Hey there,
Hope your week’s been smooth so far! Ready for round two of WP Growth Weekly? 🚀
Speed and security are the unsung heroes of every successful WordPress site. 🔒 This week, we’ll cover the simple steps that keep your site both fast and safe — so you can focus on running your business, not firefighting tech headaches.
Week #2 - Performance & Security Basics
Weekly Picks
Firewalls are your site’s bouncers — keeping hackers, bots, and bad traffic outside. This guide breaks down the types, benefits, and setup basics so your WordPress stays both safe and speedy.
Think of shared hosting as a crowded dorm, and dedicated hosting as your own apartment. This guide compares performance, security, and value so you’ll know which fits your business best.
A slow site sends customers running (literally). This article explains how speed directly boosts conversions and revenue — plus simple ways to keep your WordPress site zippy.
A slow site sends customers running (literally). This article explains how speed directly boosts conversions and revenue — plus simple ways to keep your WordPress site zippy.
Lists, Lists, & Lists
A complete, up-to-date roadmap for securing your WordPress. From firewalls to logins, this step-by-step guide shows you how to lock things down without turning your site into Fort Knox.
Ready to speed things up? These tips cover caching, images, code, and plugins — practical, proven tweaks that cut load times without cutting corners.
Not all firewalls do what they promise. This real-world comparison highlights which plugins actually protect your site without grinding it to a halt. (Spoiler: some big names flop.)
Smooth Operations
A hands-on security playbook for WordPress. Covers firewalls, backups, and access controls — basically everything you need to stop losing sleep over hacks.
Make WP Rocket live up to its name. This tutorial walks you through caching, compression, and lazy loading so your site feels instant.
Extra Boost
Resource: Wordfence Learning Center
Like a free security bootcamp for WordPress. Tutorials, explainers, and best practices — all organized so you can go from “What’s a firewall?” to “I got this.”
Discover practical strategies to reduce fraudulent WooCommerce orders. From payment rules to verification techniques, this guide helps you protect revenue and keep your checkout process smooth for legitimate customers.
Stripe Radar helps prevent card testing attacks on your WordPress store. This guide explains setup, rules, and best practices to block suspicious activity without disrupting legitimate transactions.
Weekly Tip
This week’s WP Growth Weekly tip is all about backups — and more specifically, the classic 3-2-1 rule.
It’s not just tech jargon; it’s the simplest way to make sure your business site (and sanity) survive the unexpected.
Here’s how to stay one step ahead.
💾 What is the 3-2-1 Rule?
In theory, the 3-2-1 backup rule is simple: keep three total copies of your data, on two different types of storage, with one copy offsite. It’s the industry standard for a reason.
It sounds a bit abstract, but here’s the catch: one of those “three copies” is just your live site itself.
Copy 1: your running WordPress site.
Copy 2: a local/host-side backup (your hosting provider, or a plugin set to save directly on the server).
Alternative: pull a copy via FTP, then clear it off the server to free up space. (Some hosts even let you set notifications when fresh backups are ready.)
Copy 3: an offsite backup (AWS S3, Backblaze, Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, etc.).
So in practice, you’re really managing two backup systems — one near your host, one far away — while your live site makes up the third copy.
🖥️ In the Context of WordPress
That means you can’t just rely on your hosting provider’s backups. A hacked account or server crash can wipe those out in seconds. Instead, you want a layered approach: the live site itself, one backup stored locally or pulled via FTP, and one safely offsite in the cloud.
🔌 Plugins That Make It Easy
WPVivid – Flexible schedules, cloud storage integrations, and great for staging/migrations.
UpdraftPlus – The veteran: reliable, simple, and integrates with nearly every storage option.
☁️ Offsite Storage (a.k.a. Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Server)
Most plugins integrate with Backblaze, Dropbox, Google Drive, or OneDrive, and others — but if you want enterprise-level reliability, AWS S3 is in a league of its own. Redundancy, speed, security — it’s the Rolls Royce of offsite storage. (The others are fine for convenience, but S3 is where you want mission-critical stuff.)
⚡ Bonus Tip
Don’t just set and forget. Test a restore at least once a quarter. Nothing’s worse than realizing your backups don’t actually work the one time you need them.
That’s a Wrap
And that’s edition #2, locked down and turbocharged! 🚀🔒
This week, you laid the groundwork for a healthy site by focusing on the two things that quietly make or break every WordPress business: speed and security. From firewalls and hosting choices to backups and fraud prevention, you’ve built the habits that keep your site fast, safe, and ready for growth.
Next week, we’ll shift gears to the fun part: setting up your very first WordPress site. Think themes, plugins, and the building blocks that turn a blank install into something that actually feels like your business.
Until then, give yourself a nod — every site that scales gracefully starts with a strong foundation. You’ve just checked that box. 🚀
Until next week, stay growing! 🌱
Gabor, for WP Growth Weekly