Change your default WP ADMIN and ID - SECURITY

byenstinemuki

1.4K followers

6 years ago

We all know when it comes to WordPress, security is on top of the list.

There are some malicious visitors out there who spend their time trying to break into your site and bring in down for some wicked reasons.

We can make things tough for them in many ways. But let me quickly give you two things to do and why.

1. Change your default admin username
   
2. Change your default admin ID

I see lovely members here asking how to change the default admin username and almost no one cares about the admin ID.

Look, if you simply go ahead and change the username without given it a higher random ID number, a hacker can easily get the new username from the default ID which is 1 and I will show you how.

If the malicious attacker does not know the admin username, he has to guess both the username and password during a brute force attack.

This means the chances that the attack will succeed are much less and the attack will take much longer to complete, and the longer the attack takes, the more the chances of you or the hosting provider identifying the attack, which is exactly what you want.

A brute force attack is a trial-and-error method used to obtain information such as a user password or username. In a brute force attack, automated software is used to generate a large number of consecutive guesses as to the value of the desired data

Here is why you need to also change admin ID from 1 to a higher random number.

If you simply change the admin username, here is how anyone can effortlessly get the new username using the default ID.

He's simply going to your blog and type this in the browser:

https://www.yourblogurl.com/?author=1

Wordpress will redirect him to this

https://www.yourblogurl.com/author/superadmin/

and you see the new superusername at the end of the url.

I know you can use plugins to limit login attempts to 3 or 5 to block any user trying several failed attempts. But changing these elements takes you a step ahead in securing your business.

So How do I change these 2 elements?

1) Go to the database and manually effect the changes. But this is the hard way and must not be dared except you are familiar with the database environment.

2) Use a plugin.

I use iThemes Security on some of my blogs for this.

NB: Always make sure you run a backup of your db before doing any changes that affect it