Category: WordPress

Are you looking for free ways to make your website faster? One way that every website owner can get a little free speed is to turn on compression at the server. When both the webserver and the browser it is conversing with understand a common compression algorithm, then the data that is actually sent over the wire can be compressed. Compressed data is smaller. Smaller data is received faster. 

What is Compression?

When you type in a URL into your browser, your browser starts a conversation with the server and one of the things it tells it is if it can decompress content and if so, what compression “algorithms” it understands.

Your server listens, and if you have turned on compression and it knows one of the compression algorithms the browser does, it will compress all the data and send it to the browser.

Most modern web browsers understand or “accept” content encoded in one of three algorithms:

• Deflate
  
• Gzip
  
• Brotli
  

When a web browser contacts a server, it sends a header that looks like this:

Accept-Encoding: br, gzip

That tells the server that it understands data compressed in either Brotli (br) or Gzip (gzip). Servers do have the option of ignoring this and returning uncompressed data as well. 

Overall though, compressed data travels faster than uncompressed data. So your website gets to the browser faster if the data is compressed.

Compression mainly applies to text:

• HTML
  
• JavaScript
  
• CSS
  

These make up a large chunk of modern websites these days and all of these can be compressed by server-side compression algorithms. 

On the other hand, most image formats (jpg, png, etc.), most audio formats (mp3s) and other non-text binary files are already compressed. Compressing these won’t make any difference so regardless of the Accept-Encoding header, servers will send these as it is.

As stated above, most modern web browsers will accept 3 main compression algorithms. Most servers have now migrated to one or both of the two most popular ones, Gzip and Brotli.

What is Gzip Compression?

The two most common compression algorithms are Gzip and Brotli. Gzip is the oldest and most common of the two. It was written by Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler. The initial beta release was made in 1992. The first actual version, version 1.0, was released in early 1993.  back in 1992 just as the web was coming online for most people. 

Gzip was designed as an all-purpose compression library. The theories behind Gzip were based on the earlier compression algorithm, DEFLATE. 

Because of its popularity – and the fact that it is very good at making files small – it is still widely used today both in different operating systems as well as a primary compression algorithm for web servers. 

What is Brotli Compression?

Brotli was developed by Google employees Jyrki Alakuijala and Zoltán Szabadka in 2013. Google was originally looking for a better way to compress WOT files which are web fonts. 

Gzip was originally intended to compress files and has been adapted to compressing streams so it could work on the web. Brotli on the other hand,  was designed from the beginning to compress streams. This makes it a better choice for web servers to compress content before streaming it to a browser.

In 2015, Google released the Brotli specification for HTTP. In addition to specifying how the browser should notify the server that it can decompress Brotli by sending a “Content-Encoding: br” header, Google engineers also made other improvements to Brotli that made it even faster for compressing web content.

What’s The Difference Between Brotli and Gzip Compression?

While they both have their origins in the LZ77 algorithm, Gzip was designed specifically to compress files. The library has been incorporated into a lot of different programs that need to compress files. The library was incorporated into web servers as compressing content started to be the norm. It was one of two compression algorithms specified in RFC 2616, the HTTPS 1.1 specification. While it wasn’t specifically designed for streaming operations like web servers, it was adapted to it.

Brotli, on the other hand, was specifically designed for the web. Google recognized the need for a way to compress streams more efficiently so they designed Brotli.

Both algorithms do a good job at what they were designed to do. Gzip still continues to be used on the web because it is still better than nothing at all. However, as Brotli grows in popularity, more and more web servers are preferring Brotli over Gzip. Given the choice of the two, Brotli is the default many servers will use. It’s been the default choice on all SiteGround servers for a while now.

Check the following video for more reference on the differences between Brotli and Gzip!

Benchmarking Brotli And Gzip

When Brotli was benchmarked against gzip, it was found that it compresses files better:

• 14% smaller JavaScript files
  
• 21% smaller HTML files
  
• 17% smaller CSS files
  

Since Brotli was designed to compress streams on the fly, it is faster at both compressing content on the server and decompressing it in the browser than in gzip. In some cases the overall front-end decompression is up to 64% faster than gzip.

How Can I Enable Compression On My Website?

In simple terms, “turning on compression” simply means telling your web server to compress everything before it sends it to a browser that has announced it can handle compression.

If you are a server administrator, you know how to edit config files. If you are not a server administrator, skip this section and scroll straight to the “If I am not a server administrator” section below.

If I Use Apache

If you are using the Apache web server, there are 2 steps to enabling Brotli compression:

• Firstly, enable the apache Brotli module. It is included by default but may not be enabled:

$ sudo a2enmod brotli 

• Next, you need to edit your web hosts config file and tell the server what you want to apply the compression to:

<IfModule mod_brotli.c>

            AddOutputFilterByType BROTLI_COMPRESS text/html text/plain text/xml text/css text/javascript application/javascript

</IfModule>

In the example above, we are telling the web server to compress:

• HTML
  
• Plain Text
  
• CSS
  
• JavaScript
  

These are the main types of files that can be compressed.

If I Use Nginx

Nginx is another very popular web server. Like Apache, it is controlled by config files. You need to locate your nginx.conf file and add the following two lines:

load_module modules/ngx_http_brotli_filter_module.so;

load_module modules/ngx_http_brotli_static_module.so;

Then in your website’s individual conf file, you need to add the following:

brotli on;

brotli_static on;

brotli_types *;

After making the changes, either Apache or Nginx, restart your web server and now it will respond with a “Content-Encoding” header if the browser sends a “Accept-Encoding” header.

If I Am Not A Server Administrator

If you are not a server administrator, it’s actually much easier for you to enable compression on your server. You simply pick a host like SiteGround that turns it on by default. It’s that easy. 

Most top-tier hosts like SiteGround are interested in both making your site as fast as possible, and conserving as much bandwidth as possible. These are the two biggest benefits of enabling compression. Therefore, top-tier hosts turn on compression by default. 

If you are not a SiteGround client, then you need to make sure that your web host turns on compression on your web server. If they don’t and they won’t turn it on for you, it’s time to find a new host.

How Can I Test Brotli and Gzip Compression?

So how can you tell if compression is turned on for your website? There are a couple of ways to do this. 

The Hard Way

• Open a browser. I’m going to use Chrome in this example but the concept will work with any browser. The names of the options might change a little though between brands of browsers.
  
• Right click anywhere on the browser and select “Inspect”
  
• This will open a window on the side or bottom and it is a very busy window. The window has several tabs with names like this.
  
  • Elements
    
  • Console
    
  • Sources
    
  • Network
    
  • Performance
    
  • Etc…

• Find the “Network” tab.
  
• In the URL box above, enter your website’s URL and press enter. This is going to fill the network tab with a lot of different records. Scroll back up to the very first record. It should just be the name of your domain.

• Click on that first record.

• Locate the “accept-encoding” header. It will be located in the “Request Headers” section. These are the headers that your browser sent to the server. If you don’t have this header then try a different browser because the server won’t compress if the browser doesn’t send the compression header.

• Finally, locate the “content-encoding” header. This will be located in the “Response Headers” section. These are the headers that your server sent to the browser before it sent your website. This tells the browser that the server chose Brotli as the compression and it should uncompress the content streams as they come in before displaying them.
  

Honestly, most developers – myself included – do it this way. Yes, for the uninitiated, it is the hard way. If you don’t normally use the Inspect tab to dig into the conversation that your browser and the server are having then it can be confusing. However, once you understand what to look for and where, this way requires very little effort and is available everywhere.

The Easy Way

Still, there are those people who are not comfortable doing it this way. For those of you that are reading this article and fall into this category, I present to you, the easy way.

• Point a browser at the URL https://www.giftofspeed.com/gzip-test/
  
• Enter your website’s domain name in the box provided.
  
• Click the “Check” button.
  

Seriously, that’s it. When checking my site, I got the following results.

Not only does this tell me that my web server is capable of encoding my website in Brotli, it also tells me that 80.66% of my website came across encrypted.

Wrap Up

Compression in websites is now the norm because it helps your site load faster. 

Currently, Brotli is the best compression algorithm available for websites. If you see you are not offering Brotli, move to a web hosting partner that has it enabled. A hosting partner like SiteGround! You can get +15-20% smaller files with Brotli and smaller files mean a faster loading website. Check out more about SiteGround’s implementation in our article, More Site Speed Gains with Brotli Compression Algorithm. You can also harness all of our other speed boosters that will make your site fly.

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This article was originally published in January 2022, and then updated in December 2025.

