What, Why, and Hows of WordPress Security Keys
If you are using WordPress and did a little reading about WordPress Security, then you should have seen a mention of WordPress Security Keys (Secret Keys). In this article, we will explain the what, why, and hows of WordPress Security Keys for WordPress Beginners.
What are WordPress Security Keys?
WordPress Security Keys is a set of random variables that improve encryption of information stored in the user’s cookies. There are a total of four security keys: AUTH_KEY, SECURE_AUTH_KEY, LOGGED_IN_KEY, and NONCE_KEY
Why use WordPress Security Keys?
These security keys makes it harder to crack your password. A non-encrypted password like “username” or “wordpress” can be easily broken, but a random, unpredictable, encrypted password such as “88a7da62429ba6ad3cb3c76a09641fc” takes years to come up with the right combination. You should use WordPress Security keys to increase security of your WordPress powered blogs or websites.
How to use WordPress Security Keys on my site?
Self-hosted WordPress blogs does not have the Security Keys defined. You would need to add these yourself. It is a very simple and easy process, that you should be able to do as long as you know how to use FTP.
First, you would need to get your own unique Secret Key. WordPress has a random generator that can give you these secret keys. We recommend that you use that rather than inventing your own.
Second step is to modify your wp-config.php (file). You will find this file located in your WordPress root folder (the same folder where your wp-content and other folders are stored). In your wp-config.php file on line 45, you should see something like this:
Simply take your security key that we grabbed in step 1 and paste them accordingly in the following lines.
Save your wp-config.php file, and you are done. If you were logged into your WordPress admin panel, then you will be asked to log back in again.
Other Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Do I have to remember my Security Keys?
No, you do not have to remember the security key. You have to paste it once in the wp-config.php file and that is it.
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very handy and important thanks for sharing
While you’re adt it:
Why not define the salt constants and save yourself some database queries?!
It should look like this:
define('AUTH_SALT', 'put your unique phrase here');
define('SECURE_AUTH_SALT', 'put your unique phrase here');
define('LOGGED_IN_SALT', 'put your unique phrase here');
define('NONCE_SALT', 'put your unique phrase here');
This article from Digging into WordPress explains the advantages of this practice.
Thanks for sharing!
Good idea, didn’t even think of that.
if you develop multiple wordpress sites do you create a security key for each one or use the same one on all of them?
Use a new one
Nicely said. The directions are pretty easy, but I think the security and safety is understated in the documentation. Thanks for spelling it out and making the web a safer place.
Um, so does this change your admin password or what? I don’t understand what this does? Maybe that’s because I’m not a hacker. But, if this is just stored in your config.php file, wouldn’t it be way easier for a hacker just to hack into your ftp site and nab this security key out of the config file?
I want my WordPress sites to be more secure, but I just don’t understand what this is preventing?
Hi
Thanks for a short and informative post.
I notice that in your example there are four secret keys.
There appear to be more secret keys in WordPress 3.0 – can these be added to previous versions of WordPress?
Those keys become available with WordPress 3.0
You’ll need to use 3.0 to utilise all eight secret keys, rather than the former four. The new WordPress random key generator can be found at https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/salt