Comodo’s Free Site Inspector –Malware and Blacklist Detection For Website Owners

Comodo recently released SiteInspector, a free service which has been designed to automatically check owner operated websites on a daily basis to ensure the sites remains malware free and, has not been captured by a blacklist. If the worst happens – Comodo will immediately notify the website owner by email, so that corrective action can be taken.

Despite the fact that the free service is restricted to checking 3 pages on a domain, it’s a tool worth considering if you are a webmaster. Any free service that can help web site owners keep the malware hounds at bay – is worth considering.

You certainly don’t want a prospective visitor to see this!

Signing up for the service is a simple process, as the following screen captures indicate.

Following initial sign up you will receive a receipt notice.

While on the SiteInspector screen, click on “Manage Subscriptions” ……..

to set up both the site you wish to cover, and the form of coverage.

Any after the fact changes, require a sign in to your account.

The first report from Comodo – click to expand.

Fast Facts:

Daily Malware Scanning – SiteInspector scans your website for potential malicious code injection on a daily basis and notifies you if any such event has occurred, so that you can take action against them in a timely fashion, before the injected code starts affecting your visitors’ computers.

Blacklist Monitoring – Comodo SiteInspector checks major blacklists such as Google Safe Browsing, PhishTank, Malwaredomainlist, Malcode, Clean MX every day to make sure your website is not listed. If it is, you will be immediately alerted so that you can take remedial action and remove your site from blacklist, minimizing the downtime.

Immediate notifications means you react faster – Immediately after a problem is discovered, we’ll dispatch an email notification alerting you. Your support technicians don’t have to wait for angry customers to complain that your site contains malicious content

Independent external testing from your customer’s perspective – SiteInspector connects to your website in the same way that a customer would. If it discovers any problems with your website, it is likely your customers will be affected too.

No software downloads. No complicated set up – SiteInspector is a website checking service that runs remotely from secure servers managed by Comodo, so the user is not required to install software on their machine or network. Account management is done via our 100% online interface. All you need to do to take advantage of this great service is sign up, configure your tests and let SiteInspector do the rest.

The Comodo sign up page is here.

Webmasters Struggle With Hacked Sites – A Commtouch, StopBadware Report

I’m often asked why I host this Blog on WordPress.com – why I don’t self host, and maybe make a few dollars, while I’m at it, by running ads. So, I’ll start with the back-end first.

It’s not about money – far from it. I write this Blog to have a little bit of fun; to help keep my mind sharp (often a failing exercise    ) – and, to be part of a community which recognizes the need to educate computer users that the Internet is not all sweetness and light.

That’s the back-end – but, it’s the front-end that’s most important. WordPress does all the heavy lifting. All elements are taken care of: setup, upgrades, spam, backups, and site security. Site security might be last in the previous sentence but, it was the most important factor in my decision to use WordPress as my blogging platform.

Just a few of the security reasons:

Potential harmful activity is constantly monitored.

Blog PHP code can’t be modified.

Plugins can’t be uploaded.

JavaScript embed codes and CSS, are restricted.

I’m not suggesting that WordPress can’t, or won’t be hacked (nothing on the Internet is invulnerable to cyber criminals) – but, should sites hosted by WordPress.com fall to  the bad guys, those of us who rely on WP, will at least have a fighting chance to recover. This is not always the case for self-hosted sites.

Recent statistics indicate (surprise, surprise) – cybercriminals are increasing their targeting of websites for identity theft, virus distribution, and spamming. And, according to a newly released survey (Compromised Websites: An Owner’s Perspective), from Commtouch and StopBadware – in which webmasters were queried on their fight against hacking – almost half of the survey participants (who had been hacked), had no idea until they received a warning from their own computer’s protection technology.

More particularly, according to the Commtouch/StopBadware report – “about half of site owners discovered the hack when they attempted to visit their own site and received a browser or search engine warning.”  Not a very effective method of discovering one’s site has been hacked. As opposed to WP’s – “Potential harmful activity is constantly monitored.”

Highlights from analysis of the survey’s responses include:

Over 90% of respondents didn’t notice any strange activity, despite the fact that their sites were being abused to send spam, host phishing pages, or distribute malware.

