Strong passwords are necessary to help protect your website. However, using them comes with some challenges. First, as we covered in a previous article they need to have, variety, avoid predictability, avoid real words or phrases, be long and include weird characters. Long random passwords with strange characters (?><.#$%(@!) makes them impossible to memorize. That really is the point though.
Grab a Tool
This is were a tool is needed. A tool that does the hard work for you. Password services like 1Password, LastPass (the one we use) and RoboForm do the heavy lifting for you. These tools can be installed on your computer and integrated with your browser to create 30+ characters or random odd characters and thus deliver to you strong passwords. The other great part is that these tools memorize the password for you and associate it with the website so it’s easy for you to use your strong passwords. In addition, these companies offer mobile apps that have all your passwords handy when you’re on the go.
This is what we at Smitten Web Design recommend as your solution to making strong passwords work for you.
Master Password
Each of these tools will require a master password. This is a password that limits access to all your passwords. This is one password that you will need to memorize. So while you want it to be odd, random and long with some odd characters make one that you can remember. Here is a good article you can read on master passwords from the creators of 1Password. Apply what you learn from there in creating your master password.
Now you have no excuse to avoid using strong passwords for all your WordPress sites and all the sites you use around the Internet. Now one last thing…. It can take some time to get all your sites into your new password tool. No need to stress out. Just take it one site at a time. As you visit each site going through your regular activities, just take a few extra minutes to change the password using the password generator in your tool and then save it so your tool does the remembering.
Your Next Step
Go read about LastPass, 1Password and RoboForm and decide which tool you’d prefer. They all get the job done, but you might like the style of one over another. As mentioned previously, we use LastLass (and love it) so can’t say exactly how the others work. If you’d like to dig deeper into the subject, a long look at PixelPrivacy.com’s article on reusing passwords would be a good place to start.