Keep Your Web Secure From Hackers

Each passing day brings with it news of a brand new leak of personal information over the Internet. Be it credit card information belonging to millions of users or their email IDs and passwords, personal nude pictures of celebrities or even top secret classified government data — the world of hackers has democratized the Internet and its lack of security at every possible level.
You might now be wondering what this has to do with your innocuous little blog or website that does not carry users’ credit card information or nude pictures of Scarlett Johnson.
Well, hackers can turn your nondescript website into a malicious spy bot in a matter of minutes, sending sensitive user data to hackers without your even realizing it. Worse, they can hack into your website databases and destroy or manipulate important information, injecting your content with malicious links and even hijack the hosting server to be used in bot net D Dos attacks.
But enough of this scare fest. It’s not all doom and gloom out there on the Web. There are things that you can do to secure your website from hackers and becoming a target for on-line vandals. Here’s a roundup of the easiest steps you can take:

Keep All Software Updated

Whether your website was built from scratch by your development team or you chose to create a DIY site on a third party turnkey platform, as a site owner it’s your job to ensure that every piece of software you run is up to date.
CMS providers like Word-press, Joomla and their ilk work round the clock trying to plug any holes in their systems and release regular patches and updates that make their software less vulnerable to attacks. Ensure that you run these updates and have the latest version supporting your site at any given point in time.
If your site uses third party plug-ins, keep track of their updates and ensure that these are updated on time as well. Often, many sites include plug-ins that fall into disuse over time. Clean out your website of any unused, old and non-updated plug-ins — they are sitting ducks for hackers to be used as a gateway to enter your site and wreak havoc on it.

Build Layers of Security Around Your Site
Just as you lock your doors before leaving your house and install anti-virus software on your desktop computer before browsing the web, you should also have a security system to serve as your website’s first line of defense against hacking attacks. A Web Application Firewall is that first line of defense. These solutions are designed to inspect incoming traffic, provide and weed out malicious requests –-  offering protection from SPAM, brute force attacks, SQL Injections, Cross Site Scripting and other OW ASP Top 10 threats.
Until just a few years ago, Web Application Firewalls were only available as hardware appliances, but today a few Security-as-a-service (SECaaS) providers are revolutionizing the industry by using cloud technology to cut down prices of security solutions previously found only in enterprise level setups.
Consequently, all website owners can now “rent” a cloud-based Web Application Firewall, without committing to pricey security appliances or even owning a dedicated hosting server. Better yet, these plug-and-play services don’t require you to hire security experts or attempt to learn every aspect of web security. (Most of us just don’t have the time to become cybersecurity experts too.)
With hundreds of thousands of websites hacked every year, it’s becoming clear that hosting providers are not sufficiently equipped to handle all website security threats because frankly website security is not within their primary agenda. Now cloud-based Web Application Firewalls are filling that void.
Use Strong Passwords, Change Regularly
This one’s another no-brainier. Brute force attacks that try guessing user-name password combinations have multiplied at alarming rates over the last couple of years with thousands of attacks being detected on a daily basis across the web.
Using strong passwords is an effective way to limit if not completely eliminate brute force and dictionary attacks. Strong passwords are not just a requirement for your email or financial transactions on-line, they are also imperative for your website server, adman and database passwords.
Make sure your password is a combination of alphanumeric characters, symbols, upper and lower case characters and is at least 12 characters long to prevent brute force attacks.
Do not use the same password for all your different website logins. Change your passwords regularly to keep them doubly secure. Store users’ passwords in encrypted form. This ensures that even if there is a security breach, attackers do not get their hands on actual user passwords.