Nearly two-thirds of the webmasters surveyed didn’t know how the compromise had happened.

Twenty six percent of site owners had not yet figured out how to resolve the problem at the time they completed the survey.

Forty percent of survey respondents changed their opinion of their web hosting provider following a compromise.

The report includes several examples of hacked websites, as well as the spam emails that may trick users into visiting these sites. In addition to analysis and quotes from site owners, the report provides tips to help webmasters prevent their sites from being compromised.

The following graphic illustrates why cyber criminals target web sites.

Courtesy – Commtouch

The full report is available for download (PDF format) at:

Commtouch

StopBadware

How Do I Select The Right Company To Host My Website If I Live In Australia?

Guest article: If you want a website online, there are a number of reasons why you want all your support in your region. This is not just because they will speak your language. You are making contractual arrangements with suppliers, and therefore, you need them to be in your region for legal issues. Here is a deeper look at this issue when setting up a website.

Despite it being the World Wide Web, we want to make sure we know where our website is being hosted. This will also depend on the type of website you are building. Locality is always an issue. For example, if you live in Brisbane, you want IT services Brisbane.

In this article, we look at the right type of services, and other server needs you must think about. You could have put a lot of effort into your website, and you want to make sure you have complete control. There are some very local issues to understand even though you could view your website from anywhere in the world

• Getting Started. When we think about setting up a simple website, we think about getting online and buying a host program – the hosting program is where your site will go. On these websites, we can buy domain names and buy the space and location for our website. We build our site ourselves, or we build it online through one of these sites. When everything is running smoothly there will be no problem. What happens if that company that you bought your domain name and hosting location goes out of business? What happens if something goes wrong or there are legal problems and the hosting company you bought space from is in another country? While we will buy a simple hosting package online, we still need to make sure that company is in our locality, city, state or country. It could be very hard to deal with them if they were in some lawless country on the other side of the planet. You know you are safe when the supplier is in your country, and they have a physical location. Get your hosting program from a company in your locality.
• Computer Support. The hosting company will give you a limited amount of IT support in relation to how their servers work. This support is normally in the form of emails and other online interaction. You still need to maintain your own computers repairs, service and security. Even simple sites can have very confidential information, and so you will need to know how to handle this. If you are in Brisbane, for example, having a local computer repairs is essential. You might need to get face-to-face support by people who understand you and speak your language. Having support locally is always essential.
• Going a Bit More Professional. When you buy your hosting program online, you are normally buying space that is shared with other people. The hosting company has a room of servers where everyone’s website and web space is shared. If you are looking for a more secure and professional setting, you will need to look for a more professional dedicated servers provider. Dedicated servers are individual computers for each client. This will mean you will have your own computer in a secure location with your own super-high speed internet connection and support. If you are intending to earn income from your website, this will be essential. It will mean your data, and information is more secure, your website’s speed will not be influenced by anyone else’s internet use, and you will have professionals who will keep an eye on it for you. You could set up your own server in your own location if you have that knowledge. You would need to make sure you have backup power and a range of other security issues (both online and offline) solved. Dedicated servers are often in a very secure location, and you want this location to be in your locality, city, state or country. Again there are legal issues you need to think about. Just like your hosting program, domain name and IT services, you want them from someone who understands you and resides locally.

Guest article by Sachin.

If you found this article useful, why not subscribe to this Blog via RSS, or email? It’s easy; just click on this link and you’ll never miss another Tech Thoughts article.

Tech Thoughts – 2010 In Review

Year end reviews and wrap- ups, bringing us up to date on the comings and goings in virtually every area of human endeavor, seem to be the thing at the moment. Not much of a surprise then, to see WordPress get into the act by emailing a 2010 Blog summary to all WordPress Bloggers.

Here’s the WordPress version of what happened on Tech Thoughts this past year. Not entirely accurate, but within spitting distance.

The Blog-Health-o-Meter reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

• The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 1,300,000 times in 2010. If it were an exhibit at The Louvre Museum, it would take 53 days for that many people to see it.
• In 2010, there were 823 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 2,003 posts.
• The busiest day of the year was September 14th with 4,557 views. The most popular post that day was Cyber Criminals Know Your “Net” Worth – To the Penny!.

