Website Security – 4 Ways to Secure Your Website
One of the biggest priorities when running an online business is website security. Having a secure website will cause your customers to trust your business, thereby boosting sales and increasing your return on investments. The online community is teeming with malicious hackers that are willing to do whatever it takes to penetrate your site’s security and compromise the delicate financial information of your clients. You should have the same fervor when attempting to deter these careless intruders. Most customers will not shop at an online store that is not secure, therefore creating a secure environment is essential in the world of online business. The following 4 tips will help make your website a safer place for your customers to shop.
Strong Administrative Passwords
Protecting your website means protecting the administrative interface. Once a hacker gains access to your site’s administrative interface, they can gain control of your entire online business in a few short steps. Once they’ve access the administrative control panel, hackers can do anything from defacing your website, to committing identity theft or fraud in the name of your business. To prevent hackers from easily gaining access to your website, you’ll want to use strong passwords that are mix of letters and numbers. These alphanumeric password should be at least 10 characters in length. Try to avoid using any commonly used words or names. Also try not to use dates that are significant in your life, as a hacker may be able to access this information.
Firewalls
Firewalls filter information that is transferred to and from your website. By configuring a secure firewall, you’ll be preventing all unauthorized access to your website. Setting an industry standard firewall at the highest possible security preference is one of the best ways you can deter hackers with ease. Remember that simply having a firewall is not enough to keep you site safe. The firewall must be configured properly.
Antivirus
Make sure you use only the best antivirus programs. If your computer contracts a virus, the hacker that distributed this virus could gain access to sensitive information on your computer. Some viruses will install hacking utilities known as KeyLoggers, which record the data inputted from your computer’s keyboard. This means that everything you type is recorded and then sent to the hacker, including your system and website passwords. It is imperative that you ensure that your antivirus program is regularly updated to the latest definitions. This will help you to protect your computer from hackers who attack your system in efforts of gaining control or information. Simply having an antivirus program installed is not enough. New viruses are created everyday, so it is important to keep your Antivirus program updated regularly.
Security Testing
Once you have all of the above security measures in place, you’ll want to test the security of your website routinely. Try to use a security analyzing tool regularly. These tools will usually find any existing security lapses and assist you in correcting them. Remember that in order to have good website security, these security measures must be practiced regularly.
How to Subscribe to Lunartics
Often we overlook the obvious questions posted to a blog. One of the most obvious questions would be how do you subscribe an stay updated when new blog articles are posted to the Lunartics blog? Today I’ll let you know what all your options are, so that you can use the one that suits your needs the best.
We are all about posting web hosting and web development related tips, tutorials and more here on blog.lunarpages.com, so if you want to make sure you don’t miss any of them, stay tuned.
Really Simple Syndication
An RSS feed is a document that follows the Really Simple Syndication specification, and is used to syndicate a web site’s content to other places. The RSS feed is the file path you need to make this all work. For the Lunarpages Web Hosting Blog here, our RSS feed is located at: http://feeds.feedburner.com/lunartics.
You can take our RSS feed, and plug it into any number of RSS feed readers out there. This means you could display our blog posts in your Google Reader account, the iGoogle front page, My Yahoo, Pageflakes, Bloglines, Newsgator and more. Just click one of these buttons to subscribe via the corresponding service, automatically.
You can also copy and paste the feed address into any other RSS feed reader you might not see mentioned above.
Get Updates by E-mail
If you want a more traditional way of keeping track of this blog, you could subscribe via e-mail too. This way you would get a daily e-mail digest of when the Lunartics blog is updated.
Subscribe to Lunarpages Hosting Lunartics Blog by Email
When you click the link, you will be prompted to enter your e-mail address into the form that appears, and verify that you wish to subscribe. Once you do, you will get a daily e-mail with everything that has been posted on the Lunarpages Web Hosting Blog.
It is easy to subscribe to make sure you get all of our free web hosting tips, cool coupons, incredible offers and so much more.
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Save even more on your .ORG name, now only $8.99/yr!*
Get the name you want for less! Register your .ORG with GoDaddy.com now for only $8.99/yr* and save on our already low prices. Offer expires 02/03/10.5 things I wish I learned in Business School. Plus … a smoking HOT blonde.
Watch Video Blog
Bob lays out 5 BIG things he learned the hard way — none of which are taught in business school. Bob & his smoking HOT assistant Leeann (who stars in GoDaddy.com's 1st Qtr SuperBowl commercial) also show you GoDaddy.com's LOLA commercial which was banned from the Super Bowl. See if you can figure out why.
How to Obtain a Memorable Domain Name
As each day passes, it becomes more difficult to obtain a popular domain name. Studies have shown that over 20 thousand domain names are registered on a daily basis. With all of these domain names being taken, a memorable domain name is very hard to obtain. Gone are the days of obtaining main-keyword domain names such as “Domain.com” or “Keyword.com”. Simple domains like this are nearly impossible to obtain, unless of course you are willing and able to spend exuberant amounts of money. However, there are ways one can obtain a memorable domain name without lots of cash.