Make Ad-min Directories Tough to Spot
An ingenious way hackers gain access to your site’s data is by going straight to the source and hacking into your ad-min directories.
Hackers can use scripts that scan all the directories on your web server for giveaway names like ‘admin’ or ‘login’ etc. and focus their energies on entering these folders to compromise your website’s security. Most popular CMS’s allow you to rename your adman folders to any name of your choice. Pick innocuous sounding names for your adman folders that are known only to your web-masters to greatly reduce the possibility of a potential breach.
This is such a basic and easily avoidable hacking scenario, that it’s astonishing how millions of websites still ignore it.
Conclusion
Most of us go through life with the philosophy ‘It won’t happen to me’. However, that philosophy has been proven not t be true in the world of on-line
security. A successful attack on your site not only leads to compromising of users’ data and your own information, it can also lead to a blacklisting of your site by Google and other search providers as your infected site risks spreading malicious content throughout the web.
Erring on the side of caution works best in this area. Implement at least these basic steps right away, to avoid being a soft target for malicious hackers.

Social Media is Impacting A Best Web Design

Social media has been everywhere these days. And it is affecting almost every walk of life.
It is often noticed that social media has its impact on the off-line
world as well. So, it is quite obvious that the world of the Internet would be impacted the most by social media platforms.
For businesses to be successful these days, creating a social media strategy is a must. And for almost everything they do, they need to follow a process that integrates social media in it. Web design is no different when it comes to this. It has experienced a sea of change since the advent of social media on the Internet.
Social Media Impacting Web Design
Social media has been able to exert its impact on Web design to a great extent.
Almost all the companies these days have their presence on social media. And what can be a better platform to let people know about this than the home page of the business website? This is why almost all the websites have the icons of different social media websites. And a click on any of those would lead the website visitor to the company’s social media page. This is becoming imperative for any website these days.
Attractive Design for Social Media Pages and Profiles
The advent of social media has made the Internet more of a live and interactive marketplace than ever before. It’s no more the same drab thing. In addition to creating an attractive website, it is also extremely important to have a prominent social presence. And for that, you need to design how you want to present yourself in front of your potential customers through the social media platforms.
For example, if you want your business to be present on Face-book through a page, it is important to design the Face-book fan page of your business properly. The same holds true for Twitter and other platforms as well. The profiles that you have on these social media websites need to be designed in such a way that they can grab the attention of the viewers with immediate effect.
Perfect Design Necessary for Ads on Social Media
With social media becoming more and more popular with every passing day, increasing numbers of people are joining these websites. For example, Face-book alone has its number of active users in 2015 at a whopping 1.41 billion. This is driving the companies to use these platforms to reach out to their target audiences. So, they are preparing ads for the social media websites. And the focus is more on design.
The ads are being specially designed for different platforms. The objective is to increase their effectiveness and garner more clicks. The designs of the ads will also play an important role in ensuring that the company is able to gather leads, which should be converted to earn revenues. Moreover, the designers are also required to create different other stuff, such as banner ads, mimes, and so on.
Interactive Designs
Social media has helped to create a penchant among people for content that is more interactive and interesting. This is where Web design is expected to play an increasingly important role. Web designers need to shape the websites as well as the social media pages of the companies in such a way that they attract more interaction from the potential as well as the existing customers. This will help them understand what their customers are looking for and where they are going wrong.
Using Images for Social Media Communication
Social media has been able to change the way businesses are run. They are the perfect field to interact with the customers, know what they want from you, and help you decide how you should plan your offerings.
The designs should be planned in such a way that they drive the interaction of hundreds of customers on a regular basis. A picture speaks a thousand words and hence, they are among the best components for communication. So, most of the social media platforms need images. This is where a Web designer becomes relevant. Attractive images need to be created. Moreover, the images should also be resized to meet the requirement of different social media platforms.
Increasing Importance of Web Design on Social Media
Is the importance of Web designing going to diminish with the passage of time?
This is a question that’s haunting the on-line world after the advent of social media. But that is not expected at all. In fact, the importance of Web designing is likely to increase further soon. This is because the companies will need attractive Web design to keep the audience captivated on their social profiles.

Learn How To Create A Website

               









 Thanks for a new free website just launched, business owners and entrepreneurs can follow a simple step by step tutorial to build their own professional looking websites.

