Adding a firewall to your WordPress install is one way to keep hackers out. Firewall plugins keep hackers and their queries from messing with your site and its database. No blog is hack proof. But the more difficult you make the process, the less likely it is for your website’s walls to get breached. These 6 firewall WordPress plugins let you do just that:

WordPress Firewall 2: a powerful firewall for your WordPress site that investigates requests and blocks the most obvious attacks. It protects your plugins as well. Best of all, it informs you when your site is being attacked. Sometimes, this could be too strong though.

Block Bad Queries (BBQ): takes care of suspicious URLs to keep your blog secure against malicious URL request attacks. Works great on older WordPress versions too.

Secure WordPress: if you have not taken the steps to make your website more secure already, this plugin is a good place to start. Not only blocks bad queries, it removes versions, tooltips, error messages, and much more.

Bullproof Security: a fast and powerful plugin that protects your site against XSS, SQL Injection and base64_encode hacking attacks. It turns off errors and other information that hackers can use to attack your site with.

AskApache Password Protect: you may not be able to stop all hack attacks, but thanks to plugins such as this one you can handle most automated attacks as well the ones performed by inexperienced hackers. Takes advantage of Apache’s core security features to keep your website safe.

F-Secure Safe Links: not a firewall per se, but it does allow you to keep track of the links posted on your website. Catches possible malicious links before they do any harm. This plugin protects your blog against comment attacks as well.

Please share your suggestions below.

Akismet: a great plugin for beginners and advanced users. In fact, you should not go live with your blog without having this plugin (or an alternative) turned on.

WP-reCAPTCHA: CAPTCHA can’t stop all spam comments and registrations. At the same time, it can make life difficult for spammers who want to mess with your website.

AVH First Defense Against Spam: checks comments before they are posted to your website and blocks spammers before they can do any harm.

Fast Secure Contact Form: so you thought your e-mail account would be safe against spammers when you used a contact form plugin? That is simply not true. This plugin lets you protect your forms and contact page against spammers.

Bad Behavior: a powerful plugin that could limit access to your site for spammers and keep robots and junk content away from your WordPress site.

CryptX: if you are sharing your e-mail and others’ emails on your website, you want to install this plugin to keep those addresses hidden from e-mail scrappers.

AntiVirus: spam injections and viruses are very nasty and hard to deal with for webmasters. This plugin can help you reduce the chances of your website getting infected.

Anti Feed-Scraper: content theft is a big issue these days. Some people don’t seem to have too many issues using other people’s works to their advantage. With this plugin, you can stop feed scrapers.

Stop Spammer Registrations Plugin: those of you who have owned a WordPress membership site in the past are familiar with this issue. Spam accounts are annoying and sometimes dangerous. This plugin can help you reduce their numbers.  It checks emails, username, and IP against an online database before users can register.

User Spam Remover: sometimes people create junk accounts on your website and don’t use them for a while until their chance comes. This plugin lets you remove those annoying accounts fast.

What’s your favorite anti spam plugin for WordPress?

For long I have used Akismet to manage spam comments on my blog, but WordPress does not come with captcha which means if you leave your comments open, there is a chance that folks will use that to their advantage. But the good thing about WordPress is the fact that there are a lot of folks who dedicate their time to making the platform better for everyone. That’s how Cryptographp has come about. This plug-in adds a captcha piece to your comment template, which means folks can’t just spam your blog with automated software. Don’t get me wrong. Cryptographp does not end the issue of WordPress spamming. However, it can reduce your blog’s spams significantly.

Cryptographp is a free WordPress plug-in and is very easy to install. Combined with Askimet, you can expect folks to have a hell of a time trying to spam your WordPress blog. You can download Cryptographp here.