more secure WP site: how?

  • ted.byers

    (@tedbyers)


    8 years, 12 months ago

    [ Moderator note: moved to Fixing WordPress. ]

    I have not developed in PHP before, having used mostly C++, Java and Perl over the past few decades. I have the better part of a decade of experience in developing transaction processing systems to support ecommerce. Thus, I had to develop expertise in secure site design (outer firewall => DMZ => inner firewall => vault).

    My objective is to have a local site on which I develop a number of plugins (to support educators who develop new courses – so I’d be using my expertise in instructional systems design (ISD) and evaluation to create a website using WP to support ISD/course content experts). Additionally, I will use (to teach myself WP plugin development using PHP) a little project to support useful creation and management of illustrated stories (the illustrations being cartoons that illustrate a given story line) and contests for authors/cartoonists. I will be using WordPress’ support for multisite hosting. I guess this is basically a request for guidance on secure development and staging, aiming to get that right from the very start.

    My first question is “How does one usefully configure/install WP to use a properly designed ‘site’ that makes full use of inner and outer firewalls, a DMZ and vault?

    My second request is for comments about, or recommendations of, plugins like Duplicator and WP Staging. What do you think of these two plugins? Do they have any very good competition? At the moment, I do not know which of the two (or perhaps some other I haven’t found yet) would best serve my requirements; or perhaps I could make good use of both. Obviously, I will be managing a staging process, but I also require a means to both secure my site and backup all data from my ‘production’ deployment (even possibly allowing the sites I create in my staging multi-site installation to be deployed to different hosts.

    My last question is, for now, is anyone familiar with any good plugins that have been developed for creation of cartoons to illustrate stories or for supporting instructional systems design and evaluation? NB: In this, I am not looking for info that I can get from a google search, but rather actually experience with one or more products supporting either task. The purpose of this question is two-fold: 1) to find particularly apt examples to study, and 2) to plan my own development so I do not waste time reinventing the wheel when I can be more productive extending an existing, good quality plugin.

    Thanks

    Ted

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  • a2hostingrj

    (@a2hostingrj)

    8 years, 12 months ago

    For security: WordFence. It is good for protecting you site against attacks.

    Also, there’s a plugin to change the admin login address, so that you don’t get hit by bots. I also strongly recommend to use Akismet, which protects your site against spammers.

    Thread Starter ted.byers

    (@tedbyers)

    8 years, 12 months ago

    Thanks a2hostingrj

    Noted. And this led me to a number of additional resources that look useful.

    Have you seen any good references dealing with using WordPress with a site architecture involving a well designed DMZ and vault created using inner and outer firewalls. By this, I mean a discussion, based on practical experience, of how to deploy what in which zone of a secure site that uses, frankly, rather traditional and well established site architectures?

    Thanks again

    Ted

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

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