Obtaining a Popular Domain With Little Funds
One way you can acquire a professional domain name is by searching the database of infinite expired domain names. Many times there are domains that have expired that would suit your keyword perfectly. Everyday new domain names expire that can potentially represent authoritative websites in your desired niche. Buying expired domain are not only more cost efficient, but it gives you the opportunity to gather a group of visitors that may have previously visit the expired domain. In some cases you may find yourself on the fortunate side of anothers misfortune. Domain names expire when the webmaster is unable to pay the renewal fees. Sometimes a domain owner may fall victim to an accident, or may simply be unable to maintain their website, leaving you to pick up where they’ve left off.
Where to Find Expired Domain Names
Finding the right expired domain is a task that requires plenty of diligence and searching. Settling for the first domain name that is available is not necessarily the best route. However, it may be advisable to rack up on as many domain names as possible, giving your business more visibility. If you are searching for that one domain name that is going to give your site the reputability you’re seeking, then you may need to enlist the help of an auction sniping software. Since domain names are sold at auction most of the time, it can be hard to squeeze in the last bid, thereby securing your chances of obtaining the perfect domain name for your online business.
Domain Name Sniping
However with auction sniping software, you can set a maximum amount of money that you would like to bid, and the software will automatically bid for you in set increments of time and money. For example, you can place the maximum bid of $500, and the software will automatically place bids in increments of $10 every 30 minutes, or to the specifications you desire. In fact there are also sniping softwares that are made especially for domain name sniping, that will notify you when the best domain names are available as soon as they expire, based on your keyword preferences.
Free Facebook Ads Offer from Lunarpages
There are over 200 million people out there on Facebook, have you tried to reach them? Advertising through Facebook can be a great way to get your business or web site off the ground – and Lunarpages is here to help you get started with a $25 – $50 discount on Facebook Ads.
By partnering with Lunarpages for your web hosting, you can utilize Facebook Ads to reach your target markets from the largest social networking site in the world.
Discounts Per Web Hosting Package
- Basic Hosting = $25 Facebook Ads Credit
- Business Hosting = $25 Facebook Ads Credit
- VPS Hosting = $50 Facebook Ads Credit
- Dedicated Hosting = $50 Facebook Ads Credit
How to Redeem Your Free Facebook Ads Offer
First, you will need to login to your Customer Account Page, and then locate the Facebook offer banner, as seen here:
Now, click that banner to be taken to the Facebook Ads offer page. Once there, click on the button that reads, “Request Your Credits”.
You will be given your coupon code, and a link to click through to sign up.
Facebook Ads FAQ
The rest of the process is pretty simple. If you get stuck, check out these Facebook Ads FAQs:
- Why do I need to add a credit card to my account in order to use a coupon?
- My coupon code says it’s expired, even though I just got it.
- I didn’t use up all the credit from my coupon, but my credit card was charged.
- I just added my coupon, but my credit card is still being charged.
- I completed my purchase through the vendor, but never received my coupon.
- I entered my coupon code on Facebook, but do not see where/if the credit has been applied to my account.
- Why can’t I activate this coupon even though I have a new account?
- I added my coupon, but did not receive any sort of confirmation. How do I know the credit was added successfully?
Need More Advertising Help?
For more information on the special Lunarpages Facebook Ads offer, be sure to check out Lunarpages.com/Facebook-Ads. Promotional Ad Credits must be applied to a New Facebook Advertiser’s account within 15 days of the creation of the account and is valid only for purchase of Facebook Ads. Also, this offer is only for new Facebook Ads users.
Lunarpages has provided you one more way to market your web site or business online.
© Lunarpages Web Hosting - Also, don't forget to follow @lunarpages on Twitter!
CMS: Creatively Maintaining Sites with a Content Management System
Running an online business can be very confusing, especially when considering how many tasks there are for the average business owner to complete on a daily basis. For this reason the website building industry has become a diverse market filled with a variety of different expertise fields, each one playing an important role in the success of a single website. You have web designers that specialize in improving the overall appearance of the website, programmers that specialize in writing code and creating web applications to boost the productivity of a website, freelance authors that populate the website with informative content, and various other experts that come together to form a collective effort towards the progression of the website.
Unfortunately, many website owners simply don’t have the money to outsource as much work as they’d like. Leaving them to handle a lot of the manual work involved with building and maintaining a website in solitude. Somewhere along the line, the immense amount of work it takes to create and maintain the project, deducts from the amount of creative fervor the website owner has.
Reducing Workload – Increasing Creativity
It’s a vicious cycle – the more you work, the less you’re able to conceptualize. As your creativity decreases, you have to work harder to maintain productivity, which ultimately is affected regardless of your efforts. The only way to stop this process is to reduce the workload you place on yourself, and as the old saying goes “Work smarter, not harder!”