Searching for the best WordPress themes can feel like endless job interviews. Every candidate looks impressive on paper, they all promise to be the perfect fit, but which one will actually deliver? 

You don’t need to interview every theme on the internet before finding your match.

We’ve done the homework for you by looking at what actual users are saying—not just what the sales pages promise.

Every theme claims to be “lightning-fast,” “SEO-optimized,” and “beginner-friendly.” Do they deliver? That’s what we’re here to find out. Whether you’re launching your first blog, building a business site, or just tired of your current theme’s performance issues, this guide will help you find the best WordPress theme that actually shows up and does the work.

What Is a WordPress Theme?

A WordPress theme is the design framework that controls how your website looks. It defines your website’s layout, typography, colors, spacing, header and footer structure, and sometimes even template options for posts and pages.

In other words: Your theme sets the overall style of your site, which is the foundation your content sits on.

How Themes and WordPress Work Together

Before diving into specific themes, it helps to understand how WordPress themes work alongside the platform’s editing tools. Here’s a quick overview:

• Gutenberg (Block Editor): WordPress’s built-in editor for writing and designing content with blocks (text, images, columns, etc.). You’ll use this editor no matter which theme you choose.
• Page Builders: Optional plugins that let you design pages visually with drag-and-drop layouts. Some page builders, like Elementor and Divi, also offer their own pre-built themes or templates, so you can use them to control your website’s design entirely, not just individual pages.
• Themes: The main design framework that controls site-wide style — your header, footer, colors, typography, and default layouts. You can use a standalone theme, a free or premium theme, or a theme provided by a page builder like Divi or Elementor.

Types of WordPress Themes

WordPress themes come in different types, each suited to different needs and skill levels. These are the main categories of WordPress themes:

• Default WordPress Themes: These come pre-installed with WordPress (like Twenty Twenty-Three). They’re lightweight, well-coded, and great for simple sites.
• Free WordPress Themes: Available in the WordPress.org theme directory. Many are excellent, but some free WordPress themes offer limited design options unless you upgrade.
• Paid (Premium) WordPress Themes: These typically include advanced customization features, more templates, priority support, and extra design flexibility.
• Custom WordPress Themes: Built from scratch or heavily customized for a unique design and functionality. (Note: Fully custom themes aren’t covered in this guide; we focus on default, free, and premium themes that anyone can use without hiring a developer.)

How We Picked These WordPress Themes

Rather than testing every theme ourselves, we focused on what real users are saying. Here’s how we curated this list:

• Popularity Metrics – We looked at the most purchased and downloaded themes from major marketplaces. Themes that are widely used tend to be reliable and well-supported.
• User Reviews – Instead of relying on a few testimonials, we analyzed ratings and reviews from hundreds of users to identify consistent feedback.
• Forum Insights – We checked reputable WordPress forums and communities to see which themes users actually recommend and why.
• Updates & Support – Active development and responsive support were key factors. Themes that are regularly updated and supported reduce long-term risks for your WordPress website.
• Feature Relevance – Finally, we considered the features users mention most frequently, including mobile responsiveness, SEO optimization, customization options, and plugin compatibility.

By focusing on real user feedback and measurable popularity, this guide helps you choose the theme most likely to work well for your website, business, or project.

Best WordPress Themes (Quick View)

Theme	Type	Price	Standout Features
Twenty Twenty-Three	Default	Free	Full site editing, lightweight, accessibility-focused
Astra	Free	Free	Lightweight, fast, highly customizable, page builder-friendly
Neve	Free	Free	Mobile-first, fast, compatible with page builders
OceanWP	Free	Free	Multipurpose, WooCommerce-ready, flexible layouts
Hello Elementor	Free	Free	Minimal, ultra-lightweight, optimized for Elementor
Kadence	Free	Free	Performance-focused, easy to customize, responsive
Avada	Paid	$69	Multipurpose, pre-built templates, extensive customization, plugin-friendly
Divi	Paid	$89/year	Drag-and-drop builder, pre-designed layouts, design freedom
GeneratePress Premium	Paid	$59/year	Lightweight, SEO-friendly, highly customizable theme
Bridge	Paid	$69	Multipurpose, visual design-focused, flexible layouts
BeTheme	Paid	$60	Hundreds of pre-built templates, multipurpose, plugin compatibility

Best Default WordPress Theme

Twenty Twenty-Three

When it comes to default WordPress themes, Twenty Twenty-Three stands out as the top choice. Released alongside WordPress 6.3, it’s designed with full site editing in mind, giving users unprecedented control over layout and design without needing any coding skills.

Why Twenty Twenty-Three Is So Popular

• Full Site Editing: Unlike earlier default themes, Twenty Twenty-Three fully supports block-based editing, allowing users to customize headers, footers, and page layouts directly in the WordPress editor.
• Lightweight & Fast: Many users on WordPress forums and ThemeForest discussions note that the theme is highly optimized for speed, helping pages load quickly and improving SEO.
• Accessibility First: It’s built with accessible web design in mind, ensuring that your site is usable for all visitors—a feature praised repeatedly by real users.
• Flexible Design Options: Comes with multiple starter templates and block patterns, so you can quickly launch a site or build a custom look from scratch.
• Reliable & Well-Supported: As an official WordPress theme, it’s regularly updated to stay compatible with the latest WordPress version, plugins, and security standards.

Best For:

Twenty Twenty-Three is ideal for bloggers, small business websites, and anyone who wants a minimalist, highly customizable, and modern WordPress theme. Beginners will appreciate its ease of use, while advanced users can leverage full site editing to create unique designs without additional plugins.

Not Ideal For:

• Highly Feature-Rich Sites: If you need complex ecommerce functionality or advanced custom layouts, you may need additional plugins or a premium theme.
• Older WordPress Versions: Requires WordPress 6.1 or newer for full site editing, so it’s not suitable for sites running outdated versions.
• Users Seeking Pre-Built Designs: While starter templates exist, the theme is minimalist by default, so it may require some design work for a fully polished look.

Real User Feedback:

Across WordPress.org forums and review threads, users consistently praise Twenty Twenty-Three for its speed, reliability, and design flexibility. Many note that it’s a safe, stress-free starting point, especially for those building a website from scratch or migrating from older themes.

Best Free WordPress Themes

1. Astra

When it comes to the best free WordPress themes, Astra consistently stands out. With over a million active installations and glowing reviews across WordPress.org and popular forums, it’s a free theme trusted by beginners and professionals alike. 

Why Astra Is a Popular WordPress Theme:

• Lightweight & Fast: Astra is designed for performance, with minimal bloat and fast loading times, a feature highlighted by many users.
• Highly Customizable: Using the WordPress Customizer or page builders like Elementor and Beaver Builder, you can create a unique look without touching code.
• Multipurpose Design: Astra works well for blogs, portfolios, business sites, and small online stores. Its flexible layout options make it easy to adapt to different site types.
• SEO-Friendly: Users appreciate that Astra is built with clean code and optimized for search engines, helping sites rank better in Google.
• Regular Updates & Support: The theme is actively maintained, ensuring compatibility with the latest WordPress version and plugins.

Best For:

Astra is a free WordPress theme that is ideal for beginners who want a reliable, flexible option, as well as experienced users who want a lightweight, customizable foundation for any type of site.

Not Ideal For:

• Sites that want complex features built directly into the theme without using plugins.
• Users who prefer a pre-styled design out of the box—Astra is minimal by default, so some setup is required to achieve a polished look.

Real User Feedback:

Across WordPress forums and review sites, Astra is frequently praised for being fast, flexible, and easy to use. Many users recommend it as a “go-to” free WordPress theme, noting that it’s a reliable foundation for building any website.

In addition to Astra, several other free WordPress themes are widely used and praised by the community. These other free WordPress themes offer solid functionality, flexibility, and strong user support.

2. Neve

• Overview: A fast, lightweight theme with a mobile-first approach.
• Best For: Blogs, startups, and small business websites.
• Why Users Like It: Easy setup, responsive mobile web design, and compatibility with page builders.
• Not Ideal For: Advanced users looking for built-in complex layouts without plugins.

3. OceanWP

• Overview: A multipurpose theme with extensive customization options.
• Best For: Ecommerce stores, portfolios, and business sites.
• Why Users Like It: WooCommerce-ready, flexible layouts, and strong community support.
• Not Ideal For: Beginners who may find the many options overwhelming.

