Successful Blog

Five steps to fully optimising your website against hacker attacks

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By Brittany Thorley

Cyber attacks have been a growing trend and an ever-growing challenge for organisations of all sizes with the financial loss as a result of cyber attacks and the cost of resolving such threats costing billions worldwide. Whilst the global price tag of cyber attacks is staggering and hackers by no means defeated, organisations across the globe are taking steps to optimise their websites to avoid hacking disasters.

Prevent hackers from using your server as a transmitter of spam and illegal files using these five steps to a website that is safe, secure and ultimately uncompromised.

1. Update regularly to close hacker loopholes

Updating software and backing up files should be the mantra of every online business and this regime is an important step to protecting your site from hackers. Updating all software on your server and any web applications on a regular basis is essential and will close loopholes that leave your site vulnerable to attacks. Exercise particular diligence when using any third party software (e.g., CMS) by regularly running security updates. CMS software (such as WordPress) informs you of any available updates when logging in.

2. Use parameterised queries

Preventing SQL Injection vulnerabilities is a developer’s nightmare when it comes to web application security, and many have quite the battle on their hands to ensure the code they write is secure and a number of other factors are controlled to inhibit compromise. Despite developers’ best efforts, SQL Injection, whereby the hacker uses a URL parameter or web form field to access and manipulate databases, is all too common but you can do your bit in protecting your website from unauthorised changes, data collection and deletion.

Parameterised queries can be used in collaboration with many web languages and will prevent the hacker from changing URL parameters to add their additional query to the SQL statement.

3. Censor error messages

Unbeknownst to many, error messages can give away essential information that leaves your system compromised. One area in particular where hackers can use error messages to attack and gain access to your website is the admin login form. For example, they use vague error messages such as ‘Your username or password was incorrect,’ implying that one of the two fields is correct. This will give the hacker the information they need to launch an attack on the incorrect field and gain access to your system even quicker.

4. Use strong passwords server and browser side

The importance of strong passwords may be an obvious one, but many organisations still fail to make their password as complex as they should, especially when protecting their server and admin area. Follow the principles and create a password that will outwit the most persistent hackers and defend your website appropriately.

  • Ensure your password is at least eight characters in length
  • Regularly update your password and ensure it is dramatically different every time
  • Do not include your username, company name or real name
  • Use a mixture of uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers and symbols
  • Avoid using complete words or phrases

The use of memorable information in a password can make it easy to remember, but apply the principles above and the following example to form a stronger alternative. If you’d like to use your husband’s birthday as the basis of your password, use the values in the following example: ‘My husband’s birthday is 25 November 1987’, opt for this password – ‘Mhbi25/Nov,87’.

5. Assess your website security with penetration testing

Penetration testing (or pentest) uses similar scripts as hackers to simulate a hacker attack and highlight and exploit vulnerabilities within your IT infrastructure. These weaknesses can be found and remedied before hackers have the chance to abuse them in a bid to compromise your website. Internal, external and hybrid penetration testing can provide organisations across all industries with a level of certainty and reassurance when protecting their website from hackers.

Have you taken steps to secure your website?

Author’s Bio: Brittany Thorley is a business and security blogger, she works with a range of organisations to enhance their security online with advice on penetration testing, security audits, source code review and training.

5 Tips On How To Choose The Right Layout & Design For Your New Blog

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By Reena Cruz

Everyone has a reason for starting a blog: passion, hobby, business, information sharing, you name it. Whatever compels you to the blogging dashboard, you’ll find yourself wondering how your blog layout and design can best attract your target niche.

Different themes and layouts will work well with certain goals, for example, and some won’t. Thus, you need to decide on the best blog design that will work with and emphasize your main goal. It may sound easy, but any veteran blogger can tell you that it isn’t.

Visually and technically planning out your blog’s design requires a lot of testing and refining. So to help ease the process for budding bloggers, we offer some basic advice to help you start achieving your blogging goals effectively.

