PHP quietly powers a huge part of the internet, including WordPress and many of the plugins, themes and shop systems built on top of it. That popularity is a strength, but it also makes PHP sites a favourite target. Attackers do not pick businesses one by one. They scan the web for any site running software with a known weakness, and then they work through the list automatically.
The most common problems are not exotic. A PHP version that no longer receives security fixes, a plugin that has not been updated for a year, an admin login with a weak password, or a forgotten test page left on the server. Any one of these can let someone inject code, steal customer details, send spam from your domain or lock you out of your own site.
The impact goes beyond the technical. A breached site can be flagged by browsers and search engines, drop out of results, and land your domain on email blocklists, so your own messages stop arriving. Customers who see a security warning rarely come back, and depending on the data involved you may have legal duties to report what happened.
This is why I think about security from the first day of a project, not as an extra at the end. Where a site does not need a heavy server-side system, I build it without one. A fast, pre-built site with a small, locked-down form service has far less to attack than a database-driven site with dozens of plugins. Forms are checked and cleaned on the server, rate limited to stop abuse, and sent with strict security headers so browsers help protect your visitors.
When a site does need more, such as a CMS or a shop, the work is in keeping it healthy. My monthly Care, Improve and Partner plans include the routine jobs that stop problems before they start: updates to software and plugins, regular backups so a mistake or attack can be undone quickly, uptime monitoring so I hear about an outage before your customers do, and security checks and vulnerability scans with fixes applied.
You can do a few things yourself, whoever looks after your site. Keep everything updated, use a password manager and unique passwords, turn on two-step login for every admin account, remove plugins and accounts you no longer use, and make sure someone is actually responsible for the site after launch. If you are not sure whether yours is covered, ask me for a quick check. A short conversation now is far cheaper than recovering from a breach later.