Where did they come from?

• The top referring sites in 2010 were  Google Reader, mail.yahoo.com, google.com, and stumbleupon.com.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1 Cyber Criminals Know Your “Net” Worth – To the Penny! April 2010
2 Download RKill – Free Antimalware Specialty Removal Tool June 2010
3 Ten Beginner Tips for Using Google SketchUp June 2009
4 Your Account Information Has Changed Phishing Attack June 2010
5 EnhanceMySe7en – A Free Windows 7 Tweaking Utility August 2010

Some of your most popular posts were written before 2010. Your writing has staying power! Consider writing about those topics again.

Thanks for flying with WordPress.com in 2010. We look forward to serving you again in 2011! Happy New Year!

If you’re a regular reader here, you have my thanks for making this Blog a fun place to write up my thoughts and opinions.

If you found this article useful, why not subscribe to this Blog via RSS, or email? It’s easy; just click on this link and you’ll never miss another Tech Thoughts article.

Bryan Keller’s Web Design and SEO Primer

Guest writer Bryan Keller, gives you the lowdown on how you can improve, not only your web site or blog’s visual appeal but, how SEO (search engine optimization) properly utilized, can drive more readers to your site.

SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization, is the process of optimizing one’s website to improve the position in which the website will appear within the search results obtained from a search engine based on specific keyword phrases.

The exact formula for achieving this result effectively and efficiently is a much talked about and debated issue.  However, there is at least consensus on the basic approach to improving position and for anyone who owns an online business it is just about imperative to follow these basic techniques for there to be any hope of appearing somewhere on the first or second page of Google, Yahoo, or Bing.

First, foremost and most important is the basic design and structure of the actual website itself.  A carefully planned out, user friendly, logical, and straightforward landing page or home page is essential.  In addition, maintaining a structured, easy to navigate, uncluttered and not overly complicated web design results in lower bounce rates.

It is very useful to actually layout the design of the website on paper before any computer design work even begins.  Using a graphical flowchart also greatly helps keep things organized and makes the design much easier to understand for anyone who will eventually be involved in the design, coding or implementation of the final project.

A flowchart is basically just a simple graphical representation utilizing directional lines, graphical symbols and pointer arrows that is utilized to depict the design characteristics of a websites menu-flow, page-order, and logic path.

In designing the website keep in mind that as much useful, high quality, informative, data about the business or industry the website is focused on should be included throughout the site itself.

A glossary of terms that relate to the industry the website specializes in would be a good place to start.  Another very useful inclusion could be a FAQ (frequently asked questions) page that describes in detail the most common questions relating to the website’s area of business, with descriptive answers.

When it comes to SEO, there can never be too much information included in a website as long as it is all completely original unique content (unless references are duly noted).

Original content means copying pages of data from the Wikipedia, or using content pages found on other websites or even ‘lifting’ excerpts of content from other websites simply will not work.  Plagiarized content ‘lifted’ from other sources without express consent can also be a source of legal concern.

This is one place where Google in particular, is very good at detecting copied content and will give no SEO advancement for such material included in one’s website.  If a business owner is not able to author original content themselves it would be advisable to hire someone to write original content for the website.  Original content is just as important if not more important than any other aspect of achieving good SEO results.

Additionally, there are many so called ‘article submission’ websites that are available to host uploaded content articles written about almost any subject.  As a matter of fact it is very possible that you may be reading this article on an article submission site at this very moment.

The purpose, in SEO, to the process of uploading and submission of articles to these types of websites is twofold:  first, popular article submission sites have thousands of guests each day which is a huge potential market for readers of the submitted articles and second, as an author one is allowed to create a signature that can include a link that directs traffic back to the website of the author’s choice.

This brings us to the topic of links, and more specifically ‘backlinks’.  The term backlink refers to a hypertext link, which is located on an external website that links, references, or points back to one’s own website.  A ‘backlink’ is made up of two parts: 1. The ‘URL’ of the destination site (or the site the link is pointing to), and 2. the ‘anchor text’ which is made up of the ‘keyword phrase’.  An example of a ‘backlink’ written in html code would look like the following:

<*a href=”http://www.yourwebsiteurl.com

“>Your Keyword Phrase<*/a>

When displayed this link would appear as:

Your Keyword Phrase

‘Your Keyword Phrase’ would be an active link pointing to the ‘url’ that follows the ‘href’ in the link statement above. (Please be sure to remove the asterisks – I used them only to prevent the link from becoming active.)

