If you’ve got joomla installed chances are good that you are going to get your site hacked sooner or later. The more security holes you leave up the sooner that is going to be. Here is one tip on closing a particularly obvious security hole. Joomla installs with a /administrator folder for all sites, knowing this a hacker (or anyone familiar with joomla) can go to http://www.example.com/administrator and voila you are at the administrator login page. If they’ve used a few other hacks they will already have reset the administrator login password as well. Here’s how to change how you get to your administrator page:

Download jSecure from the extension repository on joomla.org
(Don’t forget where you download it to)

Log into your administrative section and click on “Extensions”, then “Install/Uninstall”
Click on the Browse button and locate the jsecure file (plgSystemJSecure-1.0.9.zip unless you renamed it or the file has been updated since this post)
Click “Upload File & Install”

You should get a message back stating that the install was successful, now we just need to finish up by configuring it.

Click on “Extensions” again, then “Plugin Manager”
If you don’t see it already type “jSecure” in your filter, then click on “System – jSecure Authentication”.
First off we need to change the key, enter something into the key that you will be able to remember but will not be easily guessable by a hacker.
Next you can change your redirect option to either go to a custom 404 page you have, go to the index page, or remain where it currently is.
Lastly change the “Enabled” radio button from “No” to “Yes” and hit “Save”.

You are all set, from now on when you need to get to your administrator section you will type in http://www.example.com/administrator/?<your_key>