Perhaps the easiest way to boost productivity, maximize creativity and improve the overall appearance and functionality of your website, is to use a capable content management system. Content management systems streamline the website creation and maintenance process by giving the user access to multiple user-oriented work modules. With a good content management system, users can automate content production and population, schedule tedious maintenance tasks, and even outsource work more efficiently than ever.
Outsourcing In Full
What is outsourcing? Outsourcing work is essentially defined as – delegating duties to employees. Sadly, most business owners who believe they are outsourcing work, are only partially doing so, as they still have to upload the work to the site once their employees send it in. While this doesn’t seem like much of a task, surely the individual that has to upload three hundred articles to various pages on his website would not agree. With a good content management system, you can outsource the uploading process to the very same employees that are responsible for producing the content, by assigning specific permissions to each employee. For example, one employee might be able to upload text, while another might only have permission to upload video content.
Focus on the Fun
It is common knowledge that those who engage in practices they enjoy, will ultimately be more successful at those practices. It can be very difficult to enjoy the production and progression of your website if you are constantly focusing on menial tasks. Using a solid CMS to outsource and boost productivity is a great way to restore the fun of building your business.
Add Fixed Social Buttons to WordPress
When it comes to marketing yourself online, making sure everybody knows of your standing among the social networking sites out there is always a positive. if you are using WordPress to publish your web site, then this plugin will be perfect to quickly add fixed social buttons to your domain.
The Fixed Social Buttons plugin for WordPress, does exactly the job you would think it would do. It allows you to display a fixed (meaning they scroll along with you on the web page) series of buttons to help you promote your site on other social network web sites out there.
Once installed, here is how the options look:
Just pick and choose the icons you want and if you want them on the top of the web pages, the bottom of the web pages, to be displayed vertically or to be displayed horizontally. It is a great alternative, if you don’t have the time or experiance to set something like this up by hand in your WordPress layout.
You can pick up the Fixed Social Buttons plugin for WordPress from the WordPress plugins database.
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Best Alternative Comment Systems
Two online services out there are really battling it out for your attention and use. Disqus Comments and Intense Debate are both top notch commenting systems. Which one though will really help you make your web site’s comment section look more appealing to new web site visitors?
Disqus Comments
Disqus Comments is the perfect comment solution, if you are looking for an easy way to add more features to your web site’s commenting system or you need an easier way to manage comments for multiple blogs. Setup is easy, and it is a lot of fun to use. Once it is in place, your users can login to comment on your blog via Disqus, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo or an OpenID.
Intense Debate
As another commenting system, Intense Debate also does a great job at giving your web site a better looking comment system. You get features like comment voting, reputation scores, reply by e-mail and much more.
Which one is right for you? It is hard to say – since the two commenting systems are so similar. I went with Disqus Comments on some of my projects, and have been pretty happy thus far. Not to say I wouldn’t be as equally as happy with Intense Debate, I just haven’t had that much experience with it.
What do you say, which comment system do you like the most?
© Lunarpages Web Hosting - Also, don't forget to follow @lunarpages on Twitter!
Assessing Storage Needs for Your E-commerce Domain
The practice of E-commerce involves much more than simply selling products and services online. Developing a good e-commerce website involves maintaining the security and administrative aspects of your website as well. Many people overlook the importance of storage when it comes to choosing a web hosting service provider. Many people make the mistake of relying solely on their hard drive, which eventually will become unable to hold your website’s data. Aside from running out of space, using a personal hard drive is risky because a crash can occur at any time resulting in data loss. When it involves your business, reliability and security is the most important factor. With all of the possible selections available in today’s market, it can be difficult to choose a single solution. There are certain things one must consider when selecting a proper web hosting service for their business.
How Much Space Do You Need
Purchasing a new storage device requires the assessment of your storage needs. If you only need to backup a few things, then a simple USB drive will suffice. Even though USB drives do not consume a lot of space, they are capable of holding vast amounts of data and are seen as a good way to backup your data. If you need to store more then you may want to consider an external hard drive.
Outsourcing Storage Space
If you do not want to store your data on a physical device at your home or office, then you can always opt for virtual storage with a third-party provider. With a good data hosting service, you will receive the benefit of an online interface that will allow you to easily transfer your files, and you’ll also receive plenty of bandwidth. Before selecting a third-party data hosting service, make sure they are reputable and take plenty of security measures to help protect your website’s data. The data must be secure during the entire time it is stored on their server to prevent data loss.
Speed Necessity
If you need to transfer a lot of data at one point in time, then speed should most definitely be a determining factor. It is important to consider all of the aspects of the storage provider, including speed, memory and disk space. Normally the best speeds are provided by interfaces such as IDE, Firewire, SCSI, parallel, and USB. These storage devices are of the plug and play variety and are very easy to use and maintain.
Making the Right Decision
There are plenty of options available concerning storage for your e-commerce website. It is not hard to find a service that will accommodate your needs, however it is best to make sure you make the right decision initially.