For the purpose of this post, I’m going to walk you through the process of how I setup my Make A Payment page.

First Things First

You need a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate in order to make your site, or a page within, secure. In my case, I have a really awesome hosting company that I work with in order to offer hosting with my web development packages. I contacted Mark over at Maxim Hosting and he set me up with an AlphaSSL certificate.

WordPress HTTPS

Once the SSL certificate was purchased and in place, I installed the WordPress HTTPS plugin. Configuration is easy, but you need to make a couple of decisions prior to configuring the plugin. Do you want to secure your entire site or just one page? Do you want to secure the WordPress admin area? I chose to secure everything.

Here is how I configured the WordPress HTTPS plugin:

Note: After you click the Save Changes button, you will be instantly logged out of WordPress. Return to your login page and login again.

The WordPress HTTPS plugin also adds the ability to force SSL on any of your site’s pages. Simply edit the page and you’ll see an HTTPS box above the Publish box in the right column of the edit screen. Click the Secure post checkbox, then click the Publish or Update button, and SSL will be forced upon that page.

Tell WordPress About It

Now that you have the basic needs setup, we need to tell WordPress that everything is secure. This is as simple as editing the WordPress General Settings, by changing your WordPress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL) to use https:// instead of http://.

Note: You will again be kicked out of WordPress, so you’ll have to login and return to the admin area.

Automatically Fix Non-SSL Links

At this point, you have setup all the necessary parts to make your site secure. However, there will most likely be some problems with links to Javascript libraries, links to external services and other anomalies. While there is no instant fix for all of these issues, there is a plugin that does a large chunk of the work for you. The plugin is appropriately called Fix SSL Non-SSL Links and can be found here. There are no configuration options, just install and activate it.

But Wait, There’s More

Now you need to check to make sure your site truly is secure. If visitors are greeted with large red pages in Firefox or an icon in their browser that makes them queasy, you still have work to do. Visit a page on your site using Google Chrome, then right-click on the page and select Inspect Element. Now click the Console tab and see if you have any errors. If you see any errors, they will give you clues on what needs to be fixed to make that page truly secure.

In my case, I am using the Facebook Like Social Widget, which refers out to the Facebook servers using http instead of https. Sadly, that meant I had to edit the plugin’s core file directly, so I’ll have to revisit this fix every time it gets an update. I also discovered that my theme was using an http link to Twitter, so I had to fix that function file.

As you can imagine, this could become a rather tedious excursion, depending on how many errors you discover in the Console. But once you have addressed all of these issues, your address bar (in Google Chrome) should now look something like this:

Summary

Securing your WordPress site really isn’t that difficult, but it can be tedious, depending on what plugins, widgets and/or themes you are using (and how many of them). The above should give you a good starting point to making your site secure. Cheers!

A local journalist with a passion for writing good, fun stories about people and their adventures, approached us to build a new type of website for and about people who love searching for goodies with metal detectors. In the industry, there are many forums and communities that cater to metal detector addicts. However, this site would not simply be one of those; as a journalist, our client would receive treasure-finding tales and turn them into professionally-written news articles. She needed the ability to share on Facebook and Twitter and connect to her visitors on a personal level. We accomplished that.

In addition to the standard social network links, we also added article sharing options to each article, making it easy for visitors to share with their friends. We also built a “treasure map” which geographically shows where each article is based; each marker is clickable and takes the visitor directly to the respective article.

These are just some highlights of the project. Visit http://treasurescoop.net to see more.

After having a bad experience with a previous designer who wouldn’t let go of their original domain name, a referral to us got the ball rolling on a new site. They wanted something eye-catching with generally earthy tones. As part of our services, we also provided an on-site photo shoot to ensure that we were all able to obtain the photos that would be most appropriate for their new site.

The Twin Oaks family wrote up some content and we populated the site for them. They are quite happy with the resulting website and it was a pleasure to serve them.

Through their membership in a local networking group called SalemPROs, DreamCraft discovered PowerCompass Business Solutions, who maintains an alliance with us here at Harness Technology. Together, we developed a robust website that allows DreamCraft staff to maintain on their own with little to no assistance from us. This helps them keep ongoing costs to a minimum while still having a professionally-constructed website.

We built the site to incorporate not just a blog, but a way of tracking her good news articles using Google Maps mashups, mailing lists, article voting and much more. In addition, Jodi needed a way to share via Facebook, Twitter and other social networks and we were able to make it all come together.

We happily obliged, much to their satisfaction as you’ll read in the testimonial they sent to us shortly after the project was completed.

Harness Technology provided an outstanding service and an excellent company to work with. Every question was answered quickly and they went above and beyond what we asked of them. The website they designed and launched for us is exactly what we want and their service made every step of the process simple.

I would recommend Harness Technology to any company wishing to create or update their website.

– Kurt Linn & Associates

Search Engine Optimization
The process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the “natural” or un-paid (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results.

Back in the mid-1990′s, webmaster and content providers began optimizing websites for search engines. The search engines were just emerging, but like any other new web technologies, there were a few techno-geeks riding the cutting edge. In those early days of SEO, a website owner would simply submit the site’s URL to the search engines, which would trigger them to send out a “spider” to “crawl” the submitted page and add it to an index. Soon, site owners began to realize the benefit of ranking high in search results, hence the birth of an entire SEO industry.

Search engines have evolved to a very sophisticated point, often dictating how a website is to be built and structured. There’s little reason to even submit new websites to the search engines for crawling due to automation. However, this also means that your website needs to be built, written and maintained in such a way that appeases the search giants (particularly Google).