In the early days of the Internet backlinking was the holy grail of SEO.  One merely needed to acquire many, many links pointing back to one’s website to achieve a very high position within the result set of a search engine.  At that time it was mainly just the quantity of backlinks that determined a websites PR and not the quality of the incoming links.

Those days, I’m afraid, are long, long, gone.  The search engines are much ‘smarter’ today and the number of backlinks is not nearly as important as the ‘quality’ of the backlink in determining whether or not the backlink will provide a benefit to SEO at all.

To prevent the misuse of link farming and other types of link manipulation the use of the ‘no follow’ attribute has been implemented.  When the use of the ‘no follow’ attribute is applied to a link it directs the search engine to award no PR or ‘PageRank’ (PageRank will be explained in a moment) benefit to the landing site no matter how high the ‘PageRank’ of the referring site may be.  This has been successful in helping to reduce the amount of spamming and ‘spamdexing’.

Other methods that were once popular but are no longer effective include:  keyword stuffing, the use of hidden or invisible text, the use of unrelated hidden content with high search volume, and Meta tag stuffing.  If you are solicited by a business that mentions any of these techniques as a means to improve your SEO be sure NOT to do business with them!  None of these methods work at all anymore.

At this point it becomes necessary to discuss PR or PageRank.  PageRank is the method of grading a websites ‘authority’ or importance on the web and the process was developed primarily by researcher Larry Page (hence the name ‘Page’ Rank) at Stanford University as part of a research project.

Page and another researcher named Brin later founded Google and took the technology with them and it is still the basis of the Google search engine and search tools to this day.

A website’s PageRank is a numerical weight ranging from 0 to 10 that is assigned to a website based upon, among other things, the quantity of and the PageRank of the external websites that link in or have inbound links that refer to the target site.  A website that has many inbound links from websites that have high PageRank themselves will in turn be given a high PageRank as well.  According to Google’s website the PageRank is calculated by ‘considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms.’

Needless to say, trying to understand an algorithm this complex exactly will never be possible but there are still many things that can be done to boost a sites PR and help improve its placement in search engine results.

We have discussed the importance of a high quality website design, the need for very informative original content, article submissions, backlinking and PageRank.  This would be a good time to begin discussing the process of determining keywords and keyword phrases.

Selecting the correct keywords and keyword phrases to focus the SEO efforts on can determine whether or not it will be possible to successfully achieve the intended result.  It is very important to take the time to do some research on competition and keyword popularity.

In general the most common terms that describe a business would be the best place to start.  For instance if you own a business that provides roofing contracting services keywords that you might consider focusing on might be ‘Roofing Contracting’ or ‘Roofing Contractor’.

Google provides a tool that displays the average number of searches for selected keyword phrases.  You can find this tool by searching Google for ‘keyword tool’.  After entering the keyword or keyword phrase and pressing the ‘search’ button a page of results will be displayed that indicate the number of times the particular keyword(s) has been searched for on average each month.

Also displayed are many other similar phrases that most closely match the keywords that were searched for.  Take the time to scroll through this list and many good alternative phrases can be found in this way.  Choosing the phrase that has the most searches and most closely matches the website’s line of business is a solid practical approach.

Guest writer Bryan Keller:

I own a Computer Repair and Data Recovery business in San Antonio, TX, San Antonio Computer Repair. I spent 10 years in database development. I am now also providing Website Development, Hosting, and SEO services. We use the Joomla CMS.

Altogether, I have been involved in computer programming for over 30 years. I was a self-taught programmer back when the ‘Atari 800’ was all the rage! I had an Atari 800 with 16 kilobytes of ram and a 6502 8-bit processor that ran at 1.7 MHz, no hard drive and a 5 1/4 inch floppy disk that stored just 180 Kilobytes of data. Of course there was no internet but we had the dial in bulletin boards that we connected to at 300 baud. lol.

