WordPress has become the earth’s most famous CMS. Since it’s so popular, this is even more of a reason to improve and enhance WordPress security if you’re using it for your website. Many Individuals understand how to create their Page itself secure, however, if you are not focusing on the security of your WordPress Website by restricting access to important folders and files, then you’re still at risk. To do this you will not be making any changes to WordPress itself, but rather altering how WordPress runs on a server and how much access users have to its files.

WHAT IS A .HTACCESS FILE?

Using .htaccess files lets you control the behavior of your site or a specific directory on your site. For example, if you place a .htaccess file in your root directory, it will affect your entire site (www.coolexample.com). If you place it in a /content directory, it will only affect that directory (www.coolexample.com/content).

.htaccess works on all of our Linux hosting accounts. Some examples of what a .htaccess file can be used for are:

• Customize the error pages for your site
• Protect your site with a password
• Enable server-side includes
• Deny access to your site based on IP
• Change the default page (index.html) that is loaded for your site
• Redirect visitors to another page
• Prevent directory listing
• Add MIME types

A .htaccess file is a simple text file with the name .htaccess. It is not a file extension like .html or .txt, as the entire file name is .htaccess. For more information on how to set up .htaccess files, visit Apache’s website.

STEP 1: LIMITING ACCESS TO WP-INCLUDES FOLDER

A WordPress Business Website are comprised in a set of folders and files, each using their own Unique URLs, which means if someone were to type in the right URL they could get or change sensitive files which run your website. One Of the most frequent targets for this sort of hacking is your wp-includes folder, So we’re going to include some extra code into the host configuration file to Beef up safety and avoid these types of threats. When we are done with this, anyone attempting to access these files gets redirected back out.

To start you will want to open up the .htaccess file for your site. You can do this through any text editor, it doesn’t matter which because all we are doing is adding a little snippet of code to the file. You will notice that the file already has code in it, generated by WordPress. In one of the early lines of code, you will find a line that says # BEGIN WordPress. Immediately above this code, we’re likely to add the extra lines of code, which will fortify the website’s defenses by limiting access into this wp-includes folder.

# Blocking web access to the wp-includes folder

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>

RewriteEngine On

RewriteBase /

RewriteRule ^wp-admin/includes/ – [F,L]

RewriteRule !^wp-includes/ – [S=3]

RewriteRule ^wp-includes/[^/]+\.php$ – [F,L]

RewriteRule ^wp-includes/js/tinymce/langs/.+\.php – [F,L]

RewriteRule ^wp-includes/theme-compat/ – [F,L]

</IfModule>

Afterward, you simply need to re-upload the file to the server and you’re done. While the changes here seem minor it can have a large impact on your site’s defenses. Because a lot of the Innovative functions of WordPress are located inside the wp-includes folder, they’re a significant goal for Hackers to go after. With these changes executed, when users try to access this folder, they will rather be redirected to the front page of your website.

STEP 2: PROTECTING WP-CONFIG.PHP

Our next step to Reinforce your Business Website built-in WordPress Safety is to restrict access into the wp-config.php file. When you first created your WordPress site, you had to create a database name, username, password, and table prefix, which is contained in the wp-config.php file. The reason you want to protect this file is because it contains the information WordPress needs to talk to the database, and in the long run, control your site.

To ideally shield your wp-config.php file, you will just want to do a few little steps. First, we will want to open up the .htaccess file again. Next, we will want to copy the snippet of code below and paste it into our .htaccess file just like we did with step 1.

# Blocking web access to the wp-config.php file

<files wp-config.php>

order allow,deny

deny from all

</files>

Finally, save and re-upload the file.

STEP 3: DEFENDING THE .HTACCESS FILE ITSELF

As you can see with steps ONE and TWO, the .htaccess file can be intrinsic to shielding your WordPress Website from malicious external threats. That’s why in this step we’re going to shield the .htaccess file itself, preventing hackers from eliminating the Protections we have previously put in place.

To achieve this we can open the .htaccess file. Next, insert the code below into the current code.

# Securing .htaccess file

<files ~ “^.*\.([Hh][Tt][Aa])”>

order allow,deny

deny from all

satisfy all

</files>

And with this Easy addition, your .htaccess file is shielded from external threats.

