Attackr.com » Developer Portal for web designers, developers and programmers http://www.attackr.com Come To Share, Come To Learn Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:09:25 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 WordPress Security http://www.attackr.com/wordpress-security/ http://www.attackr.com/wordpress-security/#comments Tue, 24 Feb 2009 03:29:17 +0000 Karen http://www.attackr.com/?p=324 The Internet is great but unfortunately there are unscrupulous people who, for whatever reasons, will attack, hack, and cause havoc to your WordPress blog if you’re not taking steps to secure it.

The very first thing that you should always do is keep your WordPress blog upgraded to the latest version. Some people say don’t do this because plugins won’t work, etc. But my advice is this: plugins are a dime a dozen. It is far more important that you have the most recent tweaks to WordPress. A lot of time, WordPress upgrades are to fix security vulnerabilities.

Another thing you should do is install this WordPress plugin: Secure WordPress. What this does is hide the WordPress version number in your blog’s header, installs a blank index.html file in your plugins directory so people can’t snoop, and various other tweaks to prevent hackers from getting in easily.

It goes without saying that your password is another part of the equation when it comes to security. Create a good password that’s at least a 6 in password strength, and don’t write it down anywhere-memorize it! It’s a good idea to change your passwords on a regular basis, as well.

A lot of people make money from their WordPress blogs. Offline you would have security cameras, excellent locks, etc, installed in your business location, wouldn’t you? So it makes sense that you need to take the same precautions online.

The great thing about security online is that a lot of the time you don’t need to spend very much money. There is enough freely-available information and lots and lots of good people who create open source software. A lot of the time the software is superb. Wouldn’t you say WordPress itself is superb? You bet!

So just make sure you are vigilant. Implement the above procedures quickly and then you can spend the rest of your time building your blog with quality content and making money from it without worrying about security issues.

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]]> http://www.attackr.com/wordpress-security/feed/ 4 The Top 10 Open Source Content Management Systems http://www.attackr.com/the-top-10-open-source-content-management-systems/ http://www.attackr.com/the-top-10-open-source-content-management-systems/#comments Fri, 10 Oct 2008 10:00:14 +0000 Web Developer News http://www.attackr.com/?p=154 One of the main characteristics of Web 2.0 publishing is the change from HTML websites to DHTML Content Management Systems. Another is the Open Source model itself, leveraging user communities for development of the CMS platforms. Content Management Systems include all of the Web 2.0 calling cards – social networking, blogs, forums, wikis, image galleries, comment threads, ecommerce, voting, social bookmarking, tags, embedded video, and many other features through extensions and modules. Consequently, the CMS is the preferred platform for most web designers building sites today. Working full time in Open Source CMS development for the last four years, we decided to review the best and create a top 10 list at our website to see if developers agree on which publishing platform is tops for Web 2.0.

The Top 10 Open Source Content Management Systems:

1. Drupal
2. WordPress
3. Joomla
4. Media Wiki
5. Liferay
6. TYPO3
7. Moodle
8. Dolphin
9. Pligg
10. Movable Type

Honorable Mention:
Xoops, Geeklog, e107, Mambo, Nucleus

We gave the top spot to Drupal because of its ease of use, vast number of modules, great user, developer, and support community. WordPress is really a close second, but is best for single blog websites and personal publishing, lacking many of the social networking functions, ecommerce facilities, forums, wikis, etc. used on more expansive sites. Joomla has one of the largest user communities of any CMS, and everything you need to develop social networks, ecommerce, & archive sites, but includes too many commercial products for Open Source development, and is more difficult to learn than the top two.

After the top three, the list includes more specialized CMS platforms, like Media Wiki for collaborative document authoring, Moodle for education, and Pligg for social bookmarking. TYPO3, Dolphin, and Liferay all offer unique feature sets and a distinct design that sets them apart from other platforms. Movable Type is a questionable choice for the last spot, and will face strong competition from other blog platforms such as XOOPS, Geeklog, and Nucleus.

For more information or to see the full review and discuss the rankings, visit webdevnews.net.

