Wendell, you are freaking unbelievable. It looks awesome! I am ready to take it live whenever you are. Thanks brother. You are the best.

– Bradley P. Ott, PLS, PE, Main Street Consulting Company

The post It looks awesome appeared first on Harness Technology.

Still, this recent attack is but one example of the many ways a hacker could break into your website and use it for malicious reasons. There are also many ways you can protect WordPress and I recommend you implement as many of them as you possibly can. If you don’t know how, you could literally spend hours scouring the internet for solutions and configuring them properly. The best way, however, is to hire a professional.

That said, this article is going to show you how you can tighten security using a little file in the root directory of your WordPress installation called .htaccess. If you are using a Linux-based server for your web hosting, then you are most likely running Apache Web Server software and this tutorial will help you. If you are running some other web server software or hosted on a Windows server, this tutorial will not help you. The .htaccess file is used to secure specific directories with various restrictions.

Before continuing, you will need your local IP address. To find out what this is, simply visit http://whatismyipaddress.com/

Step One

Backup your existing .htaccess file. You can simply copy and rename it, or download a copy of it and have it ready in the event you need to re-upload it.

Step Two

Restrict access to the WordPress administration area. If you are running a single-administrator site (you), this modification to only allow access from your IP address will help protect the WordPress backend. In the code below, replace #.#.#.# with your IP address. Add this at the top of your .htaccess file:

order deny,allow
allow from #.#.#.#
deny from all

Step Three

Protect your wp-config.php file. The wp-config.php file contains information that allows your WordPress installation to communicate with the database where all of your site’s data and settings are stored. As you might imagine, this information could be dangerous if obtained by the wrong people. Add the following code right after the code provided in Step Two:

<Files wp-config.php>
order allow,deny
deny from all
</Files>

Better Method: There is a better way of protecting your wp-config.php file, but it doesn’t involve editing .htaccess. The best practice would be to move wp-config.php out of your site’s root folder and put it back one level — that is, above the public site root directory (often titled “public_html” or “www”). WordPress will automatically find it and use it from there.

Step Four

Protect your site from spammers. This isn’t a catch-all system for stopping spammers from hogging your site’s resources. However, it is a good first line of defense against them. Spammers often use bots to find victims and do so by hiding where they are coming from. This little trick will stop these bots right from the get-go. Add this code right after the code provided in Step Three:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} POST
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} .wp-comments-post\.php*
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !.*yourdomain.com.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^$
RewriteRule (.*) ^http://%{REMOTE_ADDR}/$ [R=301,L]

Step Five

Protect internal WordPress directories. There’s no reason why anyone should be able to manually browse your directories. Those who know about the WordPress directory structure could use this to determine what plugins you are using and find weaknesses by which to exploit your website. Place the following code directly after the code provided in Step Four:

Options All -Indexes

Step Six

Protect your .htaccess file. Now that you have protected many aspects of your website, you need to make sure a malicious user can’t access your .htaccess file and reverse everything you’ve just done. Add the following code to the top of your .htaccess file:

<Files ~ “^.*\.([Hh][Tt][Aa])”>
order allow,deny
deny from all
satisfy all
</Files>

Alternate method: You could also rename your .htaccess file, thus thwarting anyone look specifically for that file:

AccessFileName hahaha.loser

Conclusion

As noted previously, this is not the ultimate solution to securing your website. But it certainly is a big step in the right direction. Couple the steps above with some other security measures, including some plugins, can help you protect WordPress and minimize the danger of your site getting hacked.

One important note: Some plugins rely on access to the .htaccess file (such as caching plugins). You may have to remove some of the above settings in order to properly use certain plugins.

Stay safe!

The post Protect WordPress via .htaccess appeared first on Harness Technology.

WPMule knows WordPress inside and out so you don’t have to. This allows you more time to focus on your business and your core competencies. You are good at what you do. We are good at what we do. Whether you are just short on time or you just don’t know how to maintain your website, let WPMule give you a hand (or a hoof, in this case).

