Hosting Tips

How To Keep Your WordPress Site Secure (Several Mistakes To Avoid)

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Best Cheap ASP.NET Hosting – WordPress is very popular software, which powers millions of website worldwide. When starting WordPress website, maybe the last concern of every webmaster is security. If you can’t keep your website safe, you will be losing business and all your hard effort can be ruined in just a second. The development team of WordPress is constantly maintain and updating the software to improve and fix all security issues. With all this great effort and time that is dedicated to WordPress, there are still lots of mistakes that webmasters commit. In this article we will present you how to keep your WordPress site secure by knowing the most common WordPress security mistakes that can make your website a victim in this endless ocean of cyber-crime.

How to keep your WordPress site secure

Outdated Core And Plugins

WordPress is very well built and tested software, however there are some versions where is a tiny security hole in the source code that can represent a high risk for many websites. You should pay attention to the back-end of your wordpress site, and whenever there is any news about security update of the core software you should perform and update right away.

It is  important to keep an eye on the plugins as well. These can also represent a risk to your website if any of them has a vulnerable code. If there is a new version available for any of the installed plugins, do not hesitate to update. These updates will usually take couple of seconds only.

Bad Web Hosting Provider

If you are using WordPress you should pay extra attention to the web hosting provider you choose. If you choose an unreliable hosting provider, most likely you will end up switching to a new host after you go through a lot of problems. If the people who are behind the hosting company do not have the necessary experience and knowledge to secure and optimize their servers, even if your site is running on latest version, it can still be hacked. Another problem that comes with poor hosting is that your website will always be slow, due to poorly optimized and configured servers and old hardware, and website visitors will never return to a slow site. So make sure that you pick a hosting provider that supports WordPress and has all the necessary tools to help you with installation, security and updates.

Use Of Default Admin & Generic Password

This is the most common mistake that is exploited by hackers. In many cases, WordPress sites are developed offline, and because the developers don’t want to spend much time on website setup and can easy forget complicated password, the choose to go with the simple admin/123456 combination. After the project is finished, it will be transferred online, everyone is happy that the website is finished and works as the client wants but nobody cares about changing the login information. Another common mistake is when users use their birth day date, name family member names as password, because it is easy to remember. They also link their website to their public facebook profile, where all this information is available. Guess what will happen next.

To be safe, you should change the default admin user and if you can’t come up with a strong password, use an online password generator that will create a unique password for you. Do not use the same password on all of your websites, social or email account. This way if one of your accounts get compromised, all others will be safe.

Malicious Plugins And Themes

t is phenomenal, that WordPress has so many contributors and that there are so many people out there who are willing to spend their time to develop free plugins and themes. There are, however, many cases when developers abuse the system and they insert “features” to the add-ons that are actually bad for the user. For instance there are theme provider websites, that force links into the themes and you cannot remove them. Having links on your website is all right, however if you have unrelated links in the footer of your page, could result in a penalty from Google.

To avoid this you should always download wordpress themes from trusted websites. Plugins are also abused, there are cases when a plugin opens a back-door to hackers to access your website, in other cases a plugin will insert ads on your site or even change your ads. If you are downloading free plugins, always use plugins from WordPress.org because these plugins are verified and tested.

Some Tips To Keep Your WordPress Site Secure

Use of security plugins
Install a security plugin to your website. For example Wordfence, is one of the best security plugins for wordpress, which not only will scan your website but will also provide protection against bots, malicious activity and hackers. It will also make your site run faster.

Sucuri.net
This is a globally recognized company in terms of website security. This service can be easily integrated to any wordpress site, by installing their plugin. The Sucuri service provides lots of security features to your site: security activity auditing, malware scanning, blacklist monitoring, post-hack security actions, security notifications and firewall as well.

Two factor authentication
These types of plugins are also a great defense against brute force attack. While you login to the wordpress admin area, you will receive an email with a link to verify your identity. Once you are verified, you can login to your wordpress site by only entering your password next time. However if you try to login from another device, you will again go through the verification process.

Captcha authentication
Using a captcha plugin for the admin login area will prevent brute force attacks. This is the most common type of hacking, it is usually done by a software, which tries to login to your site with different usernames and passwords.

Remove version and generator name
By adding two lines of code to the function.php of your theme, you can remove the wordpress version number from the source code, and even the generator name. Hiding these information, hackers will find it more difficulty to figure out what software and what version you are using for your site.

Hosting Tips – Choose A Web Hosting That Won’t Hurt Your SEO!

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Choose A Web Hosting That Won’t Hurt Your SEO | Although high quality content and authoritative, relevant inbound links are the primary SEO concerns for most site owners. However, choosing an optimal web hosting service may be more important. If you don’t want to hurt your SEO, pay attention to your web hosting.

Choose A Web Hosting That Won't Hurt Your SEO

Choosing A Web Hosting That Won’t Hurt Your SEO

There are some factors of web hosting that have a real impact on the fortunes of your SEO:

Page Speed

The speed at which your page loads has an impact on the ranking of your website. This fact was revealed by Google in the year 2010, making speed one of the nearly 200 factors that go into the determination of your ranking. Web speed has to do with the rate at which your site responds to web requests which can be an uphill task to improve. Search engines regularly crawl your website, and if some pages cannot be accessed due to a compromised speed then the rankings of the respective keywords will suffer. A fast loading website ensures that most if not all of the pages are indexed during your GoogleBot crawl budget, which might not be much depending on your sites trust and authority.

