How to Limit Login Attempts in WordPress (Step by Step)
How to Limit Login Attempts in WordPress? (Step by Step). In this post, we will explain how to limit login attempts in WordPress using the plugin.
WordPress is a secure platform, but it doesn’t guarantee that your site will be immune to break ins. Your website is prone to face brute force attacks when a bot or human hackers try to breach inside through your login page by attempting various usernames and passwords until it works.
You can restrain their attempts by limiting the WordPress login attempts and ensuring that your website remains secure by multiple logins or breach attempts on the login page.
The default setting of the WordPress login page enables the user to log into your site with zero restrictions on the attempts, but you can change it.
But how? How to Limit Login Attempts in WordPress? (Step by Step). Let’s find out.
Why Should You Limit WordPress Login Attempts?
The brute force attack is a trial and error to bypass the WordPress website login barrier. It can hack your website to steal vital information for different purposes.
The common type of brute force attack is guessing the password using automated software that applies millions of password combinations to gain access to the website.
No restriction on the login attempts on WordPress sites makes it easier for the automated software to guess the password in no time. You can control the number of failed login attempts and temporarily lock the users after five failed attempts.
It removes the chances of effective brute force hacking attacks and ensures that you can keep your data, business, and online presence safe and secure.
You can also add a new security layer to your WordPress website that can ensure you minimize the losses and prevent your website data from getting compromised.
As most legitimate users require a few login attempts, you can limit the unnecessary freedom that the hackers can exploit. Now, let’s dive into understanding how to limit the login attempts.
How to Limit WordPress Login Attempts?
Multiple steps can ensure that you limit your WordPress login attempts, but we have filtered a few straightforward and effective steps.
1. WordPress Limit Login Attempts Plugin
With WordPress, you get access to hundreds of professional plugins that can streamline your website management process. You can install a professional WordPress limit login attempts plugin to help add a protection layer to your website entry.
You can use different plugins, but we recommend you a free, and easy to use Limit Login Attempts Reloaded plugin because of:
- It’s easy to use
- Cost effectiveness
- Wide usage
Irrespective of the ease of use, the plugin offers various configuration features and handy extras that can help you increase your effectiveness. You can install and activate the Login Attempts Reloaded plugin on your WordPress website and easily explore its functionalities.
2. Customization of Plugin’s Settings
Once you activate the plugin, it starts its work. The default setting of the plugin restricts and locks out the users after four guesses.
If you want to add more customization to the process, you can change the functionality work from the settings area.
You can access the area by clicking the Settings and Limit Login Attempts.
Under the Statistics section, you can see the number of ‘lockouts’ that occurred because of the plugin. The section will be empty at the start, but after a while, you can check the number of brute force attacks the plugin was able to halt.
You can also check and customize the lockout system under the Options section. It includes deciding how many guesses the plugin can allow, the length of the user lockout, and different factors.
It also allows you to activate a GDPR compliance setting that will obfuscate the recorded IPs for different privacy reasons.
You can also find the sections labeled as Whitelist and Blacklist. You can enter the specific IPs and/or usernames within the boxes.
Once you enter the details in the Whitelist, the user can enter the log in details unlimited time, and the plugin won’t lock them out from your login page.
But if you add user details on the Blacklist, you’ll permanently lock them out. It can be helpful when suspicious activity rises from one or more specific IP addresses.
You can save the changes within the settings that can help you implement the changes and ensure that you limit or restrict unwanted attempts or intrusions from hackers using different modern day hacking techniques.
These are the easy steps to limit login attempts on the WordPress website. But not all security strategies and tactics are right for your WordPress website, so is limiting the login attempts good or bad for your website?
What is the security perspective of Limiting Login Attempts in WordPress (Step by Step)? Let’s find out.
Is Limiting Your Login Attempts Advisable?
You may have a brief idea about the advantages of limiting your login attempts, but let’s discuss the flip side of the coin and understand the cons.
- Adding additional WordPress limit login attempts can increase the plugin count which can hinder the performance of your website. Although the limited login plugins are lightweight, they add up to the existing vital plugin list, increasing the overall load on the website server.
- It may cause inconvenience to legitimate users who can forget their passwords and might enter different login attempts that can lock them out. Although you can enter the user details in the Whitelist table of the installed plugin, if new users try to log in, they might face inconvenience.
You can also tackle the issue by displaying the number of attempts to avoid lock in. It can help legitimate users from getting caught off guard and take a calculative decision with their login attempts.
You can also try to minimize the lock out time to avoid inconvenience to legitimate users.
Following a few basic security steps, you can bypass the drawbacks that may arise using the limit login attempts on your WordPress site.
Once done, you can extract all the advantages of integrating a limit on the website login attempts that can keep the malicious users at bay and safeguard your business or personal website data.
Tips on How to Protect Your Website
Limiting your login attempts is a single approach to ensure that your WordPress website is safe and secure. The first protection layer is your passwords, and you ensure that you have a strong password.
It’s difficult to remember, but you can adapt to different techniques or strategies to help you remember your password and keep it secure from unwanted intrusions.
Running a multi author WordPress site increases the security concerns that make a strong password a need of the hour.
You can add a security layer using Google reCAPTCHA or WordPress SSO for your website login. It minimizes the success rate of DDoS attacks and helps you to strengthen your website security further.
Ensure that you add a firewall that takes care of the brute force attacks and guarantees maximum safety.
Also, ensure that you keep a secure data backup of your WordPress website using different strategies or plugins. It is a great preventive measure when things go downhill, and you need to retrieve your website.
Using these result oriented tips, you can streamline your WordPress login security concerns and strengthen your first protection layer.
Thank you for reading How to Limit Login Attempts in WordPress (Step by Step). Let’s summarize.
Limit Login Attempts with our WP Cloud SSO Security Plugin
Try our WP Cloud SSO WordPress hardening tool to limit login attempts to your WordPress site.
- This WP Cloud SSO offers WordPress SSO Single Sign On to secure your WordPress logins.
- Ability to Login to WordPress (WP) using Azure AD, Azure B2C, Okta, ADFS, Keycloak, OneLogin, Salesforce, Google Apps (G Suite), Shibboleth, Ping, Auth0 and other IdPs (Identity Providers).
- A SAML SP (Service Provider) which can be configured to establish a trust between our WordPress SSO plugin and IDP to securely authenticate and enable SSO / Login for the user into the WordPress (WP) site.
How to Limit Login Attempts in WordPress Conclusion
Brute force attacks are the second most popular attack used by hackers to penetrate your website and manipulate or steal your vital information.
You can minimize the effectiveness of these attacks on your website by preventing the hackers from limiting them to making consecutive login attempts.
Now that you understand the how’s and why’s behind restricting your login attempts on your WordPress website. It’s time you implement this knowledge and enhance the security of your website.
Check different precautions that don’t cause inconvenience to your legitimate users and help them effectively bypass the lock out trap setup for unwanted intruders.
Improve your security and prevent your website from getting compromised.
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