4. Hello Elementor

• Overview: A minimal, bare-bones theme designed to work with the Elementor page builder.
• Best For: Users who want full design control via Elementor.
• Why Users Like It: Extremely fast and lightweight, perfect for custom page designs.
• Not Ideal For: Those who don’t plan to use a page builder—it has almost no styling by default.

5. Kadence

• Overview: A flexible, performance-focused theme suitable for a wide range of websites.
• Best For: Small businesses, blogs, and WooCommerce stores.
• Why Users Like It: Fast, easy to customize, and well-documented.
• Not Ideal For: Users who want highly specialized templates out of the box.

Best Paid WordPress Themes

1. Avada

With over 750,000 sales on ThemeForest—a popular online marketplace where developers sell WordPress themes and plugins—and thousands of positive reviews, Avada is one of the most trusted and widely used premium themes in the WordPress community.

Why Avada Is a Popular WordPress Theme

• Multipurpose Flexibility: Avada comes with hundreds of pre-built templates for blogs, business websites, portfolios, and ecommerce stores. Users love that it can adapt to almost any site type.
• Advanced Customization: Built-in options and the Fusion Builder page builder allow users to tweak layouts, colors, headers, and footers without touching a single line of code.
• Plugin Compatibility: Avada works seamlessly with WooCommerce, Yoast SEO, and other essential plugins, making it ideal for professional sites.
• Regular Updates & Support: The theme is actively maintained, with dedicated support and detailed documentation, which users consistently praise in forums and reviews.
• Performance & SEO Optimized: Despite being feature-rich, Avada is optimized for speed and search engines, helping websites perform well.

Best For:

Avada is perfect for business websites, agencies, portfolios, and ecommerce sites that need a highly flexible theme with robust support. It’s also suitable for users who want a “ready-to-go” theme with many pre-built templates.

Not Ideal For:

• Beginners seeking lightweight themes: Avada is feature-rich and can feel heavy if not optimized properly.
• Minimalist Sites: If you want a simple, stripped-down design, Avada’s extensive options may be overwhelming.

Real User Feedback:

Across ThemeForest reviews and WordPress forums, users consistently praise Avada for its flexibility, extensive customization options, and reliable support. Many recommend it as a go-to premium theme for serious projects that require professional design and functionality.

Here are a few other popular WordPress themes that are premium and repeatedly show up in expert round‑ups and marketplace best‑seller lists—often praised for flexibility, design quality, or specialized strengths.

2. Divi

• Overview: A premium WordPress theme with a built-in visual page builder and hundreds of pre-built layouts.
• Best For: Agencies, freelancers, portfolio sites, and businesses wanting full design flexibility.
• Why Users Like It: Drag-and-drop builder, extensive design options, and large library of pre-designed templates.
• Not Ideal For: Users who want a lightweight, minimal theme; Divi can be heavy if not optimized.

3. GeneratePress Premium

• Overview: A lightweight, performance-focused premium option versus the popular free version of the GeneratePress theme.
• Best For: Small businesses, performance-sensitive sites, and users who want speed with flexibility.
• Why Users Like It: Fast, SEO-friendly, highly customizable, and compatible with popular page builders.
• Not Ideal For: Users who want pre-built layouts; most design work is done via customization.

4. Bridge

• Overview: A multipurpose premium theme with a creative and visually-oriented design.
• Best For: Creative agencies, portfolios, and visually-driven business websites.
• Why Users Like It: Flexible layouts, large template library, and strong visual design options.
• Not Ideal For: Beginners or users seeking a simple, lightweight theme; lots of options can feel overwhelming.

5. BeTheme

• Overview: A versatile multipurpose premium theme with hundreds of pre-built website templates.
• Best For: Agencies, large or complex websites, and projects that need ready-made layouts.
• Why Users Like It: Extensive template library, flexible design, and wide plugin compatibility.
• Not Ideal For: Users who prefer minimal or simple themes; it can be heavy and complex to navigate.

WordPress Theme Features to Look For

Choosing a WordPress theme isn’t just about looks; it’s about functionality, performance, and long-term reliability. Below are the features we considered when selecting the themes in this guide. That said, if you explore other themes, keep these same standards in mind to ensure your site stays fast, flexible, and reliable. 

Here are the essential WordPress theme features you should consider:

1. Responsive Design / Mobile Friendly: Your theme should look great on desktops, tablets, and smartphones. Since more than 60% of global web traffic comes from mobile devices—and Google favors mobile-friendly sites—a responsive WordPress theme ensures your content performs well across all screens.

2. Fast Loading & Performance Optimized: WordPress themes that are lightweight and well-coded load faster, improving user experience and SEO. Avoid themes that are bloated with unnecessary features.

3. SEO-Friendly: Themes built with clean code, proper HTML structure, and optimized performance support WordPress SEO, helping search engines index and rank your content more effectively.

4. Customization Options: Look for themes with easy-to-use customization tools: headers, footers, colors, fonts, and layout options. Themes compatible with the WordPress Customizer or page builders make design simple.

5. Plugin Compatibility: Your theme should work seamlessly with popular plugins like WooCommerce, Yoast SEO, and Contact Form 7. This ensures you can grow your business and expand your site’s functionality without conflicts.

6. Regular Updates & Support: WordPress themes that are actively maintained are safer, more secure, and compatible with the latest WordPress version. If you’re using SiteGround Managed WordPress Hosting, updates for WordPress core, themes, and plugins are automatically handled for you, so your site stays secure and up-to-date with minimal effort. Check also for responsive theme support and thorough documentation.

7. Starter Templates / Demo Content: Themes with pre-built templates or demo content can help you launch your site faster and give you a foundation to build on.

8. Accessibility & Translation Ready: Themes that follow accessibility guidelines (WCAG) and support multilingual plugins make your site usable for more people worldwide.

Pro tip: Even the best theme performs poorly on slow or unreliable servers. Choosing a web hosting provider optimized for WordPress ensures your site loads quickly, stays secure, and works seamlessly with your theme.

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Next Steps: Pick the Best WordPress Theme for Your Site

So there you have it—no more endless scrolling through theme directories. Whether you go with a reliable default theme, a flexible free option, or splurge on a premium theme with all the bells and whistles, you’ve now got a solid foundation that actually shows up and does the work.

The best WordPress theme isn’t the one with the most features or the flashiest demo. It’s the one that performs well and doesn’t cause drama down the line. And if you want your theme to run at its best, pair it with hosting that can keep up. SiteGround’s Managed WordPress Hosting automatically handles updates for WordPress core, themes, and plugins, so you never have to worry about compatibility issues or security gaps. Plus, their optimized servers mean even feature-rich themes stay fast and responsive.

Now stop overthinking it and launch that site already. Your ideal theme is waiting.

This article was originally published in January 2022, and then updated in December 2025.

The days of a web ruled by white pages, black text, and blue links are fading into history. These days, if you want to get noticed your page has to “Pop”. JavaScript, CSS, and images all add to the pop of your website. Fonts also add a lot to the distinctive look of your website.

Unlike some of the other elements of your website though, fonts can be large blocks of data that – if not handled properly – can slow down the loading of your website. Speed is king these days so while pop is important, you need to make sure you don’t impact the speed of your site when using fonts.

In this article we are going to look at fonts and how they relate to WordPress, how to change fonts in WordPress, how to use Google fonts within WordPress, and finally, we will take a look at how you can organize your fonts so that they make your WordPress site look good while not impacting the speed of your site. 

So let’s get to fonting, shall we?

How to add new WordPress fonts to your site

1. Pick a font in the right format

The first step you need to do when working with fonts, is to select your font and get it into your site. If you search around, you will find that there are a lot of free fonts available for use. These fonts come in a variety of formats. You need to make sure that when selecting a font, you pick one that is available in the right format. As with everything on the web, you’ve got options and not all options are created equal.

• EOF: Embedded OpenType Fonts
  

This format is more compact OTF fonts.

• OTF: Open Type Fonts
  

These are the most commonly used web fonts.

• TTF: True Type Fonts
  

This is an older format developed in the 1980’s by Microsoft and Apple. 

• WOFF 1.0: Web Open Font Format
  

This format is broadly used for web pages and recommended by the W3C.

• WOFF 2.0: Web Open Font Format
  

This is a better option than WOFF 1.0 due to better compression abilities. 

As of this writing, all formats were supported by the current version of all modern web browsers. (HINT: Internet Explorer is not a modern web browser.)

All of the formats above will work, however, for performance sake, whenever possible, use WOFF2 fonts. Since they are compressed, they load faster.

2. Add the WordPress font to your site

There are a few different ways you can add custom fonts to your theme. Let’s look at two options: how you can do it manually and how you can do it through themes and plugins.  

