The Number One Problem In The WordPress Community Might Surprise You

• April 6, 2015
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Recently, a barrage of thoroughly concerning statistics have been released on the number of “safe” WordPress sites on the web.

That number, to be clear, is exceedingly low.

Recent events pertaining to critical flaws in SEO plugins, in specific, have only served to further draw light on this issue; people just aren’t protecting their sites, and are thus failing to protect their identities, businesses, lives and the lives of others

In a survey by web backup service Codeguard, more than 500 WordPress users (business owners and bloggers) were polled. Turns out less than half of the platform’s users actually make the effort to backup their websites for months.

Do not let this be you

Furthermore, more than 25 percent have never had any formal security training, 22 percent have no idea what a backup is and 63 percent have inadvertently deleted important files that they’d failed to backup. Likely because they didn’t know that they could.

Much like any lack of knowledge or educational information on a popular topic, this dearth of self-defensive behavior is a big problem.

Funny enough, as Codeguard is a backup service itself, the company also surveyed respondents’ propensity to recover what they’d lost; 20 percent “would pay thousands of dollars” in order to recover what they’d lost after failing to backup.

If you happen to be in this group, don’t be ashamed but don’t ignore the problem. As WordPress is so intuitive, many users never receive formal training on the ins and outs. It’s not uncommon. But in order to avoid your site (and business, and therefore, pocket book) going up in flames head over to WordPress’s security white paper page, where you can download a crash course on the steps you can take to protect yourself.