that focuses on staying ahead of attackers! You get just that with Wordfence! You get real-time firewall protection against the latest vulnerabilities and threats.

When you use the Wordfence firewall on your WordPress site, the firewall is run before any PHP code on the website. Any time a request is made to your website, the Wordfence firewall will process that request first to make sure it is safe. The request is compared against Wordfence's ruleset to determine if it is in fact safe or not. If the request is deemed unsafe, it is blocked.

This code is run before absolutely everything else. This ensures that neither your WordPress code nor database are actually connected. This ensures a fast determination whether the request is safe or not. This means that a malicious attacker can only hit your site's firewall, and not anything attached to your actual site.

Wordfence Security Scans

The Wordfence plugin scans:

• Core files, themes and plugins for malware
• Bad URLs
• Website backdoors
• Search engine optimized (SEO) spam
• Code injections
• Harmful URL redirects
• Out dated or closed plugins

Any files that are deemed damaged or dangerous can be replaced by a clean, original version of that file via Wordfence.

Additional Wordfence Features

Wordfence is loaded with additional security features including:

• Blacklist site scanning
• Brute force defense
• View the origin of an attack attempt, their IP address and when the attempted attack occurred.
• Leaked Password Protection will block login attempts by anyone attempting to use a password known to have already been compromised.
• Two factor authentication means users need your password and a unique passcode from your smart device each time to access your admin area. This prevents an attacker from accessing your admin area with only your password.
• Defense from over aggressive crawlers.
• Blocking traffic from specific countries known for malicious activity. Thi is a feature found in Wordfence Premium.

Wordfence - Behind The Numbers

The first version of Wordfence was written back in 2011 and was released in 2012. As a mature security plugin, you know you're getting only the best defense for your site! Millions of websites understand this as well! There have been over 20 million downloads of Wordfence, leading to the protection against over 25 million daily attacks.

Get More Wordfence Information

For more information about the Wordfence Security plugin, please visit http://wordpress.org/plugins/wordfence.