Option 1: Add fonts manually through the File Manager

First, let’s look at the hard way. Loading it manually. 

The first thing we need to do is locate a font. I pulled one from one of my personal sites but you can search around and find one you like. 

Next we need to upload the actual font file to our website. Since my test site is hosted on SiteGround, I use the SiteTools > File Manager to do this. 

I am using the current WordPress default theme, twentytwentyone. So in that directory I create a directory named “fonts” and upload my font file there.

Next, we need to tell our theme that it has a new font to work with. We do this with a @font-face section in our stylesheet.

@font-face {

    font-family: “ace_sansbold”;

    src: url(‘fonts/acesans-bold-webfont.woff2’)  format(‘woff2’);

    font-weight: normal;

    font-style: normal;

}

This tells our theme that there is a new font family named ace_sansbold and it can be loaded from fonts/acesans-bold-webfont.woff2.

That’s all fine and good but just having a font doesn’t make any difference, we need to apply the font. I want this font used in my site’s title. To do that we find the style selector used for that and change it.

In twentytwentyone, that is the .site-title selector. By default it looks like this:

.site-title {

color: var(–branding–color-link);

font-family: var(–branding–title–font-family);

font-size: var(–branding–title–font-size-mobile);

letter-spacing: normal;

text-transform: var(–branding–title–text-transform);

line-height: var(–global–line-height-heading);

margin-bottom: calc(var(–global–spacing-vertical) / 6);

}

We want to make one change. We want to change the font-family line to this.

font-family: “ace_sansbold”;

This will tell our theme to use our new font instead of the one selected in the Theme customizer. The final will look like this:

.site-title {

color: var(–branding–color-link);

font-family: “ace_sansbold“;

font-size: var(–branding–title–font-size-mobile);

letter-spacing: normal;

text-transform: var(–branding–title–text-transform);

line-height: var(–global–line-height-heading);

margin-bottom: calc(var(–global–spacing-vertical) / 6);

}

Here is what my site title looked like before I added the font.

After I followed the instructions above, it looks like this:

Option 2: Add and edit fonts through themes and plugins

Ok, we did it the hard way, now let’s dive in the straightforward way, that is to take advantage of the themes and plugins to add fonts to your site easily. 

How to add fonts using the Theme Editor

Most modern themes have some way of adding fonts in and assigning them to parts of the site. I use the Astra WordPress theme on one of my sites and it comes with a feature called “Custom Fonts”. Instead of having to manually apply CSS and upload files, I am presented with a simple form that allows me to add or edit fonts.

Once I save it, everything is automagically handled for me. Not only is the font placed where it should be and readily accessible, but the new fonts now appear in my Theme Editor, ready for me to use. No hacking CSS!

As a bonus, Astra comes ready for me to use any of the Google Fonts. They are already programmed in and ready for me to use.

How to add fonts using WordPress Font Plugins

If your current WordPress theme doesn’t include fonts out of the box, there are still options as freemium plugins.

Fonts Plugin

“Fonts Plugin” gives you all of the Google fonts ready to use in WordPress. Additionally, it will let you enter in your Adobe API key if you have one, to use all of the Adobe fonts as well. 

One of the things this plugin won’t do is allow you to upload custom fonts like described above. The pro version may allow you to do that, but the documentation is unclear on this point.

One really nice feature of this plugin is that it gives you a new Gutenberg block called a “Google Fonts” block. This is an extension of the Paragraph block and it gives you the option to select a font for the block. Changing fonts for a text element in Gutenberg is difficult to say the least. It’s nice to see someone figuring that out.

There are other plugins that you can use to add fonts to your existing WordPress website theme. Take a quick look at the WordPress Plugin Repository and you’ll find several that will do the job. 

How to change fonts in the Theme Customizer

Some WordPress themes have font selectors for different parts of your page or site. By default, twentytwentyone does not, but as shown above, Astra does. In Astra, the “Global” option has a “Typography” option. Clicking into Typography, you are presented with selectors to allow you to set different fonts and weights for things like:

• Body
  
• Headings (H1-H6)
  

This gives you broad control over the fonts that are displayed on your site. Different themes and plugins will add other options to the Theme Customizer to allow you more fine-grain control over what fonts are used where. A good example of this is the Font Plugin described above. It adds a section to the Theme Customizer for twentytwentyone to allow users to select and assign fonts.

You can pick fonts, weights, and sizes for most of the standard elements. For instance, above we manually replaced the font family for the .site-title selector. Using the Font Plugin, it is as simple as going to Advanced Settings > Branding.

There you can select the Site Title Typography options.

Bonus: How to keep fonts from slowing your site down

We’ve talked a lot about how to get fonts into your system and use them. Fonts, however, are just one more thing that a browser has to load to view your site. Things a browser has to load are just things that can slow it down. How can you deal with this? The solution is to preload your font files. Thankfully, if you host your website with SiteGround, you have access to the SiteGround Optimizer plugin which will make this task for you really straightforward. If you click through to the Optimizer Settings > Frontend > General you will find the “Fonts Preloading” feature.

This option is a little different than most of the other options in the plugin because it is not an on or off, you have to enter the URL to your font so they can be preloaded.

In our case, the URL would be https://example.com/wp-content/themes/twentytwentyone/fonts/acesans-bold-webfont.woff2. We enter that URL in and click Confirm.

This will insert the proper link tag with rel=”preload” in it so that the font file is the first thing that is loaded. You can see this by opening your website in a different browser, one that you are not logged into, visiting the page, and then click Inspect and Network. Then reload the page.

<link 

  rel=”preload” 

  as=”font”

  href=”https://example.com/wp-content/themes/twentytwentyone/fonts/acesans-bold-webfont.woff2″ 

  Crossorigin

/>

The first entry is the actual page you requested but the second entry will be the font file. It gets loaded as the first asset.

Wrap Up

Fonts are a good way to make your site look distinctive. Used sparingly they can set your site apart without significantly impacting its performance.

As with all good things, less is more. Too many fonts will slow your site down and also make your site more difficult for your users to read. The end results are the same in both cases, users bounce to the next site, so, as with everything, use website fonts wisely and make sure you keep them optimized.

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I’ve been managing (and mis-managing) SQL databases for almost 37 years now. SQL was the second programming language I mastered and to this day it is still one of my favorites.

In all that time of wrangling databases, one thing has remained constant, you have to actively manage your database and at times, that means cleanup and maintenance. WordPress databases are no different.

Why Clean Your WordPress Database?

One of the most important reasons to do WordPress database cleanup is because your database is the second slowest part of your entire system. The only thing slower is the file system itself. So making sure that your database is operating at optimal speed is important not only to your site health but to your search engine rankings. Most of the major search engines use page speed as a factor in ranking a page. For optimum WordPress performance, you want to keep the database clean. Cleaning your WordPress database is part of an overall process of WordPress performance tuning.

The vast majority of WordPress installs use a MySQL (or MariaDB) Relational Database Management System (RDBMS). That is what we will focus on in this article. Even so, most of the advice will apply to whatever datastore you are using for your WordPress database.

Steps to Take for an optimal WordPress Database Cleanup

Back Up First

Before you embark on this journey, make sure you create a fresh backup. Yes, you should have nightly backups from the past 30 days nearby but things may have changed since your backup. You want to make sure that if you mess something up, you can easily restore things to the point where you started.

If your hosting partner offers an on-demand backup system like SiteGround does, make one now.

If not, before you go any further, install a plugin that will allow you to create and restore database backups.

There are many good plugins out there that will do the job. I’ve worked with several of them and looked at others. For this job, backing up and restoring, I like UpdraftPlus WordPress Backup Plugin because it has a very easy to understand restore feature. The free version will get the job done for our purposes but the paid version adds a lot of nice to have things. (like support for WP-CLI… that is really important to me in most plugins.)

Once you get the plugin installed, go ahead and make a backup. Unless you are deleting files, there is no reason to backup everything, just backup the database.

After you make your backup, go ahead and restore it so you can see what it’s like before you get in an emergency situation. Remember, if you have an untested backup system, you don’t have disaster recovery, you have hopes and wishes.

Leftover tables in the WordPress Database

Now that you’ve got your backup system ready, this first item is one that you may want to bring a developer in on. I’ma  big fan of bringing in professional help when I’m in over my head and this task may put a lot of people in over their heads.

