What would your reaction be? Wide-eyed disbelief? Exclaimed profanities? Questioning the meaning of the word “owned” in this context? Let’s hope you never have to find out. Better yet, let’s make sure you never have to by practicing these five website security habits.

1. Use secure passwords. I won’t lead you through the cryptography behind it, but most secure passwords are unique, long (14+ characters), and nigh indecipherable. I’m talking about strings of upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and special characters that don’t even remotely resemble real words. Use unique passwords for every aspect of the site, including all of your domain registrar, control panel, email, FTP, database, and CMS accounts. Store them all in a utility like KeePass to make them easy to manage.
2. Keep your software up to date. Popular web platforms like Drupal and WordPress tend to develop vulnerabilities that are quickly patched with new releases. However, these patches can’t protect you unless you keep the software up to date. This applies to your site’s core software as well as any plugins or extensions you may be using. You should schedule time to review and, if necessary, update your site’s software on a weekly or monthly basis.
3. Use SSH instead of FTP. Standard FTP transmits information as plain, unencrypted text, allowing anyone on the same network to eavesdrop and learn your FTP login credentials no matter how secure they might be. For this reason, whenever possible, you should log into your site through SSH instead.
4. Perform regular backups. Assuming all of the above isn’t enough to keep a hacker out, backups ensure that your website is recoverable if your site is ever compromised. This includes the files on your web server as well as the information in your database. Automating this is fine if you can pull it off. Just be sure to perform these backups regularly, weekly if not more frequently. Backups should be archived as well, either monthly or quarterly, just in case the current backup itself is ever compromised.
5. Test your site regularly. Whether you use automated software or do it by hand, you should perform regular tests of your site’s important functionality. This ranges from simple uptime monitoring to form submissions and the like. Testing allows you to detect when problems occur, which could be evidence of a simple server failure, a glitch, or something more malicious like compromised code, all of which you’ll want to know about as soon as they occur.
    

It’s important to realize that no system is perfectly secure, so problems can still crop up even if you follow every one of these recommendations. Imagine, for instance, if your website is on a shared hosting environment and your web hosting provider is hacked. In that sort of a situation, there’s really nothing you can do to prevent it short of picking a different hosting provider.

The point is to plug all the holes you can. 99% of the time, when your site is hacked, it’s because you weren’t doing something on the list above. And even in the other 1% of the time, your site should still be recoverable from backups. In any event, you’re covered.

Worried about this sort of thing? Need an expert to help you out? Read about Bold’s WordPress Site Maintenance service.

Visit The Writer at Work

I received it today and I love it. The pink is beautiful and it feels like a rubbery surface. The bottom is black and the inside is silver – so it’s not a Pepto Bismal laptop. It came with a set of headphones/earplugs with replacement rubbery things – you know, the part that fits around them. They’re small and fit into my ear quite nicely. I was like “Are they in?”

The keys are similar to what we have on the Mac Powerbook. They’re silver. A little tougher to press and the keys themselves are sunken down a little further. But my wrist has been hurting (carpal tunnel?) so maybe this keyboard will be better for my wrist? Guess I’ll have to see.

The touchpad is one of the nicer ones out there. Here’s how I know. Last week, I went shopping at brick and mortar stores after learning my Dell was supposed to be delayed. I’m glad I didn’t buy any of the ones I saw. I did see some impressive laptops, but now that I have this Inspiron, I can safely say that none of them compare to this one.

During that process, I did try to become an Mac girl. But while I was at the Apple store, I finally figured out what I don’t like about Macs – it’s that the windows don’t automatically maximize to fill the entire screen. Yes, you can do it manually, but even still, you can inadvertently click on other windows underneath the top one.

I’ve read that the reason behind this is for increased productivity. But for me, it was the opposite. That’s the great thing about the market right now, is that there are options since people learn and produce in different styles.

I’m happy to be back on Windows. I’m on Vista – which runs best on 2GB of memory for anyone in the market for a laptop. Vista is a little different, but I was already familiar with it, so no big deal there.

I feel a huge sigh of relief. I think I’m going to be far more productive. It will take a little time to get used to the keyboard since the control key is in a different place than it was on the Mac. But that won’t take long.

[tags]dell, inspiron, laptops, computers, productivity[/tags]

This was familiar advice. I’d been given it before by previous instructors.

But this week, it struck me differently. I’ve felt for a while that something has been holding me back from progressing as an improviser. And after my teacher’s comments, I knew this was it.

The funny thing is – that inside, in my heart and mind – I’m a positive person. But I’ve been protecting that by being sarcastic and dramatic to the outside world.

I got away with that for a few years because people have a certain tolerance for those going through a rough time. During the course of a few years, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, had a bit of a nasty breakup and went through unemployment – twice.