Features

• WordPress updates to the core, plugins & themes
• Malware scanning and threat notifications
• Database optimization and repair
• Off-Site backups and Anytime Restore™
• Up-time Monitoring & notifications
• Security enhancements
• Site caching & data compression
• Broken link detection
• Search engine optimization (SEO) enhancements
• Site maps (for search engines and visitors)
• Monthly SEO reports
• Access to premium plugins & themes
• Website hosting
• WordPress installations with recommended plugins

Probably the best feature of the bunch is the access to premium plugins and themes. WPMule maintains several developer licenses with various WordPress-related products and services, many of which allow usage of their products for the buyer and his clients. If you added up the fees associated with all of these licenses, you would spend far more buying them yourself than you would with a WPMule account.

No more paying your web guy $300 per month to maintain your website. Now you can pay much less and get more features than you would with traditional website maintenance services.

So after you have Harness Technology build your WordPress-based website, let WPMule keep things in order. Click on the buttons below to find out more information about WPMule‘s services.

The post Website Maintenance with WPMule appeared first on Harness Technology.

Retrieve Settings From cPanel

• Start by logging in to your cPanel account. For our clients, you can simply go to http://harntech.com/cpanel and login with the credentials that were emailed to you when we first created your account.
• Then click on the Email Accounts icon, where you will see a list of your existing email accounts.
• At the right side of each email account listed, you will see a More button. Click that button in accordance with the email account you want to setup, then click Configure Email Client.
• You will now see the settings necessary to configure Outlook 2010 in the box labeled Secure SSL/TLS Settings (see screen shot below). Print or write these down. You will need them later when configuring Outlook.

Configure Outlook 2010

Now that you know what settings are required, you can configure Outlook 2010 to send and receive email from that account.

• Open Outlook 2010, click the File tab, then Info. If you have existing email accounts already configured, you will see them listed here.
• If you are editing an existing email account, follow these steps:
  • Click the Account Settings button.
  • Select the email account you’d like to modify.
  • Click the Change… button.
• If you are creating a new email account, follow these steps:
  • Click the Add Account button.
  • Select Manual configure server settings or additional server types then click the Next button.
  • Select Internet E-mail and click the Next button.
• Populate the form with the appropriate information from the cPanel settings retrieved previously:
  • Enter your Name and Email address.
  • In the Server Information section, enter the following:
    • Account Type: POP3
    • Incoming mail server: mail.myiacon.com
    • Outgoing mail server (SMTP): mail.myiacon.com
  • In the Logon Information section, enter the following:
    • User Name: Your full email address, e.g. me@mydomain.com
    • Password: Your email password
• Click the More Settings… button.
• Click the Outgoing Server tab, then:
  • Check the box labeled My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication.
  • Ensure that the option Use same settings as my incoming mail server is checked.
• Click the Advanced tab, then:
  • Under the heading Server Port Numbers enter the following details from the cPanel settings retrieved previously:
    • Incoming server (POP3): 995
    • This server requires an encrypted connection (SSL): Make sure this box is checked.
    • Outgoing server (SMTP): 465
    • Use the following type of encrypted connection: TLS
• Click the OK button. This returns you to the Internet Email Settings screen.
• Click the Next button.
• Click the Finish button.

You should now be able to retrieve your email messages from your cPanel account using Outlook 2010.

The post Setup Outlook 2010 for cPanel Email appeared first on Harness Technology.

But, as a business owner, you don’t have time to maintain all of these social accounts. Many business owners shy away from starting social networking accounts because they don’t want or need the hassle of keeping up with all of them. But you don’t have to be actively involved with each and every one on a regular basis to keep them updated. With a few simple tools, you can just keep your blog updated and the tools do the rest.