If your site has been around a while, the chances are good that you have installed and uninstalled a lot of plugins. My personal site has been running WordPress since 2005. Many plugins, especially the older ones, did not clean up after themselves. This means that during install, they may have created tables in your database that they did not delete when you uninstalled them. Look at your list of tables – if you don’t know how, you don’t need to be doing this without help – and try and identify any that are no longer in use. Remove those tables from your database.

Once you’ve removed them, test EVERYTHING. It is these kinds of operations that make me recommend having a staging environment up and running and test these things in staging first. Still, if you have your backup, you should be good to go. 

I looked at the database for my personal site a year or so ago. There are over 500 tables in it. The standard WordPress install has around 40. I really need to take the time to clean things up myself.

There are plugins that will help you with this task if you do not have a developer available. One of them is mentioned below, WP-Optimize. 

Don’t be alarmed if when you try and remove a table it fails. The database user that your WordPress install runs under may not – probably SHOULD NOT – have table delete privileges. Still, you can show this list to your developer and they will know how to safely remove these tables.

Revisions

Next up, let’s talk about Post revisions. As you are working on a Post or Page, WordPress is constantly saving it in the background. To allow you to go back and restore one of these versions at a later date, each revision is stored as a separate record in the posts database. Once you have finished editing your Post and pushed it live, these revisions serve no purpose. 

If you have a developer on staff, they can easily delete these records from the table without having to install any plugins. If you don’t have a developer, or you want to make a change that will keep this problem solved for you, check out WP Revisions Control. This simple plugin will allow you to set how many revisions to keep and it will keep your database clean for you, automatically.

Draft Posts

Another source of “cruft” in your database is old posts that you started but never released. Again, using my personal site as an example, I looked one time and I had well over 50 posts in DRAFT status. This means not only did I have 50 records in my database I didn’t need but I also had revisions for each of them just hanging around. Get rid of those old posts that you are never going to release.

Empty the Trash

As an administrator of a WordPress installation, you have deleted old posts, pages, and other things. WordPress doesn’t actually remove these old entries from your system, it moves them into “the trash”. (From a technical perspective it changes the status of these items.)

The Trash is great if you need to go back and retrieve something later on but after a certain amount of time, you can be fairly confident that you aren’t going to need what you trashed. So empty “The Trash”. When you do this, you actually delete the items that WordPress has marked as trash. This gets them out of your database and keeps them from hanging around and cluttering things up.

Things Not To Worry About

There is a lot of advice on what you should do to clean your WordPress database out on the Internet. Some of it is well meaning but not all that useful. Here are a couple of things that you don’t need to worry about.

Cleaning Transients

Transients are little pieces of information that WordPress and plugins need to store temporarily. Transients have an expiration date. Some people will advise you to make sure you cleanup expired transients every once in a while. Don’t bother. WordPress’ cron system will do this for you every night. At best, you may delete a few hundred records a few hours early. The effort you put into managing transients is effort you could better spend making your site pretties, faster, or more useful to your readers. 

Optimizing Tables

A lot of places will tell you to “optimize your tables”. Some might even explain what this means while others just used it as a magic incantation that is supposed to make you feel better about your database. The truth is that there was a time when optimizing database tables was important. Thankfully those days are long gone. These days most MySQL databases use tables that don’t require optimization. Even my crusty old personal site’s database no longer needs to be optimized. Technically, it is no longer necessary to do this for 99.9% of WordPress installations out there. If you are part of the other .01%, instead of optimizing your tables, move your site to a modern version of MySQL with a table type that does not need optimization

Plugins that do all of this for you

Yes, there are things you need to do on a regular basis to keep your database clean and healthy. Yes, you or a programmer working for you can do these things manually on a regular basis. However, if you are like most of us, you don’t like having to remember to clean things up. For those cases, there are plugins that can do all of this and much more for you, automatically.  Think of them as the Roomba for your site. These plugins will come out while you aren’t around and take care of cleaning up the dusty corners of your site for you on a regular basis.

Here are four options you can consider:

Advanced Database Cleaner

This plugin is available in both free and premium. The free version will do all of the basics you need done. You can even schedule it to run on a regular basis so that your database stays clean. The Pro version will give you many more options. I recommend starting with the free until you understand what it does and then if you feel the need, move to the Pro.

Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions

This is another good choice although it does offer “tabel optimization” that I just got through telling you was unnecessary. It will keep your database clean of old posts, comments, revisions, and a bunch of other things. There aren’t as many options as Advanced Database Cleaner but the ones you really need are there. This plugin is free and there is a link to donate to the author if you use it and find it useful. (and I always suggest you donate to the authors of free plugins if you use their plugins) 

If you do choose to analyze the tables, it will attempt to run analysis on them but if you are using a table type that doesn’t require this feature, it will tell you that. It won’t harm your database or any of your data.

WP-Optimize – Cache, Clean, Compress

Probably my favorite option though (and the one I have loaded on my personal site) is WP-Optimize. This performs all the functions we’ve discussed here plus a lot of other things. Like the previous two, you can schedule this plugin to run automatically. However, since this is written by the same team that wrote the very first plugin I recommended, UpdraftPlus WordPress Backup Plugin, it integrates with that seamlessly and gives you the option to automatically back your database up before it performs maintenance. This is a nice feature. Like Updraft Plus, WP-Optimize comes in a free and paid version. I’ll leave it to you to decide whether you need the features present in the paid version.

Speed Optimizer

If SiteGround is your hosting partner then make sure you have the Speed Optimizer plugin installed. This is a MUST INSTALL plugin for every site hosted with SiteGround because it’s free speed. This is an easy plugin to install and while the database is not it’s primary focus, it does do routine database maintenance. It also does a LOT more to speed your site up and keep it fast. For the full details on this great plugin, check out this blog post.

Wrap Up

Keeping your WordPress database clean is an important step to making sure that your site always runs quickly. Either invest the time to manually clean your site on a regular basis or install and configure one of the recommended plugins to do it for you. Either way, it is time well spent.

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Making your website secure is not a one-time thing. It’s not a switch you can flip to “SECURE” and then not worry about it again. Web security is built in layers. The point of each layer is to make it a little more difficult for bad actors to get in and do bad things. Our goal is to put up just enough layers so that they give up and move on to a site with fewer layers.

Exactly, what is “WordPress Security”?

A lot of web site owners I talk to think that WordPress security is a plugin they install or a service they buy. Nothing could be further from the truth. Security is a mindset, it’s not a specific thing. It is something you should think about in every decision you make about your website.

• Want a new theme? What is the theme developers reputation security-wise?
• Want to add a new plugin in? How secure is it? Have there been any vulnerabilities reported in it?
• Want to hire a new contractor? What do others have to say about their work? Is their code secure?

Every decision you make needs to be wrapped in the question “How will this affect the security of my site?” If you can’t say for sure that the answer to that question is either increase it or at least not hurt it, then you need to re-think the decision.

The other analogy I use a lot is that security is not one specific action, but a series of layers you wrap around your site.

• The top layer is a network firewall
• The next layer is is your application firewall (in WordPress, this is usually a plugin)
• The next layer in is strong passwords
• The next layer in is Two-Factor authentication
• The next layer in is moving your wp-admin directory to a different name.
• The next layer in is not using the login name “admin”
• The next lawyer is to disable XML-RPC

None of these things by themselves are going to make your site secure. However, all of them together may make your site secure so that bad actors move on to a site with less security. Another good news is that you can nowadays easily secure your website by hosting your website with a high quality hosting partner that commits to security.

You may notice that Installing an SSL certificate is not in the list above. This is because having an SSL certificate is what we call “table stakes” these days. This means that it’s not a security measure, it’s something you should do when you setup any and every website. They improve your security and your search engine ranking. Since they are now free, there is absolutely no reason for any website to be running without one. Moreover, on SiteGround, they install free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates shortly after the creation of each website to make it even simpler for you.

>> If you are interested in knowing more about WordPress Security, download now for free our eBook 21 Tips to Keep Your WordPress Secure <<

What are the best WordPress security plugins to secure each layer of your WordPress site?

To set up the layered setup described above will take most people some time. As mentioned before, almost everything can be accomplished these days by non-technical site owners. That having been said, if you are nervous about it or unsure of your ability to commit the time to do things right, hire someone you trust to do it for you.

Network Firewall

If you are using a reputable hosting partner like SiteGround, this will be configured for you. If you are unsure if your hosting partner provides this service for you, ask them. If you don’t get a very clear “Yes, we provide you with a network level firewall.” consider finding a new hosting partner.

