Hello, this is Rob. Now one of the most common reasons for WordPress sites to get hacked is that they are running on software that is not up to date. So I'm going to tell you how to make sure if you're running on up to date software or not, how to keep it updated, and what to do if the software is not up to date. So your website will be running on a server. And that will be running various applications. There will be the operating software to run the server and the various applications on top of that to run the websites.
It's most likely 95% likely that you'll be using Apache as the operating system on the server. Also, WordPress needs PHP and my SQL to run whether you're using the update versions of these software's depends on your host but I will show you just Now how to check it. If it isn't up to date, then you need to contact your host straightaway. And tell them for example, do you know you're running an out of date version of Apache? When do you think you will be updating? And if they reply and say we might be updating it in a few weeks or months time, then I would consider changing your host, but also the WordPress installation, and the WordPress themes and plugins that you are using need to be up to date as well.
And I'll show you how to ensure that this is the case. First of all, I would advise you to go to gravity scan.com right now, and check if your site's software is up to date. So here we are at gravity scan. And what you do is type in or paste in the web address of your site. You have to make sure you The HTTPS in the beginning and launch scan. And that will take a few minutes.
So here is a scan, we have run on my site. And we can see that we have passed on everything. There's no malware detected, no vulnerabilities found, and the blacklist checks have been passed, which is all good. There are a couple of low severity warnings. And I've looked into those and found that they are really nothing to worry about. But down here at the bottom, you can see that the security scan has found no issues with the software that I'm running PHP, Apache, and WordPress.
I can't tell you which versions of these software's that you should be using. Because of course, you could be seeing this video as a later date, where the versions will be higher than the ones we're using now. So that's why The best idea is to go to gravity scan.com. And there they will tell you whether you're running up to date software. Well, that's the case for the software on the server, the PHP and the Apache. But when it's the WordPress software we're talking about, then, of course, you have the ability to update it yourself.
And you can do that by the back end. So here we are, this is an completely updated site. All my sites are updated, we can see we're running WordPress 4.8, which is the up to date version at the time this video is made. When you're watching this video, it's more likely to be another version. You can always see the version down the bottom of every size, bottom right hand corner, but if it wasn't the most recent version, there will be a alert here in red right at the top of the dashboard and of every page in the WordPress back end when you go into WP admin of your sites, I'll show you the plugins and themes as well. Let's go to the plugins, first of all.
So on this page, you'll see that all my plugins are up to date. Again, if they weren't up to date, then there would be an alert underneath the plug in, and an option to update the plugin. So what happens is, and I'll show you this in another video, you just click a link here and update the plugin and 99 times out of 100. That will be what you do, there may be a small chance that very slim chance in fact, less than 1% that the plugin will fail to update and then you'll have to update it using an FTP program which I'll show you how to do as well. The other important thing to see on this page, the plugins page is that all the plugins are activated as well they all have this light blue background and they all have a deactivate link underneath the plugins.
Now if Any of them has a different color background and white background and has an activate link instead of a deactivate link, then that plugin is not being used, and most importantly should be deleted. Always delete plugins that you're not using undeleted plugins are not updated. Therefore, they run the risk of being a vulnerability as time goes on. And hackers have found ways to break into those plugins. hacks through an updated plugins in WordPress are extremely common. So this is one thing you can do regularly to really cut down the chances of your WordPress site being attacked.
And how do you find out when these plugins need updating? And the answer is with the wordfence security plugin, and I'll show you how to use that in another video. Let's go on to Appearance themes. Now, because themes get updated as well as plugins, and you will be notified on the dashboard on the WordPress back end when you need to update these themes. And again, if you have wordfence, which I very much recommend you do, it's a free plugin that will notify you as soon as a theme or a plugin or the WordPress install needs to be updated. Now, here in your themes page on WordPress, you should either see only one theme, or here in this case, two things.
You should never see any themes that are not being used in the same way as unused plugins. unused themes should be deleted, and I'll show you how to do that in another video. But in this case, I am using Genesis theme platform and a Genesis child theme. So I need both of them. And they're both up to date. So we're okay with this site.
We know That from the gravity scan, that the operating software and the software on the server is all good. And we know from the back end that the WordPress software themes and plugins are all good as well. So we are now sure that this site is running up to date software. However, that's not the end of the story. There's not more videos to come about Webroot hygiene, and other factors that could be vulnerabilities on your server. So keep watching and I'll also show you more about updating and throwing away unnecessary themes, files and folders on your website.
My name is Rob coven. I'll see you in another video.