Probably the easiest way to set this up is to create an account with an online service that uses your website’s news feed to update your social networking accounts. Some of them are free and some charge a nominal monthly fee. We recommend dlvr.it.

Once you create your dlvr.it account, you setup your source, which is your website’s news feed. In the case of a WordPress site, your news feed will usually be something like: http://yourdomain.com/feed. Then you can setup “destinations” such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Once all of this is setup, dlvr.it will check your news feed periodically and disperse links to your news articles among all of the destinations you have configured.

There are other ways to accomplish this directly from the website. When we (Harness Technology) build a site for you including the social media options, we install a special plugin that acts similarly to the dlvr.it service. The difference is that the plugin is installed directly in your website so you don’t have to rely on a third-party service. Granted, there’s nothing wrong with using dlvr.it and many of our clients do, but there’s something handy about having all of the functionality work right from your own website.

Either way you go, using these types of tools will help keep your social networking active but without creating a lot of extra work for you. Once configured, these tools do all the grunt work so you can focus your valuable time on building your business in other ways.

The post Socialize Your Website appeared first on Harness Technology.

If my Dad or I mention to the other that “so and so” is a good guy, well, that is all the other needs to hear. We know then that “so and so” is a good man and can be trusted.

We utilize this description on a rare occasion. Wendell is a good guy.

The post A Good Guy appeared first on Harness Technology.

The post Creates Awesome Sites appeared first on Harness Technology.

In a study conducted by Statcounter in September of 2012, it was found that 98% of browser resolutions were at least 1,024 pixels wide by 768 pixels high. In fact, 85% of resolutions were above 1,024×768 resolution, mostly due to the big surge of laptops with 1,366×768 screen resolution. So should we keep allowing our sites to get wider and wider?

The answer is: NO.

Well, okay, mostly no. In some cases, an elastic design, one that stretches with the browser width regardless of screen resolution, may be appropriate for some sites. But that type of design is very hard to keep under control. Because of the elasticity, it is difficult for webmasters or site owners to know how certain elements will look, such as inserted images.

So we typically settle on an acceptable width that is easy to control and still looks nice on wider screens. This is also why backgrounds are becoming more and more critical and need to have a nice appearance.

At Harness Technology, we typically design websites to have a maximum content width of around 1,000 pixels. This allows room for the browser’s scrollbar, borders and other elements. It’s a nice compromise because it fits comfortably on screens having a 1,024 pixel width. But you might ask why we don’t use 1,300 pixels since 85% of visitors are using a 1,366 pixel wide screen; our response is that we don’t want to isolate that 13% segment of visitors — when you consider them in terms of potential customers, do you really want to alienate 13% of them? Also consider that adding 150 pixels to each side of a design isn’t a huge margin by any means and actually gives you an opportunity to show off a nice background.

Another interesting statistic involves mobile devices. Did you know that 61% of people will browse your website from a mobile device? Now we are talking about a huge range of screen sizes and you might wonder how one might tame all those devices into properly viewing a website. This is where responsive design walks in.

Using a responsive design, code is used in the website that detects the size of the viewer’s device and adjusts accordingly. But it’s not a fully elastic design — keep in mind what we said above about elastic design being hard to control. You could say that a responsive design involves “stages” for determining which size you will see. In our designs, we typically include specifications for full-size (of course), 800 pixels wide and 480 pixels wide, which covers most modern devices. The designs do also incorporate a sort of hybrid elasticity as well, so the sites will still fit on other resolutions (and they look quite nice, even if we do say ourselves).

So, for now, assuming a typical visitor has at a 1,024 pixel wide screen for the sake of design is appropriate. But who knows what we’ll be designing for in the future — will a pixel resolution of 2,048,000 be considered “old school” one day? I guess we’ll find out.

The post Designing For Size appeared first on Harness Technology.