Application Firewall

In the WordPress ecosystem, “Application Firewall” usually means a plugin. There are several good ones with solid reputations to choose from. I don’t usually recommend specific plugins because as soon as I do, someone writes to me to tell me how my recommendations are wrong. Still, since a lot of users have asked me for recommendations about security plugins, I am going to break my rule and make a few recommendations. It is important to note that these are in no particular order.

By the way, most of these plugins do a lot more than just APplication Firewall. 

• Malware scanning
• Security audits
• Security hardening
• Website firewall

Some of the companies behind these plugins also provide malware removal and hacked site cleanup. If you are looking for peace of mind, that’s a great feature to have.

Jetpack

Jetpack is Automattic’s omnibus plugin. It has a lot of functionality and most of it doesn’t deal with security. It does however have some security features built into it. If you already have Jetpack installed, consider purchasing the security features.  

If you don’t currently have Jetpack installed and don’t need any of the other features, this might not be the best solution.

Sucuri Security

Sucuri has been around for a while and has a great reputation. In addition to offering a Web Application Firewall Sucuri offers a lot of other features:

• Malware Removal & Hack Cleanup
• Advanced DDoS Mitigation
• Malware & Hack Scan Frequency

These three features are important and covered by their basic level. All-in-all, Sucuri is a well rounded offering that would be an important lawyer in any website’s security.

iThemes Security Pro

I’ve actually used this one before. I am not currently using it but at the time I was using it it was one of the best – if not the best – on the market. (It is important to note that I do not think the plugin has degraded in any way, my needs changed.) 

The one thing that I remember about this plugin is that it’s admin page is complex. Make sure you block out a few hours over a couple of days to read and understand every option available to you so that you can make the right decisions. That advice is equally applicable to every security plugin. 

Unlike other plugins, iThemes gives you all of the features on every pricing level. The difference in price is based on the number of sites you want to protect.

Strong Passwords

Though there are plugins available for this layer, strong password support is thankfully built into the WordPress core. I strongly encourage you to enforce strong passwords on any user that has any security above Guest or Subscriber. If they can manage anything, they should have at the very least, a strong password.

WP 2FA

Two Factor Authentication (2FA) is one of the newer technologies to come to the web but it is an important one. Logins and passwords can be stolen online but a phone can’t. By adding 2FA as a layer to your security, you make it impossible for someone to access your site just because they got access to your login and password.

One plugin I’ve used over the years to implement 2FA is WP 2FA. It only does 2FA. If you already have an application firewall that implements 2FA, use that. But if you do not, WP-2FA is a good choice.

…and the rest

The other layers however, you still need some help with. I’ve tried combinations of dozens of different plugins to implement them and each time something didn’t go quite right. While I love the concept of “one plugin-one feature” Sometimes the plugins don’t play nice with each other and then you end up with a mess on your hands.

 That’s why I was excited when SiteGround released their in-house built WordPress Security plugin. It wraps a lot of security layers into one plugin.

Security Optimizer: The All-In-One WordPress Protection Plugin

This is a newcomer to the group but it has already become my favourite security plugin. I already have it installed on 4 of my WordPress installs, only one of those is actually hosted with SiteGround.

Security Optimizer comes with a lot of security features. Each of them can be turned on or off without bothering the rest of the features. My favourite 4 features of the plugin are as follows:

• Two-Factor authentication
• Disabling XML-RPC
• Disabling the login name “admin”
• Lock and protect system folders

I’ve installed stand-alone plugins that did each one of these things. Each time I ended up eventually removing the plugin because either it didn’t do the job the way I wanted it to or it became abandonware and was holding up my upgrading of my system.

Security Optimizer integrates all four of these important features in a single plugin. Because it’s created by SiteGround, I know that it won’t be abandoned.

It does a lot more than just these 4 things but these are the 4 that are the most important to me. To see everything it can do, install it, or watch this webinar I did on WordPress Security. In the webinar I install and configure it while you watch.

Concluding on WordPress Security

Spending time thinking about keeping your site secure is always time well invested. It is even more important as we are in vacation time now. Making sure you are up-to-date and as secure as possible means you can spend less time worrying about your site and more time focusing on your vacation activities.

Remember, the whole point of security is not to lock your system down tight so that nobody can get into it, because then…well, nobody can get into it. The point of security is to make it difficult enough so that bad actors move on to a site that is easier to break into. 

“Security is a journey, not a destination.” 

  — Cal Evans

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Having a reliable and secure WordPress website  is critical for both your business and your users. For one thing, not having to worry about someone hacking your website and destroying years of work is a priority – but also, any user’s data breach will undermine your audience’s confidence and it’s questionable whether they’ll ever return. Even though website security is an on-going process, there are a few most common back doors for hackers that you can effectively avoid. That’s why we turned to well-known  WordPress  experts on the subject and organized a #WPSecurityChat on Twitter along with the creator of 11+ million websites-powering plugin Yoast (@Yoast), the full-stack developer and marketing technologist Jono Alderson (@jonoalderson), the PHP community force Cal Evans (@calevans), and SiteGround’s WordPress Initiative Manager Hristo Pandjarov (@pandjarov). Here’s a summary of their discussion with useful tips on how to safeguard your website against hackers.

Top 5 common ways for WordPress sites to be hacked in 2021

WordPress is a safe and secure software in and of itself. The majority of vulnerabilities are caused by the use of unreliable plugins, outdated themes and weak passwords. Hristo Pandjarov, our WordPress Initiatives Manager and SEO strategist outlines five most common backdoors: “My top five NOT ranked by priority, since any of those can cause enough harm are:

• Weak passwords
• Old plugins & themes not updated
• XSS attacks 
• Malware on computers with access to your site
• Weak passwords 🙂 “

Using a password manager, such as LastPass or 1Password, is advised by our WordPress security experts. Over the years, having a very strong master password and then randomly-generated ones for different logins has proven to be the best solution. You can find more useful tips and simple steps that address the issues above in our blog article “5 Simple Steps to Secure your WordPress” by one of the other participants in our #WPSecurityChat, Cal Evans.

Most hackers don’t care about your site’s popularity according to our security experts

Many website owners think that if your website is not hugely popular, then there is no reason for it to be a target. All of our WordPress experts agreed that it makes no difference whether your website is popular or not; everyone is at risk, and everyone should take measures to prevent hackers from gaining unauthorized access to their sites.

According to Jono Alderson (@jonoalderson), a Special Ops at Yoast, “It’s much more common for attackers to try to compromise lots of websites at scale, via automated attacks. If they can take control of your site, they can inject links (for nefarious SEO purposes), redirect your visitors, or abuse your site’s resources.”

How does site security affect SEO?

Jono Alderson, an expert at Yoast, the widely-used WordPress SEO plugin, summarizes that “…so much of SEO is all about building up and demonstrating trust, relevance, and authority. If your site gets hit, there’s a real risk that all of that gets compromised.” Your website’s reputation and SEO are closely connected. For example, if your website displays irrelevant content to users and search engines, your relevance and trustworthiness will suffer. 

Because site security is so important, Jono Alderson also revealed helpful methods for determining whether or not your site has been hacked, “Most good security plugins will also let you know when sensitive files have been changed or added, or when unusual behaviour has been detected. Make sure that you’ve configured that kind of logging, and regular scans.”

At SiteGround, we offer SiteScanner malware detection and monitoring service. The scanner lets you perform on-demand scans of your website as well as comprehensive daily scans to detect domain blacklisting and malware.

Site security is something you have to constantly work on

There is a common notion among our WordPress experts that webmasters tend to neglect site security over other tasks. Common mistakes include failing to update software, plugins, themes, and so on. Cal Evans, PHP developer and WordPress expert, shared his tips for avoiding common hacks “Be diligent in maintaining your site. Check in daily to see what has changed. It’s ok for YOU to update plugins instead of waiting for autoupdate,” adding “Keep good backups and keep them for a while.” 

At SiteGround we try to take some of that load off your shoulders by automating many of these tasks as part of our managed WordPress security services. We automatically update your instances and their plugins to the latest version and patch against common WordPress-related exploits through our server firewall. Our latest backup service updates include distributed physical backup locations and enhanced data protection which help enormously in event of a hacking incident.

How can your web host help in keeping sites secure?

If your website does get hacked, our experts suggest you contact your hosting provider’s support team or a specialist. Hristo Pandjarov puts emphasis on “Regenerating the #wordpress salts, to make sure there aren’t any logged hackers, plugin & theme updates, malware scan of all computers with administrative access to your site and last but not least changing your hosting account pass and enabling 2FA auth!”