Sarasota, FL, USA - October 28th, 2013 /Marketers Media/ -- In this day and age a website is an essential tool for most small businesses and entrepreneurs. It acts as a business card, a promotional advertisement and a sales tool all working together. But in the past small businesses have had to outlay thousands of dollars to get a basic website online.

A new website:SimpleWebTutorial.com hopes to change all that. Setup by long time web developer Brock Hamilton, as a way for anyone to build and maintain their own professional looking website at a fraction of the cost it would usually require.

"Even people with absolutely no experience in web design or programming, can have a basic website up and running in under 30 mins." Says Hamilton

The website consists of a range of step by step tutorials that take first time web builders through the process of registering a domain name, setting up web hosting and then building the actual website.

"Everything they need to know to get setup is in our main tutorials, and then there are a series of 42 additional videos that show users every aspect of managing and maintaining their websites". Hamilton says.

"The idea for the website came after dozens of friends and friends of friends had asked me to help them setup a basic website for their small local business, or for a business idea they had and wanted to test out without spending thousands on web development."

"I started off helping them get a website setup on a one by one basis, but to be honest, I got sick of explaining the same "very basic" things over and over again, so I decided to setup a website that took them step by step through the process, so they could do it themselves." Hamilton explains.

The website is completely free to use, and remuneration is made by way of affiliate commissions for various recommendations. But remuneration is not required to use the site's tutorials.

About Brock Hamilton:
Brock Hamilton is a web developer with over 10 years experience building websites for small to medium sized businesses as well as selected bespoke personal sites. He has also published an eBook
(released exclusively on Amazon Kindle) where he attempts to lead small business owners and would be web developers down the path of building and running their websites for a fraction of the normal costs associated with the practice.

How To Purchase A Nice Domain

If you have a web site, you should seriously consider registering your own domain name. A domain name is a name like "the site wizard.com" or "the free country.com", which you can use to refer to your website. Note that you do not have to be a company or organisation ("organization" in US English) to register a domain name. Any individual can do it too.

Importance of a Domain Name
There are a number of good reasons for having a domain name:

If you ever change your web host, your domain name goes with you. Your regular visitors or customers who knew your site name as www.thesitewizard.com (for example) would not have to be informed about a change of web address (also known as "URL"). They would simply type your domain name and they'd be brought to your new site.

If you are a business, a domain name gives you credibility. Few people will be willing to do business with a company that does not have its own domain name.

If you get a domain name that describes your company's business or name, people can remember the name easily and can return to your site without having to consult their documents. In fact, if you get a good name that describes your product or service, you might even get people who were trying their luck by typing "www.yourproductname.com" in their browser.

If you want good sponsors (advertisers) for your website, a domain name is usually helpful. It tends to give your website an aura of perfectibility.

Registration Overview
Getting a domain name involves registering the name you want with an organisation called ICANN through a domain name registrar. For example, if you choose a name like "example.com", you will have to go to a registrar, pay a registration fee that costs around US$10 to US$35 for that name. That will give you the right to the name for a year, and you will have to renew it annually for (usually) the same amount per annum.

Some web hosts will register it and pay for the name for free (usually only the commercial web hosts), while others will do it for you but you'll have to foot the registrar fees.

My personal preference is to register the name directly with a domain name registrar rather than through my web host. I've heard stories, in the past, of less-than-reputable web hosts that registered the domain under their own name, making them the owner of the domain rather than you (although I don't know if such web hosts still exist today). Registering with a domain name registrar allows me to make sure that I am registered as the owner, the administrative and technical contacts. Being the owner is vital — if someone else places himself as the owner (such as your web host), he can always decide to charge you some exorbitant fee for the use of the name later, and there is little you can do. The various other contacts are less vital, but may still play important roles, depending on your registrar. For example, for some registrars, the administrative contact's approval is required before a domain name is transferred out of a web host (or at least, it used to be). If he/she cannot be contacted, the technical contact is used.