Blogs Focusing On Sales & Ads

For most, blogging will be considered a business first and foremost. Or your blog could be a business, itself, selling services and information. As such, affiliate links, sponsorship ads, Adwords and advertising are all things you’ll be aiming to fit onto your pages. Though many people are turned off by these, if you’re discreet and highly selective, you can work these into your layout.

The location of ads is crucial to a user’s reading experience. It’s everything. Take a look at the home page of TechCrunch.com for instance. Their blog contains ads and sponsored links, but only features them in five visible places and in two spots on the side bar. No more.

In the posts themselves, ads are located in secondary places (the header above the title and below the article before the comments section). These locations don’t interrupt your reading and actually catch your eye in logical places as it naturally moves across the page. So carefully consider where you should put your ads or sponsors and how many you should have in direct visible competition with your written content.

Blogs On Design, Graphics & Images

The design and image oriented blogger should consider a clean, minimalistic approach to put more emphasis on the visual content and eye-catching artwork. After all, if you’re showcasing graphic design work and high-res images, you don’t want to bury it in text or have it compete with other content elements.

For this, try picking themes that are highly customizable and allow for easy image viewing, like ones that offer the ability to add image sliders or ones where you can specify the size of posts on your home page. Keep content on the sidebars to a minimum, as well. And don’t forget the social media sharing buttons to popular image sharing networks like Flickr or Pinterest. Check out sites like Abduzeedo and Colossal, popular design blogs that put these tips into practice.

Social Media Oriented Blogs

Social media blogs are all about sharing, networking, interacting with multi-media, and spotting the latest viral post. You can get the same interaction on your blog, but with a few careful decisions.

We know that you want all the social media extras, but select ones that effectively serve a purpose for your readers. For instance, you may want to include social sharing widgets that indicate the virality of the post, allowing users to easily fish out popular posts. Or, to spark some social interaction, choose commenting systems that include ranking, pingback, and replying features.

Social media and pop culture blogs like Mashable.com or The Verge are great examples. Notice that their sharing options are carefully chosen to include one-click sharing to certain social networks—not every single one out there. In addition, their content is laid out Pinterest-style, encouraging users to visually pick out what they want to read. How your content attracts the user’s eye and lets them interact with it will play a big role in your blog’s design.

Professional Company Blogs

These kinds of blogs are great as they can act as a built-in platform for customer interaction, sharing helpful information, and promoting services. As such, you want to keep your blog professional looking.

Eliminate ad elements like Google ads or sponsored links, that is, unless your company is in partnership with some of them. Keep social media buttons available for easy sharing. To convey a sense of professionalism, your blog’s theme should work with the same layout and colour palette as your company’s website. Also, consider adding subscription buttons to update your customers automatically.

In short, be sure that your blog is in line with your company’s overall message and goal. Companies like Intuit and Hubspot have blogs that are good examples of this. They’re businesses with blogs that tie in professionalism, social sharing, and related content (both in posts and sidebars). In short, each blog element works to tie in the company’s brand and services.

Blogs Geared Towards News Sharing

It’s common for bloggers to want to share the latest news in their niche. For this, you may want to consider adding a feature that keeps buzz worthy news stories highlighted. Related ads to quality services will also be a good element to add if your readers welcome the resources. Interaction with posts via comments is also a necessity. And make good use of your web real estate by keeping it organized.

Big tech news blogs like Macrumors.com and GigaOM take different approaches. In both cases, each has some of the same elements. They highlight recent articles and have trending content in the sidebar. For comments, Macrumors uses a forum community for lengthy discussions; GigaOM gives users the ability to share their comments on social networks. Lastly, because news can cover so many topics, each blog breaks the content down into different categories. So decide how you want to handle the never-ending onslaught of daily news, first. Then you can decide on the easiest way your community can consume it and form discussions around it.

Conclusion

It’s ultimately up to you to decide which layout and design works out best. No matter which direction you choose for your blog, ensure that its theme is practical for presenting content, interacting with it, and achieving your main goal.