To add to the importance of choosing the right web host to help keep your website secure, Jono shares that “Good WordPress hosting companies also know WordPress inside-out. They’ll make sure that your setup – and theirs – is hardened. They’ll recognize and protect against common attack patterns, and know exactly what to do if things go wrong.”

SiteGround is well-known for our powerful, yet simple to use managed WordPress services. We place a high value on site security since the beginning. Our team dedicates hundreds of hours of development time to keep improving our web hosting security, starting on a server level with shared accounts isolation, reliable backups on distributed geographical locations, a smart Web Application Firewall (WAF), and enabling 2FA authentication for our users among other things. On the WordPress application level, we’ve also always made a targeted effort to go the extra mile for our clients in order to make running WordPress more secure on our platform. Our most recent security upgrade is the release of the SiteGround Security plugin, which addresses the majority of threats and assists clients in adopting better security policies, such as:

• Establishing relevant rules to protect WordPress against common malware, bruteforce and other security issues. Some of these rules include hiding your WordPress version or deleting your default readme.txt, making it harder for crawlers to detect that you’re even using WordPress.
• Strengthening WordPress login security
• Monitoring your admin area activity log
• Post-hack actions tool in case you suspect your site might have been hacked

You can find the whole conversation between our WordPress security experts by checking searching the #WPSecurityChat on Twitter. For more WordPress security expert tips, check our free ebook on WordPress Security. Share your thoughts on what are the most common threads for WordPress sites and what are the best practices to prevent them. Follow us on Twitter for more exciting news and expert discussions on relevant topics. 

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In the root directory of every WordPress site is a file, xmlrpc.php that actually predates WordPress itself. Back before WordPress, during the b2 days, this file was created to give sites a way to communicate with each other and for other applications to communicate with the blog itself.

What is XMLRPC?

The name tells you everything you need to know about the functionality.

XML – This was designed to accept payloads in XML. These days JSON is a much more common format but XMLRPC predates JSON by quite a bit.

RPC – RPC stands for Remote Procedure Call. It was a standard by which one system could ask another system to do something. These days we use APIs – REST or Graph API – to do the same thing but before those existed, RPC was one of the ways we accomplished this.

How does XMLRPC work?

To make XMLRPC.php do something you had to POST a message to it. If you are not familiar with how browsers work, this is basically like clicking the Submit button on a form. That usually initiates a POST request. 

If you make a POST request to yourdomain.tld/xmlrpc.php and you hand it a properly formatted XML payload, you can do things like create a post on your site.

One of the things that XMLRPC was used for a lot back in the day was “pingbacks”. Those comments you see on posts that show that someone else linked to it on their blog. 

Potential security threats from WordPress’ XMLRPC

For a long time, XMLRPC was a useful tool. Those days are fading into history now. These days all of the functionality that XMLRPC used to be used for is handled by the built-in REST API. Even though it’s not used anymore. It’s still hanging around. Those who get nostalgic about such things see it and smile. Those that are worried about security see it and frown.

XMLRPC poses a couple of distinct security risks for WordPress sites that can result in severe WordPress XMLRPC attacks. 

The first type of WordPress XMLRPC attack is a simple Brute Force attack. Since part of the XML payload that is passed to WordPress is the login and password of the user that wants to take the action, it is an easy way for attackers to try out user name and password combos until they find one that works. Many security conscious site owners will limit the number of login attempts a user can make before locking them out but won’t bother to block XMLRPC requests thus leaving a back-door open for attackers to try and find a way in.

Brute Force Attacks via XMLRPC

Once an attacker finds credentials that work, they are free then to attempt to do damage to your site by injecting content into your site’s database. Whether these are Posts, Pages, or just comments, the end result is the same. Content that you did not approve and most likely do not want is being served by your site. 

At the very least, this means spam comments or posts. At the worst though, it could be innocuous posts or comments that have malware injected.

DDoS attacks using XMLRPC

Because one of the ways that XMLRPC was used was for pingbacks, malicious users can use it to overwhelm your server by issuing a lot of expensive requests all at once.

A pingback writes a record to your database. Writing to your database is an expensive task, resource wise. While a single pingback won’t hurt your site’s performance, hundreds or even thousands of them at once can bring even the beefiest server to its knees. 

This is called a DDos or Distributed Denial of Service attack. Distributed because it’s usually not a single machine making all the requests, usually it is a whole bunch of machines spread out all over the place.

How to disable XMLRPC in WordPress

There are a few ways you can disable XMLRPC. I highly recommend that you do it because honestly, you just don’t need it. 

Through your webserver’s config file 

If you are familiar with how to block requests via your webserver’s config files – and you have access to your webserver’s config files, this is a great way to block it. For Apache, you can add this code to the .htaccess file in the root directory of your site.

<Files xmlrpc.php>

order deny,allow

deny from all

</Files>

That will stop it dead in its tracks.

Through your theme’s functions.php file

If you are not one who likes to much around in your web server’s config files, you can add a single line of code to your theme’s functions.php file.

add_filter( ‘xmlrpc_enabled’, ‘__return_false’ );

Make sure and get that exactly right, there are 2 underscores before the word return. Again, this will turn it off. This tells WordPress itself that you don’t want to accept XMLRPC requests.

Installing a plugin

Finally, if don’t want to bother with adding code to your theme’s functions.php, you can disable XMLRPC in WordPress by installing a plugin. (Hint, the plug does the exact same thing as the previous tip.) There are several good ones out there that are free or you may already have this functionality available to you if you have one of the Application Firewall plugins installed.

If not, let me recommend my favourite one and what I use on all of my sites to turn off XMLRPC, SiteGround Security Plugin. Even if you aren’t hosting with SiteGround, you can use this free plugin to manage several different security tasks. If you only want it to turn off XMLRPC, then disable all the other options. That’s one of the things I love about this plugin, everything is optional.

XMLRPC served us well in it’s day, but it’s day has come and gone. It’s time to let it retire gracefully. Until the WordPress core developers decide it is time to remove it, you need to protect yourself and your site by disabling it.

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Computer programmers like to give things big names. This is how we end up with something called the “Principle of Least Privilege” (POLP) to say something as simple as only let users do what they absolutely need to do.

That’s all we are talking about here. Make sure that all the users in your site have exactly the permissions they need, and nothing more. But since that doesn’t sound impressive, we are going to call it POLP from now on.

Application Users

The easiest user to talk about is the WordPress application user. 

• You probably have one or more administrator accounts. 
• You may have multiple “Editor” or “Author” accounts.
• Depending on your site, you may also have “Subscribers”.

POLP teaches us that you should absolutely limit the people that have administrator privileges to those that need it and can prove that they need it. In most systems, this usually means you need a primary administrator and a backup administrator in case something happens to the primary like they forget their password the same day you find out your password recovery mechanism isn’t working. By the way, securing your logins as best as possible is an absolute must, so we strongly recommend you to check this article on how to set up a 2-factor authentication on your WordPress.

Anyone else who requests administrator privileges should have to prove that they can’t get their daily job done without them. Yes, it is inconvenient to have to ask someone to do something for you but limiting administrator accounts limits that damage that can accidentally be done to your system.

Editor and Authors have less opportunity to do damage so you don’t have to be quite as strict about them but even so, everyone who has privilege in the system should have a reason for having that privilege. 

Database Users

The next “user” we need to discuss is your database user. Every WordPress site has a user and password it uses to access the database that runs WordPress. POLP teaches us that that user should have the least amount of privilege necessary to do the job. 

Unfortunately, since plugins use this user to create and delete tables, data, etc. this user has to be pretty powerful. Still, this user does not need to be all-powerful. There are two important things to check on the user that you use to access your database. (If you do not know how to check these, hire a developer, this particular part is pretty technical).

1. Your database user should not have GRANT privileges. This means that it cannot grant privileges to other users. There is no scenario in WordPress where the database user should be creating new users or granting them privileges to anything.
   
2. Your database user should not have access to any database other than the one that is attached to your WordPress site. That user should not be able to access data or make modifications to ANY other database on the server.

If you are looking to implement some changes based on the above section, you can check the following tutorial and see how to manage user’s privileges in your MySQL database.

Access to Control Panels

Finally, premium hosting partners like SiteGround have very powerful control panels that let you control things orbiting your site like email and performance. Many of these controls can do serious damage to your site if used improperly or maliciously.

SiteGround and other hosting partners allow you to add “collaborators” to accounts. Collaborators make it very easy for someone to help solve problems or perform maintenance for the site owner. This is a much better way to allow a developer to help you than sharing your login and password. You can also check our article on how to secure your login details in 5 simple steps.