Domain names disappear extremely fast. Many people claim that all the good domain names are gone. I doubt that — but it is probably true that most good domain names that are descriptive of products and services have been taken. If you want a domain name for your site, I suggest you act now, or face the anguish of having lost that name later. After all, US$10 (more or less) for a year's ownership of the name is pretty cheap when you realize that you're securing a good name for your website.

Step By Step Instructions
If you want to register a domain name, here's what you need to do. Please read it all before acting.

Think of a few good domain names that you'd like to use. It won't do to think of only one — it might already be taken (it probably is!). You can find some tips on choosing a good domain name from my article, Tips on Choosing a Domain Name, at http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/domainname.shtml

There's more to it than meets the eye.

You will need either a credit card or a PayPal account to pay for the domain. This is a requirement of most if not all registrars. It will allow you to claim and get the domain name immediately on application. This is not an option (unfortunately).

If you already have a web host, obtain from them the names of their primary and secondary nameservers. Don't worry if you don't understand what these things mean. Just save the information somewhere. The information can usually be obtained from their FAQs or other documentation on their site, usually under a category like "domain name" or "DNS" or "domain name transfer" and the like. If you can't find it, email them. You'll need the information to point your domain name to your website after you buy your domain. Having said that, if you don't have a web host yet, don't worry. Just read on.

If you do not have a web host, you can always allow the registrar to park your domain name at a temporary website specially set up for you. This way you can quickly secure your domain name before it's too late and still take your time to set up the other aspects of your site. As far as I can tell, most registrars (or probably all) automatically park your domain by default whether you ask them to or not, so if this is your situation, you probably don't have to do anything special to get it done. Some of those registrars also provide you with a free email address at your own domain name while it is parked at their site, like sales@example.com (where "example.com" is your domain).

List of Domain Name Registrars
There are numerous domain name registrars. Listed below are just a few, along with my comments, if I know anything about them. Note that the domain name industry is highly competitive, with prices wildly fluctuating throughout the year, every year, so it's impossible to really mention accurate prices below unless I spend all my time updating this page. Please check their sites for the latest rates. (Note: all prices below are in US dollars.)

World's Largest Registrar - GoDaddy.com  — This extremely popular registrar (probably the biggest today) offers .com domain names for $9.99 (plus 20 cents) per year (or $6.99 plus 20 cents if you transfer from another registrar). They have a web interface to manage your domains, free web redirection (where people who visit your domain will get transferred to another web address of your choice), free starter web page, free parked page or free "for sale" page, and an optional private domain registration where your domain is registered in the name of a proxy company. They offer .com, .us, .biz, .info, .net, .org, .ws, .name, .tv, .co.uk, .me.uk and .org.uk, etc. Note that (as with all registrars) the exact price varies depending on which domain you are registering (for example some domain suffixes are more expensive than others). Both credit card and PayPal payments are accepted.

Name cheap  — This company provides .com domains for $10.69 (plus 18 cents) per year ($9.69 if you transfer from other registrars). Along with your domain, you get free email forwarding, free web redirection (where anyone going to your domain is automatically directed to another address of your choice), free domain name parking, etc. For the first year (or at least, at the time I checked their prices), you can also have their Who's Guard (where your particulars are masked from public view) for free. They have a wide variety of domain name extensions available, including .net, .org, .biz, .info, .us, .co.uk, .co, .de, etc. You can use either a credit card or PayPal for your purchases.

1&1 Internet  — This is primarily a large web host that is also a domain name registrar. You are charged $6.99 for .com, .org, .net, .us domains. They also offer .info domains for $0.99 (first year only) and .biz at $8.99. The fee includes private domain registration, which means that your particulars are hidden from public view (done by registering the domain in the name of a proxy company). You also get a free email account, DNS management, domain forwarding and masking, and a starter website with each domain. Both credit card and PayPal payments are accepted by this registrar.