If you found this article useful, why not subscribe to this Blog via RSS, or email? It’s easy; just click on this link and you’ll never miss another Tech Thoughts article.

Neosites – A Professional Website Builder to the Max!

WordPress went off the air last week, for the second time this year. But, since WordPress is a free site service, I felt it was not really appropriate to whine about it. Nevertheless, I am not inclined to accept assurances that it won’t happen again, and this has led me to consider alternatives.

One of the reasons I was drawn to WordPress initially was WordPress’ stated policy of limited, or no ads – “At WordPress.com, we sometimes display discreet AdSense advertisements on your blog to help pay the bills.” Recently however, it seems every article on my site has advertising attached to it.

I have no problem with helping to “pay the bills”. But, I do have a problem with becoming a profit center for someone else. The situation reminds me of what my father said years ago – “If you work for nothing, you’ll never be out of a job”. So, now I had two reasons to research alternatives to WordPress.

There are more than a few sites on the Internet that offer similar free services , but frankly; most of them suck. Who needs a website that looks like it was created with an old version of MS FrontPage? Who needs a website so filled with advertising that your page content loses focus?

I need a website that looks highly professional, and polished. A website where I control the advertising – assuming, that in fact, I want advertising on the site.

As luck would have it, as I was going through this decisions, decisions, process, I received a “check me out” invitation, from a new player on the block Neosites, which offers both a free service, and layered fee services.

According to Neosites there approach is “a revolutionary on-line tool that lets you build and manage a website quickly and easily. You can create a professional looking site in just a few minutes.”

So, being the adventurist type, I jumped right in.

The following screen captures illustrate just how easy it is to work with Neosites.

Sign Up

Choose your plan

Choose your theme

Work through the Setup Wizard

Then, manage your site pages

Fast facts:

Choose a design from our gallery of over 2000 templates. They can be modified at any time and all the content will adapt to the new design.

Instructional wizards allow you to build a professional website without technical know-how. Edit the homepage with just a few clicks while you navigate the site. In minutes you can have your site up and on-line!

With Neosites you can create a website and domain name, e.g http://www.yourname.com. Have the advantage of webmail with corporate e-mail accounts, e.g. corporate@yourname.com.

Neosites offers SEO tools that let you position your site inside browsers, send promotional e-mails to your contacts, and integrate your contacts into your Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin.

Online shopping! Make sales through your site with different payment options. Receive payment on-line from credit cards, cash, or money transfers.

Upload a logo or start from scratch with our flash logo editor. The image editor allows you to select and edit images that will always fit right into place no matter what design you chose.

Make the site more dynamic by adding effects to your images. If you lack a photo for your site, browse our image bank of more than 1500 images.

Create pages that incorporate images and video.

Make sales through an on-line shopping catalog and shopping cart.

Show off your portfolio with our image gallery.

Receive orders or subscriptions with our customizable forms.

Instigate debates with forums.

Display videos organized into albums.

Have visitors download files from your site.

Measure your site’s web traffic and effectiveness by analyzing number of visits, page hits, location and source of your visitors.

I’ve only been testing this new service for a few days, but I like what I see. It’s too early to tell if I’ll choose this route, or even if I’ll make the switch from WordPress, but should I do so, Neosites is at the top of my list of alternatives.

If you’re looking to create that first web site, including web hosting,  using a WYSIWYG visual website creator, and you want to do it for free, (or as in my case, using the fee based plan), then this service from Neosites will fill the bill admirably.

Sign up at: Neosites

If you found this article useful, why not subscribe to this Blog via RSS, or email? It’s easy; just click on this link and you’ll never miss another Tech Thoughts article.

Cloud Hosting vs. Dedicated Hosting

A primer, by guest writer Charles Homes, on how choosing the right hosting plan can significantly impact your business.

There are quite a variety of hosting plans for businesses to pick from, with the “best choice” being entirely dependent on how your business is set up.

When it comes to companies who perform the vast majority – if not the entirety – of their business online, there are two main alternatives to investing in, and setting up, in-house servers.

For businesses that are already well established and stable, dedicated hosting would likely be the choice that makes more sense. However, for newer companies that are still in the process of starting up, cloud hosting is the better choice.