Not every incidence of a slow website can be attributed to your web host. You must realize that other factors such as the coding of your site, un-optimized images, excessive fancy flash, external embedded media, and spam can also result in the slowing of your website.

Uptime

Uptime is another web hosting issue that will hurt your SEO efforts. Your SEO efforts can be hurted if you choose a web hosting service that frequently experiences server downtime. Downtime refers to the time that your website is inaccessible due to problems associated with the server that it is hosted on.

During server downtime, potential clients will be unable to access your site and the same goes for search engine bots. When a search engine bot attempts to cache your site during server downtime, it may not affect your rankings immediately. However, when this happens repeatedly, it indicates to Google and other search engines that your site may not be reliable, that it may have been inactive even between the attempted search engine bot crawls. This, understandably, can seriously damage your rankings and can even cause Google to display an “unavailable” error message as your site’s meta description in search engine results.

Location

Does the geographical location of  hosting company will affect your SEO rankings? The short answer is yes, but it isn’t necessarily a top priority. As mentioned previously, your domain name is attached to an IP address. This IP address indicates the location of your FTP hosting server. If your hosting server is located in Germany, for example, Google will assume that your site caters to German Internet users. However, other factors, such as the language used on your site, can change the way that Google prioritizes search results according to location as well. This is also reflected in your site’s domain name. For example, .com sites are understood to be U.S.-focused by Google, while domains ending in co.uk generally indicate a bias for users in the United Kingdom. If your website caters primarily to customers in and around your immediate geographical location, it’s optimal to choose a web hosting service that has a server located near your area of business.

Shared Hosting Services

Many web hosting companies offer shared hosting services, which allow as many as thousands of unique domain names to exist on a single IP address and share the same pool of bandwidth and storage space. In some cases, however, using a shared hosting service that also hosts spammer websites (i.e. pornography and sites designed to trick search engine bots) can be harmful to your search engine rankings. Usually, search engine bots don’t view your site negatively if only a few spammer sites share your hosting space. However, if your website is the one of the only legitimate domains among a shared hosting service dominated by spammers, Google and other search engines may become suspicious. It’s best to ask your web hosting service for information regarding the amount of spammer sites located on their shared hosting IP addresses.

Large e-commerce sites and domains that deal primarily with multimedia often prefer dedicated hosting services that attach only one domain name to an IP address. Using dedicated server not only to avoid spammer in shared but also can improve page loading speed and overall site performance, so your SEO won’t be hurt anymore.

Technical Requirements

Every website is created with a set of technical features that makes it compatible with specific web technology operating system. There are Windows or Linux servers to choose from and your choice will come out based on your website is coded, in PHP, JSP, ASP.NET or ASP. A way of determining whether a web host is right for this requirements is to take a closer look at their server’s configuration settings as well as the time limits, server versions and installed libraries. Your final choice of a web hosting services provider must be one that offers overwhelming technical support.

Hosting Tips – Understanding Web Hosting Terms of Service (TOS)

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Understanding Web Hosting Terms of Service | When you are looking for a web hosting company for your website, understanding Web hosting terms of service (or terms and conditions) is very important. Many people sign up a web hosting plan without reading the TOS. They just look at the advertising at the home page of a web host’s website.

Understanding Web Hosting Terms of Service

Normally, the Terms of Service (TOS) page is quite long and surely most people will have no patience to read from the beginning to the end. Hey! You don’t have to read all sections and all items! But, you must read some of important parts for understanding Web hosting terms of service. You should understand the following objects below before you sign up a web hosting plan.

Understanding Web Hosting Terms of Service

Use of Website

Use of Website includes “Content”, “Prohibited Uses”, or “Acceptable Use”. This part will tell you what kind of web content are not allowed to use the hosting services, such as Prohibition of Adult Content, Prohibition of Offensive Behavior, Infringing upon any copyright or trademark, Using a shared account as a backup/storage device, and so on.

Data Transfer and Disk Usage

If you intend to host a website with big usage of space and bandwidth on a shared server, it’s better to check this part of content to make sure your website is not going to violate the terms. Each hosting company offers different hosting packages depending on what features are in it or not in it. These packages include the disk space, bandwidth, domain among other things. There are services that offer a certain size for these while there are those that have unlimited storage and bandwidth.

Your choice of a hosting package will depend on the kind of business that you have. If you have many websites to be hosted, you can choose a better hosting package that will meet your need. For smaller business, there are also affordable hosting packages that will fit your needs.

Cancellation and Refund Policy

“Suspension and Termination” and “Guarantee” is the part of cancellation and refund policy that you need to know for understanding Web hosting terms of service. You need to read this carefully. Even you cancel your account in 30 day money guarantee, some fees like domain registration, set up fee are not refundable. If your payment method is not credit card, some web hosts will not give your money back. They will give you credit on their services. Read it before you sign to avoid surprise. When it comes to HostForLIFE.eu, if for any reason you’re unhappy in your first 30 days as a customer, you’re more than welcome to request your money back. You don’t have to worry about domain and set up fee, because they give you free of charge of setup fee in the beginning you register your account with them.

Payment and Renewal

Some web hosts may have a policy on payment by check, money order, or other payment methods. Some web hosts set automatic renewal as default. If you don’t request a cancellation before the end of your contract, your hosting account will be renewed automatically.

There are more things that you should read regarding your specific website’s need, such as Prohibited Scripts and Applications, Back Up, Reseller Policy, etc. However, what we have listed above is the most important parts that you have to know for understanding Web hosting term of service (TOS).