Do you want to scan your WordPress website for potential malware and malicious code?
Without regular scanning malware and malicious code can go unnoticed on your website, it is therefore important to perform regular malware scans of your entire WordPress website to help keep it safe and secure.
In this article, we’ll show you how to easily scan your WordPress website for potential malware and malicious code.
When should you scan your WordPress website for Malware?
If you are a WordPress website owner, who has not installed a reliable WordPress security scanner, then you really should act now and scan your WordPress website immediately, as it could already be compromised and infected with malicious code and malware, thus harming your online reputation.
Those readers who know me personally will know I get side-tracked very easily, so let’s bench the pros and cons of using a WordPress Security plugin for another post and address the question in hand.
How to Scan your WordPress website for Malware
There is an abundance of awesome resources and plugins that are available for WordPress website owners to use to help keep their site malware and malicious code free.
Defender Pro
Defender Pro which is part of WPMUDEV Pro Plugins membership that once installed allows you to immediately perform a full scan of your WordPress website for malware. You can also automate and schedule security scans which include malware detection scanning.
There is also a free version of Defender in the official WordPress Plugins repository.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/defender-security/
Sucuri
Sucuri Security is available for free installation from the official WordPress Plugins repository. Once installed use the SiteCheck feature to scan your WordPress website for Malware and malicious code.
https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/sucuri-scanner/
WordFence
WordFence is another great WordPress security plugin that has a built-in Malware scanner, also available from the official WordPress Plugin repository.
For real-time malware scanning their Premium version is worth considering.
https://www.wordfence.com/products/wordfence-premium/
Our recommendation
We recommend signing up for a WPMU DEV Basic membership which includes all Pro plugins including Defender Pro (Security), Snapshot Pro (Backups), SmartCrawl (SEO), Hummingbird (Site Performance) and Smush Pro (Image Optimisation) plus more. Well worth the $7.50 USD per month for 1 WordPress website.
Alternative Malware Scanning Options
Hosting Providers
Most reliable WordPress hosting providers provide a Malware scanner option within your hosting environment. Even if you have installed a Malware Scanner plugin, it is also worth running this hosting malware scan on an ad-hoc basis – let’s face it you can never be too careful.
Online Malware Scanners
Sometimes your WordPress developers do not provide you with full administrator access to your WordPress backend, so installing a Malware Scanner can be tricky.
Thankfully that is where online Malware Scanners come-in to play.
We have already mentioned the awesome folks over at Sucuri, and they provide a free-to-use online Malware scanner at https://sitecheck.sucuri.net/
Next step …
It is great that you have now installed a reliable malware scanner and fingers crossed it reported no malware was found on your WordPress website.
Don’t stop there, make sure you keep your WordPress website as safe and secure as possible with this quick WordPress Maintenance checklist.
- Schedule and automate full WordPress files and Database backups, keeping these out of your hosting environment. Consider installing a reliable WordPress Backup solution.
- Ensure you are not using Admin, Administrator, your name or business name as your Administrator WordPress user.
- Ensure you are using a secure and unique password.
- Run a security scan to identify other security-related issues with your WordPress website.
Final thoughts
We really hope this article helped you learn how to scan your WordPress website for malware and malicious code. We appreciate that sometimes people just need that little extra help, if this is you then please feel free to contact us today to arrange a chat about our WordPress Hosting, WordPress Management and WordPress training.