One of the best tools out there is provided by Google itself. They provide a service called Google Webmaster Tools (GWT), which gives you some insight to what Google sees when it looks at your website during the indexing process. It also provides you with information about the health of your website, such as what kind of errors the Google bots might be encountering and if you have any malware attacking your site. We’re going to show you how to claim your free GWT account and make use of it.

Create or sign-in to a Google account

The first thing you need to do is create a GWT account by pointing your browser to https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools. If you already have a Google account, you can use those credentials to sign-in. If not, you can create a new Google account by clicking the red “Sign Up” button. Once you get logged in or create your new account, you’ll be taken to the GWT Dashboard.

Adding your website

Now that you have your account setup, you can add a website. Click the red “Add A Site” button to start that process. You will be asked for the URL of the site. For example, in my case, I used: harntech.com.

Now you will need to verify that you are indeed the owner or authorized representative of the website by verifying ownership. They recommend that you download an HTML file that they supply to you. There are other methods, but this is the easiest way to do it. The instructions they provide are a bit vague, but basically you download the HTML file, upload it to the root directory of your website, then click the red “Verify” button to continue. Hint: to download the HTML file from the link they provide, right-click on the link and select “Save Link As…” (or other similar phrase).

If you are an existing Harness Technology hosting client and you need help with the HTML file, download it and send it to us. We’ll upload it to your account for you.

Assuming all went well, you’ll receive confirmation that the site was verified.

Reviewing the data

Now that you have verified the site and are back at the Dashboard, you can see a summary of information about the site. There won’t be a lot of solid data to look at yet, but just having your GWT account setup will now allow it to collect data for display in the future.

In the left column, you’ll see some links to the main sections — Configuration, Health, Traffic, Optimization and Labs. We won’t go into great detail here about all of the options and information available, but we will touch on the most important sections to keep in mind.

Health

The Health section will likely be the most important area to keep an eye on. Here you will find out if Google had any problems “crawling” (indexing) your site, what the indexing status is and if there’s been any malware detected. If you discover any errors, you may need to have a web professional correct them for you.

Traffic

In the Traffic section, you can get some ideas about how people are finding you. GWT will tell you what queries are being used to find you and where you land in the search results list for each phrase or keyword. You can also find out what sites are linking to you and what page they are linking to.

Optimization

GWT uses the Optimization section to tell you how well your site is optimized for search. If you have a sitemap setup for your website, GWT will tell you how it is performing and if there are any errors or warnings. You can also find out what HTML improvements you might be able to make for a more search-friendly website.

Hint: A sitemap is a critical component of good search engine optimization (SEO) for your website. A search sitemap is an XML file that contains a list of all content areas of your site, formatted in such a way that the Google search bots love. It’s like feeding your site to the bots on a silver platter from behind the scenes. This type of sitemap is not to be confused with a typical front-facing site map that you might find on many websites (example: http://harntech.com/site-map).

Summary

Google Webmaster Tools offers a wealth of information. However, keep in mind that much of it is advanced information and isn’t necessarily intended for novice users. Even so, you may find that the information presented will help you better understand how Google indexes your website and how you might improve your content for better SEO and overall health.

The post Google Webmaster Tools appeared first on Harness Technology.

• Time tracking
• Expense tracking
• Invoicing
• Project estimates
• Reporting

After using Harvest for the last couple of months, we have found the interface to be intuitive and very easy to use for us and for our clients. In our case, we typically price projects on a lump sum basis. Depending on the price, we either charge for the full amount up front or we charge a retainer with the balance due just prior to completion of services (e.g., a site going from a test server to a live environment). Harvest allows us to handle both scenarios.

Harvest also has an estimating system, making it easy to provide price estimates to your clients before an agreement is made to continue.

If you are a company or freelancer that bills on a time and materials basis, Harvest allows you to use their time tracking and expenses system to not only keep track of the time you are spending on a project, but also to ensure that you stay on budget.

Harness Technology highly recommends Harvest!

The post Harvesting Green for Your Business appeared first on Harness Technology.