Search engines continually tweak their algorithms, which often cause ripples throughout the internet. There is a balance of good versus bad SEO practices, which are very important to the visibility of your site in search results. For years, there have been some less-than-honest SEO “specialists” that would use underhanded techniques to achieve high search results. However, the search engines are getting smarter and will penalize sites that are using such nefarious methods to enhance page rank.

As you might surmise from the information above, walking a proper SEO line can be like walking a tightrope — balance is key. Here are the most critical aspects of SEO, not necessarily in order of importance:

Content, Content, Content

You must have good content that is updated regularly. Building a website with a few pages and then leaving it to die will achieve exactly that. The search spiders need a reason to index your site, so it is important that you write appropriate blog articles regularly.

Navigation/Structure

Good navigation is critical to good search ranking. Much like site loading speed, visitors need to be able to find what they want quickly and easily. Page structure, internal linking and menu layouts are more important than ever.

Speed

Your website needs to load quickly. Attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, so keeping the attention of your visitors is becoming very important. In fact, Google recently revised it’s algorithm to consider load speed when ranking the websites it indexes.

Sitemap

Every spider loves a good sitemap. It tells them what the site contains and where to find it. That sounds a lot like your visitors! But there’s a right way to accomplish a sitemap that spiders love. You can also submit your sitemaps to the top search engines, such as Google, which basically gives them a heads-up.

Other Considerations

You might have heard about the importance of keywords and meta tags at one time. While meta tags aren’t as critical as they once were, it doesn’t hurt to still make use of them. Keywords — in regards to keywords used in your content, not in meta tags — are still very important, but you have to be careful. One of the underhanded methods of SEO consists of purposely planting certain keywords and phrases in your site’s content in such a way that it severely affects quality and readability. New algorithms at Google can now identify “keyword stuffing” and will penalize you for using it.

SEO is not for the faint of heart. Make sure you are using proper techniques. The best way to do this is to hire someone who is respectful, ethical and knowledgeable about the proper methods of SEO.

The Update Checker will scan your computer for installed software, check the versions and then send this information to FileHippo.com to see if there are any newer releases.

This is a great service that helps keep your computer up-to-date. This is important because software developers will often release new versions of their software that fix problems and add new features. But even more importantly are the security holes that are patched in newer versions. So it is vital to system health and security that you stay on top of the latest versions of software installed on your computer. FileHippo makes this process very easy.

After you download and install Update Checker, you will notice a new icon in your Windows taskbar. From here, you can run it, review the results of a previous scan, change the settings or close it completely. We recommend that you right-click on the taskbar icon, select Settings and then uncheck the “Beta versions” checkbox. For most people, stable versions of software is highly recommended over beta versions, so you are better off just turning of those notifications. Also, if you don’t want it to run in the background, you can choose to not have it load when you boot up your computer. Instead, you can just run it from the Start menu whenever you like.

Now that you have your configured your settings, right-click on the taskbar icon and start a new scan (or run it from the Start menu). When Update Checker is done, it will open your default browser and display a page with a list of recommended updates. It even provides links to download each program, making it even easier. Just download and install each update.

We recommend including Update Checker into a weekly routine along with our other recommended maintenance software, such as CCleaner, Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware, etc. Keeping your computer’s software updated is very important yet often neglected. Between Windows Update (with Microsoft Updates enabled) and FileHippo’s Update Checker, there’s no reason why you can’t keep your computer safe and up-to-date. It’s worth the marginal weekly effort to avoid costly and time-consuming repairs later.

Download the FileHippo Update Checker

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Free utilizes Malwarebytes powerful technology to detect and remove all traces of malware including worms, trojans, rootkits, rogues, dialers, spyware and more.

While it’s good to have at least two different malware scanners installed on your system, we find Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware to be the most effective. It’s also the fastest scanner we’ve ever tested, which is in stark contrast to the humongous amount of time SpyBot Search & Destroy needs to perform scans (don’t get us wrong, SpyBot is also a great tool). Despite its speed, it finds threats that even the commercial software programs miss. What are we waiting for? Let’s get started.

Using Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware

This part of the article almost isn’t worth writing. Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware (MAM) is easy to use because it walks you through everything. Right from the get go, during MAM’s installation process, it asks you if you’d like to update the definitions. Later on, when you open it again, MAM will check to see if you’ve updated the definitions recently and ask if you’d like to update (of course you should click the Yes button).

When you arrive at the main screen, you are presented with three scan options:

1. Perform quick scan
2. Perform full scan
3. Perform flash scan

During your regular weekly housekeeping routine (you do that, right?), you really only need to use the Quick Scan option. The first time you ever run MAM, however, you should perform the Full Scan. After that, maybe just run the Full Scan once every month or two. The Flash Scan is for registered users of MAM only, but if you register, then you can use it to scan your computer’s memory and autorun objects.

Once you’ve made your selection, click the Scan button to get started. If you are using the Quick Scan option, you’ll find that the scan will complete in just a few minutes. The Full Scan takes significantly longer.

After scanning is finished, if MAM found any threats, you will be presented with a new button that allows you to review them. From there, you can choose to remove all selected items (they should all be selected by default). You’ve now removed all the threats that MAM found. Wasn’t that easy?

Conclusion

As stated above, Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware should be a part of your weekly housekeeping routine. You can proactively spend a few minutes scanning once per week or you can spend hours recovering from infection later, disrupting your work, browsing or even gaming activities on your computer. No tool can completely protect you from these threats, but having the right tools keeps the odds on well on your side.

Click here to download Malwarebyte’s Anti-Malware