STEP 4: REMOVING FILE EDITOR ACCESS

For the last and final step, we will be denying hackers’ access to one of the very harmful tools that they can get their hands on: the Editor inside the WordPress dashboard. It allows you to edit your theme files, which is helpful but can be dangerous. If a person, other than yourself would get access to this, then they could change your code and break your site.

With this project, We’ll be eliminating the Editor in the WordPress dashboard. Instead of accessing the file via WordPress, I recommend that you access it through an FTP client such as FileZilla, which is better for site integrity.

So to perform this Project we’ll first want to start out wp-config.php file. Once we have that open, we are going to go to the end of the code, here you will find the text “That’s all, stop editing! Happy blogging.” Right Prior to this text we are gonna add the code below to eliminate file editing completely from WordPress.

define(‘DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT’, true);

Once you have added the code, save the file and re-upload it to the server. Now your WordPress site is Secure from anyone gaining access to a site and seeking to manipulate the code.

KNOW THAT YOUR SITE IS SAFE

In case you follow all these amazing steps ideally, your site should be a lot safer. By reducing the amount of access Hackers have into the files important to conducting your site, you’ve improved your WordPress Business Website and it’s overall security.

Are you thinking about starting a top web design agency?

When we started our Tampa Website Design Company in 2011 we knew we had a long road ahead of us. Web design is one of the niches which are expanding on the daily basis. If you are a thinking of becoming a top website design company and possibly starting your own business, follow these few tips  from The Digital Agenda to become successful.

Start Learning It

First step in order to start earning from web design is by learning it. You need to have the necessary skills in order to excel in this field. You can learn the art of web designing by either joining proper classes or even from the internet. Nowadays, there are a number of free courses available online so you don’t need to spend money on paid courses in order to learn something that is available for free. So start with a bunch of lectures and start practicing what you learn on the daily basis.

Create A Freelancing Account

After you have learned the skill, you need to make an appearance in the market. For this purpose choose one of the top freelancing websites and create a free account. In a few days, your account will be activated and then you can start bidding on various projects. A useful tip would be to start bidding low in order to get responses from the clients. There are a number of people out there who are looking for low rates as they are not offering big projects. In this way by starting small you will be able to learn from the scratch and then you can move on to the bigger projects.

Find Local Clients for your top website design company

After you have got a few positive reviews you should now look for local clients. You can include your freelancing profile in your resume and apply for various projects. According to the top web Design Company in Miami Florida, most of the clients love hiring people who have worked with international clients. Working with international clients demands a lot of understanding and patience as you have to get inside the head of a foreigner and understand what he really needs.

One of the most important parts of web designing is to get clear requirements from the clients that what they really want and if you can get the requirements successfully then it becomes easier to create the web design. According to top rated Website Company in Miami, the web design in Fort Lauderdale is the most acclaimed design during the recent years just because of the reason that the designer depicted what the client really wanted and it was beautiful.

If you need more direction the guys over at TREE HOUSE are amazing and will get you in the right direction.

Follow this link. In this track, you’ll learn how to design and build beautiful websites by learning the basic principles of design like branding, color theory, and typography which are all instrumental in the design process of a website. You’ll also learn HTML and CSS, which are the common code languages that all modern websites are built on. These are useful skills to acquire as they are needed by nearly every single business in the world to communicate to customers. By the end of this track, you’ll have all the skills required to design and build your own websites or even start a career with one of the thousands of companies that have a website.

What sets us apart as a Website Design Company

Any Website Design Company who want to increase their sales by way of attracting more potential buyers to their websites have to ensure an improved online image. Only a very powerful website can be successful in increasing the traffic and ultimately increasing the number of customers amidst the unimaginable competition that goes on in the online marketing scenario. The highly skilled and experienced designers of our Website Design Company undertakes the task of increasing your online business by way of creating an amazing as well as truly functional website. Our web designing team has the skill to design and make the website in such a way that it will make longstanding impressions in the minds of the visitors and ultimately they become real customers.

Influencing the mind of each visitor

We are not performing any magic but the professional skill and creativity of our team members ensure an exciting user experience to each visitor that tempts him or her to visit the website again and again and gather more information about the product or service offered. The content that we provide will be the most effective for the particular product or service and the results start pouring in when the highly impressed visitors make up their minds to try the product.