But now things are great. I got married to a super awesome guy and became an insta-mom to his 2 fantastic kids. We have 2 wonderful cats and a soon-to-be wonderful dog. And I finally started getting jobs that I enjoy and where my work is appreciated.

What a difference a year makes!

However, suddenly my sense of humor wasn’t funny anymore. People don’t have sympathy for me because my life is great, so their tolerance for my sarcasm has diminished. I notice them physically drawing away from me when I utter a caustic comment.

So it’s time for a new game plan. I love making people laugh, but I also know that the best laughs are from positive ideas.

Does this all relate to marketing? Of course! I’d much rather see a campaign that creatively promotes a brand rather than criticizing the competition.

The reason I should buy your brand is not because the other guy isn’t great. If you establish that your competition is unworthy of my purchase, then you’ve got me to stop buying them – but you haven’t necessarily motivated me to buy your brand. Or if you have, it’s not with great confidence.

Making consumers feel great about your product is a much more powerful motivator than making them feel bad about the competition. Success is built on strengths – not on weaknesses.

Think about your own work – are you more likely to perform well when you’re praised and admired or when you’re criticized and unappreciated?

Go motivate your consumers. Comment on their blogs. Link to their posts. Send them a freebie. Make them feel great and you’ve built their loyalty. I’ll bet they’ll tell someone about it.

[tags]positive thinking, success, marketing, social media[/tags]

My new ship date is delayed by a week – September 19.

I was concerned that using a Mac Powerbook for a month would turn me into an Apple fangirl, but alas the opposite has happened. Prepare yourself, but I don’t prefer the Mac OS platform. To make matters worse, my husband upgraded something and now the Powerbook automatically switches the screen to “Finder” every few minutes. I’ll be in the middle of typing something and bam – it gets switched to Finder. Grrrr.

Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, let’s pontificate as to why the Inspiron is delayed.

On their corporate blog, Dell offered up two reasons as to why the Inspirons are delayed.

1. The paint job elongates the manufacturing process.
2. The availability of parts changes frequently

#2 I can understand somewhat, but #1 looks like poor manufacturing planning on Dell’s part.

So what do I do?

1. Keep waiting on the pink Inspiron.
2. Cancel the pink and order the black, which seems to ship in about a week.
2. Cancel Dell and try HP, Gateway, Sony, Lenovo, etc.
3. Try to become an Apple fangirl.

I don’t have a lot of faith that Dell will ship next week. People who ordered there Inspirons in July are just now getting them this week. That could either mean that the parts and paint are now in and ready for everyone. Or it could mean that there’s a 2-3 month delay for everyone.

Right now, I’m leaning towards giving them one more week. And then, if they still don’t ship – cancel Dell and go with a different brand altogether.

What would you do?

[tags]dell, inspiron, laptops, productivity[/tags]

Speaking of which, I’m taking suggestions. But not from Apple fanboys. I’m writing from a MacBook as we speak, so yes I’ve been tempted by the MacBook Pro. But the only feature that I really care about is the built-in web cam. I can get one of those on a Dell Inspiron, which is almost $1000 less. But I’m also thinking about a convertible Tablet PC and here’s why.

Monday morning, Adam and I met with a client at a local coffee shop. I found myself switching back and forth between copious note-taking and looking stuff up on the internet.

With a convertible Tablet PC, I could take notes on the tablet and easily transform back into the laptop – and turn the screen around – when needed. Later, when I need to look at my notes, they’re right there on the computer.

“But why should I need to take handwritten notes when I could just type them out,” you ask. After all, I do type 77 glorious words per minute. The answer is that handwriting gives me the freedom to write all over a page and group things together. Hey, I’m spacial, what can I say? Then again, when I was taking notes in college, they were very linear.

Another reason is that when you have your laptop out in front of a client, it comes between you and the client like an ugly centerpiece at Thanksgiving dinner.

But convertible Tablet PCs have their downfalls. One is their size. Most come in 12 inch screens and I’m pretty sure I couldn’t go any smaller than the 13 inch screen I’m on right now. (My crashed computer is 17 inch).

Another negative is finding one with a built-in webcam that’s within my price range.  Why is the webcam thing so important? Because I want to get into video podcasting. (Actually, I have dreams of becoming a big time cewebrity, but let’s not get too far off track here.)

So, leave me a comment with your suggestion for my next laptop. And don’t forget to subscribe to the RSS feed in order to find out whether I took you up on your suggestion or not. I’ll be letting you know of my decision in the next week or two. And who knows?  It might just be by video.

[tags]laptops, notebooks, tablet PCs, computer crashes, productivity[/tags]