As bloggers and blog readers, what advice do you have?

Author’s Bio: Reena Cruz writes for the Investintech.com blog, where she shares tips about PDF converter technology and software in general. As a tech-geek, she enjoys learning about new tech trends and sharing productivity tool tips online. You can find her on Google Plus.

Intention Counts

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By James Ellis

A website can be and do just about anything. It can be a brochure, a greeting card, a catalog, a conversation space, an announcement, a research tool, a library, a photo gallery, a way to spark ideas, build connections, engage people and speak about your corner of the world.

But it can’t really do all those things (unless you are Google or maybe Facebook, in which case, “hi!”). It can do one or two of those things well. It can do three or four of those things well with an exponential increase in resources, but that’s it.

So instead of spending millions on a legion of developers, creative directors, content managers and the staff to populate their respective armies, maybe you should focus your intention down to one thing.

What is your website supposed to be or do? Boil it down to a phrase a five-year-old could understand.

Amazon was a bookstore. Now it is an everything store. Google is a search engine. Those are easy, mostly because they have smart marketers and leadership who knows that you need to excel at one thing before you expand to something else.

But what about the website for your favorite coffee shop? It could be a brochure: hours and location with a pic of a cute barista. It could be a branding peice: pictures and animations that are warm and inviting about the idea of coffee and scones. It could be a business development peice: Get you excited about the idea of hand-roasted select gourmet coffee and how it will make your life better. It could be a store: place your coffee order and schedule a pick-up time or delivery. It could be a research tool: Everything you could want to know about coffee from different regions of the world, how it should be roasted, what the types of roasting levels mean and how they affect taste.

One coffee shop, four intentions. Each intention shapes the nature of the website, who uses it and why. Intention therefore determines the site’s success

For example, will more people come to your coffee shop because they know more about all the different coffee varieties? If your goal is to sell more coffee, then maybe that intention doesn’t align with that objective. If you spend 3,000 words talking about thirty different coffee varieties, and you only sell two, what was the good in that? You may have just gotten them excited to go to another coffee shop.

Nailing down the intention of your site, especially in relation to your total marketing strategy and your business strategy, increases your likelihood of success. Now I’m going to go drink some coffee.

Author’s Bio: James Ellis is the Director of Digital Strategy at FLIRT Communications. His latest book, Google Analytics for Small Business is currently in beta. He’s giving away discounted copies if you are willing to help make it even better.

Do Images Encourage Interaction?

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By Rob James

compelling imagesIf you own an online business and want to optimise your website, it’s important to consider the many benefits of using images to encourage interaction from users. Images can add an emotional connection to websites, and when combined with excellent layout, typography, and animation, can help to build a compelling website for your business. How do images engage users, then, and what are some of the more specific actions you can take to use images as part of your own site?

The building blocks of images on a site can range from anything from an effective logo to icons and animation, as well as images in side bars and articles – in most cases, these graphics and images serve a functional purpose – they grab the attention, and they provide a complement to the copy on your site. A basic page layout can consequently use images as sparingly as possible, and can rely on stock pictures tailored to your business, or ones that you’ve taken yourself.

Emotional Images

However, images on a site should be more than just functional – they should be able to provoke an emotional response from users in the shortest period of time. One way in which this becomes more effective comes when images are animated, or when they can be navigated like a game, and broken down to include click throughs and pop ups that produce videos – some examples of where images can become more animated can be found here. Producing interactive image maps, where information for a business is spread across a whole image with different clickable sections – a map of an office or a city with separate sections activated by clicking on different parts of the screen represent examples – can also make a site more engaging.

Chuck Longanecker has emphasised the importance of ‘emotionally intelligent interactions for encouraging conversions on sites; this involves using professionally created graphic design and high quality photographs to make a site look more like a glossy magazine lay out than a traditional web page. Longanecker cites examples from error message screens that use rich graphics and images as good examples of how even the most mundane parts of a site can be made more effective.