Let’s take a good look at the differences between these two kinds of hosting, and the reasons your online business should rely on either one, or the other.

Cloud Hosting

Essentially, if you are a start-up that (1) relies heavily on its web-based technology, (2) currently lacks the resources necessary to invest heavily in on-site hosting, but (3) plans to undergo quite a few significant growth spurts in the very near future, then your business would benefit greatly from cloud hosting.

Since your business is primarily web-based, you really cannot afford to experience a significant amount of down-time, but at the same time you have the need to be very frugal with your funds since, as a start-up, you can’t really afford to invest too much in one area when such funds could be better invested elsewhere.

Cloud hosting is a very flexible option, allowing you to adjust your hosting plan quickly and easily in response to your changing needs. This kind of hosting lets a business rent a virtual server, which can be scaled as the need arises.

Many cloud hosting providers also grant you the choice of which operating system to use (Windows or Linux), will provide you the self-service flexibility offered through dedicated hosting, flexible billing, and an API or web-based interface, to configure your server on the fly.

Overall, your business can save money by only paying for what you need when you need it, while at the same time benefiting from a reliable, stable hosting plan. That kind of scalability is ideal for a start-up web-based company that does not have the resources or need to commit to something as comprehensive as a dedicated hosting package.

Granted, this all means that your IT department will likely have to be spending a great deal of its time managing your server configuration. With your traffic and userbase always in a state of flux, your server’s configuration will not remain static. Then again, your techs would likely be busy doing that anyway.

Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated hosting works in an entirely different way. Whereas with cloud hosting you are only buying part of a server’s space (and possibly sharing that server with other businesses), with a dedicated hosting plan a company leases one or more servers and has complete control over that (or those) server(s).

A dedicated hosting plan has three distinct advantages. Firstly, a dedicated sever is located in a secure and stable data center, meaning that your business does not have to spend anything in investing in any hardware or infrastructure (such as redundant power systems), or the additional space that is needed when you have your servers on-site.

Secondly, a dedicated hosting plan means that the server in question is completely dedicated to your business’s applications, websites, and platforms. Unlike shared hosting, your company’s websites, et cetera, enjoys the full and complete power and bandwidth of the servers they are hosted on, and nothing should affect those servers’ performances (such as load times), unless you choose to let it.

Finally, with a dedicated hosting plan, your IT department has full reign and is able to fully customize server performance to perfectly suit the needs of your business.

So, who is dedicated hosting right for? The answer is, essentially, large and stable business which relies very heavily on its online presence (and therefore its hosting) to survive and make money.

If your business fits that description, then this is likely the kind of hosting that you are looking for. As a web-based company cannot do business without having a strong online presence, it needs its sites and applications to run smoothly so your customers and access them at any time and buy that company’s products or services.

An example of such a company is a large online retailer, which manages a significantly large inventory through a custom CMS. A retailer like that would be processing thousands of queries a minute, which means that every minute lost to downtime, could mean losses of hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue.

Another example is, an online advertising network. Such a business would have an ad platform consisting of hundreds or thousands of ad campaigns, spread across thousands of domains for dozens of advertisers. If that business were to experience downtime and those banners would not render, clients would not have to pay them, and publishers, and if seeing this as a recurring event, would stop working with them. Therefore, maximum bandwidth and up-time is essential to the survival of that business.

Choosing a Business Hosting Provider

After deciding which kind of hosting is best for your business, the next step, choosing the right provider, can be very tricky. After all, while some hosting providers may excel at providing cloud hosting services, their dedicated hosting plans may not be that great or vice versa.

Start by looking for reviews that address how the provider handles the specific kind of hosting your looking for, not just about the provider in general. After you have a list, involve your IT team in the decision making progress. They are the ones that will be configuring your servers, so they’re in the best position to accurately evaluate a potential host’s technology and help you make the decision that’s best for your company.

Article by Charles Homes who is a consultant at Hosting.com, for more info check out their Dedicated Server Hosting.

If you found this article useful, why not subscribe to this Blog via RSS, or email? It’s easy; just click on this link and you’ll never miss another Tech Thoughts article.