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]]> http://www.attackr.com/the-top-10-open-source-content-management-systems/feed/ 3 Magento – Best for Open Source eCommerce? http://www.attackr.com/magento-best-for-open-source-ecommerce/ http://www.attackr.com/magento-best-for-open-source-ecommerce/#comments Mon, 06 Oct 2008 10:00:15 +0000 Web Developer News http://www.attackr.com/?p=151 Magento was only released last March, but already has been downloaded over 425,000 times. In that short time, Magento has become the preferred choice for ecommerce development for many web designers working with Open Source solutions. Why are so many flocking to Magento, and is the hype really justified by the functionality? We put Magento through a demo install and development process to test the software. Magento has the professional, Web 2.0 look many designers are looking for, and that is surely one of the main reasons for its popularity. In comparison to other ecommerce platforms like OScommerce, Zen Cart, etc. there is a definite improvement in both theme and display out of the box. Magento uses custom themes and block positioning like most popular CMS software for design. The templates are clean and dynamic, and it is easy to set up your catalog display. Magento includes a shopping cart, a large number of payment gateways, product comparisons, tags, polls, internationalization support, advanced reports, analytics, and SEO optimized URLs. There is support for coupons, discount codes, catalog management, wishlists, cross-sells, and related items. You can create orders from the admin section for offline or call center sales, and managing shipping is easy with built in calculation for USPS, UPS, DHL, Fed Ex, and other delivery services. Magento will also automatically calculate sales tax on orders and supports multiple currencies on the same site. The user account stores existing order information, shipping and billing addresses, as well as a user’s wishlist, recently viewed, and recently compared products. Users can submit reviews, edit and manage them from their account pages. They can also submit tags for products, subscribe to newsletters, and send recommendations and wishlists to friends.

The closest approximation to the Magento user experience that I can site as an example is amazon.com, which is really quite amazing coming from an Open Source, freely available software. To see our full review of the Magento Ecommerce Platform, please visit webdevnews.net.

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]]> http://www.attackr.com/magento-best-for-open-source-ecommerce/feed/ 2 First Release of Drupal Carbon Upcoming http://www.attackr.com/first-release-of-drupal-carbon-upcoming/ http://www.attackr.com/first-release-of-drupal-carbon-upcoming/#comments Wed, 03 Sep 2008 21:30:07 +0000 Web Developer News http://www.attackr.com/first-release-of-drupal-carbon-upcoming/ Acquia, a start-up headed by Drupal founder Dries Buytaert is scheduled to release the first commercially supported version of Drupal, code named “Carbon” within a couple of months. The release is generating a lot of buzz in the development community, and many people are wondering what effect it will have on this popular Open Source Content Management System. According to Dries, there is no need to worry – Carbon will be released to the public under the same GPL license as Drupal and be freely available for everyone to use. Acquia will be providing paid technical support and development consultation to corporations who contract their services. They will also empower other design and development firms to do this by offering Acquia certification in Carbon / Drupal development. This will be similar to a Brainbench certification, and should become popular with those working professionally with Drupal.

While not all the details are known about Carbon, the release is essentially an “installation profile” that combines the core Drupal code base with a set of popular and reliable contributed modules. Views 2, CCK, a WYSISYG editor named Kupu, Voting API & Fivestar, Tagadelic, PathAuto, and Organic Groups are just some of the popular modules that will be included in the release package. Other new features will include Mollom, an anti-spam module developed by Acquia, and Spokes, an auto-update module. There is also a “to be determined” social bookmarking integration slated. Carbon is sure to breathe a new inspiration into the Drupal development and design community. Some worry that it could threaten its Open Source development model, but that has been actively dismissed by Dries himself. Following this example, other design firms may move to build and release installation profiles with paid support that combine upon the core Drupal system and contributed modules with new themes and customizations.

A good discussion on this issue is found on webdevnews.net, and there are also some interesting posts on the Drupal site, such as:

http://drupal.org/node/282254

More information on the release of Carbon can be found on the Acquia website.

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