Remember User Experience

What this adds up to are sites that are tailored to your business, but that take the process of web design further by using HMTL5 and Flash coding to make a site rely on intuitive graphics, where drop down menus, sliding bars, and videos embedded into the site, rather than loading separately, promote a clean user experience. One good example of this in practice are sites that use full size backgrounds, and the minimum of copy, on their landing pages – fashion and car brands are particularly effective at this approach.

What can you do, then, to boost your own site? The first step to take is to either find or commission high definition images to use on your site, which can ideally be blown up to act as a full screen background – sites that take this approach look particularly great on HD tablets. Alternatively, look to a web design company that can take your existing site and rethink its graphic design – so much of what’s important now about a site is looking less and less like a simply laid out set of information, and more like an interactive puzzle that users can navigate.

Going forward, it’s also important to remember not to overload your site with different images, and to always make sure that you have the rights to use an image or graphic; Creative Commons images are available through sites like Flickr, while you can also license images from the Getty and other collections for a small amount of money. In addition, you can test out the success of new images and image layouts for your site through Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) – this involves running tests where users see different versions of the same site, and then checking to see which had the highest rate of conversions or click throughs.

Are you integrating compelling images in your site design? What’s your favorite resource?

Author’s Bio: Rob James is an online marketer who highly recommends Boxmodel mobile web development agency. Rob can be found blogging about a variety of technology related subjects, including computer hardware, mobile apps, web development, and SEO techniques.

Image: Flickr CC albdruck

Are Business Cards a Necessity in Today’s Business World?

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By Deb Bixler

Do we still need to have printed business cards in the digital age?

It is a question worth answering as business cards cost money. With work at home business consultants tightening their financial belts, is the cost of printing business cards still a legitimate and necessary expense for a direct sales business?

The answer to this question is an emphatic “Yes!”

Why Business Cards Are Still A Necessity

Most everyone owns a smartphone and many people have simple apps that allow for the easy storage of contact information. However, not everyone has a smartphone and many people do not know how to correctly use their phones to store and retrieve information beyond a phone number. Business cards often contain different pieces of information. Phone numbers, a fax number, a business description, an email address, a physical address and other pertinent pieces of information are often printed on business cards.

Entering all this information into a smartphone takes more time than most people are willing to invest when they meet a new business contact. Handing a business card to someone is fast and painless.

Though we are gradually becoming a paperless society, people still want to hold on to our paper-oriented world. Until a completely digital generation has replaced the old school paper addicts, business cards will remain an important part of networking and business meetings. If someone asks for a business card, you do not want to be the one person to reply, “I don’t have one.” Not having a business card lessens your credibility and reduces the chance that you will make a rewarding business contact.

People still look through their snail mail and they still notice business cards sitting on their desks or tucked into their wallets. This is not likely to change for at least a generation. Without a business card, you will be the one left behind when trying to promote your business or service.

How to Make Your Business Card Stand Out From the Crowd

business cardThere is no denying that business cards kill trees and it is important to make sure that forests are not destroyed in vain.

Make your business card stand out from the crowd and serve as a dynamic and beneficial marketing tool.

Business cards should be printed on paper that has a nice feel and look.

The paper should be a bit thicker than normal with some texture.

The color should stand out and be pleasing to the eye. Both sides of the card should be used, though the majority of information should be on the front side.

Since cards no longer have to fit into a Rolodex, experimenting with different sizes and shapes can be a great way to stand out from the crowd.

The direct sales business is highly competitive and business owners need to use every tool available to attract and keep more clients.

Though business cards may someday become a thing of the past, they are still a relevant and beneficial tool for business owners. Until our society is completely paperless, business cards are a necessity in the business world.

Author’s Bio:
Deb Bixler retired from the corporate world using the proven business systems that made her a success working for others by incorporating them into her home business. In only 9 months Deb replaced her full time income with the sales and commissions from her home party plan business. Find her on Twitter at: http://www.Twitter.com/debbixler