Review POLP Regularly

Whether it’s your WordPress users, or your Control Panel collaborators, you need to regularly review who has elevated access to your system. At the very minimum, once a month it is a good idea to review and evaluate users who have elevated access and make sure they still require this access. When they don’t, demote them or remove them altogether until such time as you need them to have that level again.

These audits won’t take much time but could save you many hours of disaster recovery if a forgotten account gets compromised and used to harm your site, not to mention the damage it will do to your online reputation.

Remember, reputation grows slowly like a coconut tree and falls quickly like a coconut.

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If you’ve ever considered launching a podcast, this is an excellent moment. The world is in lockdown, which means not only that you probably have more time on your hands, but other people do as well, therefore, are willing to spend more time listening or finding a window to the outside world by listening to podcasts.

Podcasts and Website Hosting

There are a number of ways to go about hosting podcasts. Essentially, podcasts are little episodes of audio files that you record, which need to be stored somewhere for your audience to listen to. You can host your audio files locally on your own server and stream them on a website, you can host them straight on your website’s hosting, or you can use a specialized podcast hosting solution for the audio files. The majority of the podcasting community seems to use a combination of these methods, meaning they choose a podcast hosting platform, and additionally, they build a website for their podcast. 

Specialized podcast hosting solutions usually offer large storage space for your audio/video files, which could be somewhat expensive to store on your website hosting platform. But storing audio is just the start. A podcast’s website is the place to engage and communicate directly with your listeners. 

A standalone website for your podcast guarantees three things: Ownership, Findability, and Simplicity. Ownership means you have full control over your content and promote it any way you see fit. Findability, because you can optimize your website for Search Engines and that way help more people find your podcast, and simplicity because your website serves as a hub for all your content to engage your audience with, in addition to your audio. An added benefit is having website analytics, which helps measure and understand your visitor and listener activity better.

Building Your Podcast Website with WordPress on SiteGround 

Given that 35% of all websites on the web are built with WordPress, it’s naturally a popular website-building software among podcasters, mainly due to its flexibility and ease of use. Combined with the powerful WordPress management optimizations at SiteGround, this guarantees a smooth and easy website experience for busy podcasters. 

We offer a built-in WordPress installer if you’re starting your website from scratch that will help you launch your website in 3 clicks. If you already have a WordPress website, migrating it to SiteGround in order to enjoy all of our amazing benefits is as easy as pie! We offer two very simple methods of transferring your site; you can use our custom WordPress plugin or let our technicians migrate it for you for an entirely er hassle-free experience!

How to Create a Podcast Website in 3 Simple Steps

1. Set your WordPress site and choose your theme

Setting up a WordPress site at SiteGround takes less than 3 minutes (and exactly three clicks!). Once you’re ready, the next step is going for a nice WordPress theme for podcasting.

Podcasts essentially operate like audio/video blogs (i.e. episodes), so you could say that all blog themes could potentially work. There are, however, specifically designed WordPress podcast themes that offer all the necessary functionalities rounded up in a podcast-ready bundle.

As an example of such a theme we recommend Satchmo, a clean, contemporary theme:

Not only does the theme use the powerful page builder Elementor, but it supports multiple podcasting plugins too. It also supports both locally hosted and external audio files, as well as embedding of the big podcasting platforms such as SoundCloud, Spreaker, Spotify, MixCloud, YouTube, and more.

We’re happy to let you know that SiteGround users can get a discount on the powerful theme Satchmo – simply visit the Perks section in yourSiteGround account and get the promo code.

Another beautiful theme is Tusant, a sleek WordPress theme whose design is clearly emitting a strong Spotify vibe (you can get a discount for this one as well, again promo code is in the SiteGround Perks section).

Tusant is featuring a wide range of podcasting options, including integration with popular video services such as YouTube and Vimeo.

Of course, you can always use a multipurpose WordPress theme – like the ultrafast OceanWP – and just adapt it to your needs through the necessary plugins.

Both themes are developed by the talented team of SecondLineThemes, therefore they share some important characteristics. First of all, the developers offer two podcast-related plugins –  Podcast Subscribe Buttons, Podcast Importer SecondLine – and of course, they are both supported. Also, both themes are fully compatible with major WordPress plugins such as Elementor, WooCommerce, MemberPress, Contact Form 7, WPForms, etc.,

The main difference between Satchmo and Tusant is that the Tusant theme supports a custom functionality they created for supporting multiple podcasts on the same website. 

2. Choose your podcasting plugin for additional features

Getting a podcast-oriented theme might already provide you with the functionalities you want, but you may want additional ones (such as wider distribution, integration with specific platforms, and so on). You may have also used a generic theme and not one designed specifically for podcasting. 

Your next step, in this case, is to equip your site with a podcasting plugin.

Seriously Simple Podcasting:

Seriously Simple Podcasting is a favorite among members of the podcasting community for two reasons: one, its very comprehensive in terms of options, settings and possible integrations, and two, it has several extensions, such as:

• Seriously Simple Podcasting Stats
• Seriously Simple Podcasting Transcripts
• Seriously Simple Podcasting Speakers

It also comes with incredibly useful features such as YouTube republishing and automatic podcast transcriptions. The plugin is also known for its very detailed analytics, which allows a decent breakdown of what happens with your podcast (including customizable reports!)

If you’re eager to test out Castos platfrom, take advantage of SiteGround’s promo code (available in the Perk section in your account) which will give you a discount for the first three months!

If you need a free alternative, not linked to a specific podcasting service, then a good option for you might be Podlove Podcast Publisher:

The powerful, yet simple interface of Podlove is widely known among podcasters that use WordPress. The main difference is that this plugin is oriented toward people who want to use their own hosting (and site) to host their podcast episodes. If you’re planning to post 1-5 episodes per month, and your hosting plan allows it, this might be a great solution for you. Also, the project is open-source and you can customize it at your will.

3. Add relevant podcast website content

Once you’ve set up the foundation for your podcast website, it’s time to consider its layout. 

Since your podcast website serves as your hub for listeners engagement and retention, you should consider adding some of the suggested main sections and information below to ensure your audience will have plenty of content to keep them entertained even between episodes:

📝 Homepage – Typically, must-have sections on your homepage are information about your podcast, an embed player with your latest episodes, a featured, recommended, or your most popular episode that listers should start with, and а call-to-action button, usually inviting the user to subscribe to the podcast. A How-to-listen is also essential info, cause not everyone is an experienced podcast listener and they might be wondering how to subscribe and keep listening to the show. Use any visual aspects of your podcast branding – such as logo, main colors or imply the subject matter of your podcast in the header image, together with any additional brand graphic elements, if you have any.

📝 About (the host) page –  the about page often gets a lot of action, but this is especially true when it comes to podcasts, as oftentimes the concept of the show might not be clear right away. Use this page to present yourself, but also to indicate the focal point of your podcast and what your listeners/viewers are going to discover with you. This is a great space to link some personal social media or other web platforms you can be found on. Some creators also insert a contact form (aside from their official contact page) to facilitate communication with them.

📝 Episodes page – this is where all of your episodes are listed so that visitors can go there and browse them by title (and therefore topic) instead of cruising the navigation of your podcast player. In case your podcast episodes get pretty diverse in the future, you can also categorize them at the beginning of the said page.

📝 Donate / Support Me page – some creators choose to accept donations as a way to monetize their podcast, so if this is a path you’re planning to take, it’s a good idea to feature prominently such a page. You can accept direct donations via PayPal or use donation/fundraising platforms such as Patreon, Fundly, Qgiv, Indiegogo, Gofundme, etc.

📝 Annotated transcripts section – as part of your content strategy it’s a nice touch to include annotated transcripts with every episode. Not only this will help your SEO rankings, but it’s also pretty useful for your viewers, as many podcast listeners report to absorb knowledge better when reading the content as well.

📝 A Newsletter subscription box – as part of your marketing efforts you can consider launching a newsletter subscription in order to retain visitors and promote new content. You can either set this as a popup (which is more prominent, but some users find it annoying) or insert it as a section on your homepage and episodes page.

If you’ve had your podcast for a while, you already know that podcast listener stats are not that detailed, so don’t forget to install Google Analytics to understand your website visitors and listener’s activity better.

Ready, Set, Go!

Give yourself a pat on the back, because you are all set and ready to start podcasting! Let us know in the comments if you’re already hosting a podcast on SiteGround or when you create one, and we promise we’ll visit.

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