Clients get the expected results

Our Website Design Company will not be directly marketing the products of our clients. We are aware that the online marketing venue is overwhelmingly crowded and it is not an easy task to make the online presence of our client felt by the buyers. Our approach is to create and communicate a clear as well as convincing message that reaches the right audience within the shortest period. When the right people are served with the right message, there will be positive response. We convert the website into a powerful tool that can clear the clutter in the market in one stretch so that our clients are able to reach their real customers and get the results that they expect.

Our commitment

Our professional team consists of designers, content providers, internet marketing experts and programmers. Apart from creating an attractive as well as professional looking business website, we ensure the best user experience and also fulfill the task of search engine optimization. Prior to designing the website, we gather a clear picture of the client. We learn about their products or service, learn about the particular field, identify their target audience, understand the goals of the clients and then set our strategy. While our efforts are always to produce maximum results, we work with our client to design the website as well as to chalk out the marketing plan. We are also committed to fulfill the task given to us on time without exceeding the client’s budget.

Frankly, this is not an easy question to answer.

The answer is completely dependent upon what type of site you are running, how important it is to ensure maximum uptime for the site, and how skilled you are at fixing problems like a failed WordPress upgrade. Even after determining a safe amount of time to wait before upgrading, there are a number of things that you should do before upgrading.

In this post, I hope that I can not only provide you with a base guideline for when you should upgrade but also how you should upgrade.

WordPress upgrades from our perspective

As a new WordPress version release approaches, we actively work to ensure that there aren’t any problems with our themes or plugins that would cause them to fail when the new version comes out. Personally, I run the latest development code for weeks on my personal sites and on my development sites to try my best to catch any and all bugs or potential problems.

So far, the 4.4.2 release has been kind to us. The internals of WordPress really didn’t change, so we didn’t have to update any of our code specifically for the new version release.

However, this isn’t to say that there will not be any problems. Problems always have a way of appearing out of nowhere.

Even though we have yet to find any issues related to the 4.4.2 release, some customers have still had issues after the new version release. So far, all of these have been caused either by plugins that have not been maintained or by custom code running on the customer’s site that was not tested on the new version. Please keep in mind that themes aren’t the only source of potential problems as a site’s plugins and customization can also cause upgrade woes.

So, this brings me to some basic steps that should be followed to give you the best chance at a safe upgrade on your site.

Five things to do before upgrading WordPress

Now that WordPress is so easy to upgrade, you can simply click a button and let the software take care of it for you, it becomes very easy to forget that this process can fail. If the upgrade does fail, your site could be down for hours or days or you could lose valuable data from your site (posts, pages, etc).

Doing the following won’t guarantee that you won’t have problems, but adhering to these recommendations will go a long way toward minimizing the risks of upgrading and will allow you to recover better in case of lost data.

1. Make a backup of all your site data – Even though WordPress itself tells you to backup your data before upgrading, most people don’t. This is just inviting disaster as most people don’t have any backup strategy and losing any data means that it is lost forever.
   The easiest thing to do is go to Tools > Export and save an XML export of your site’s data. This backup isn’t a complete backup, but it does have all your site’s posts, pages, comments, custom fields, categories, and tags. This is the most valuable data on your site, so at the very least, save this export file before doing the upgrade. To get a more complete backup of your data, I recommend using the WP-DB-Backup plugin. This plugin allows you to create a backup of all your data, including any data that your plugins could have stored on your site.
2. Upgrade all of your plugins – Most plugin authors work hard to ensure that their plugin will not break your site. When a new WordPress version nears release, they will update their plugin as needed to ensure that it still works and that it won’t break your site. By upgrading your plugins first, you give yourself a better chance of avoiding a problem caused by plugins after the site upgrade.
3. Visit plugin and theme author websites – Beyond simply updating your plugins, visit your plugin and theme authors’ sites. If the code is still being actively developed, the author should have information about compatibility with the new release. If there aren’t any updates, contact the author and ask them directly. When dealing with a plugin, if you can’t get a confirmation from the site or the author, I highly recommend that you disable the plugin before upgrading. You should also see if you can find anyone else running the plugin to see if they have any issues running the plugin on the new version. If your theme is no longer actively maintained or was a custom-built theme, test out the theme on a test site running the new version of WordPress first before upgrading your live site. I have more information on test sites toward the end of the post.
4. Disable all plugins – You’ve updated your plugins and ensured that they will work with the new version. Before doing the upgrade, you should disable all plugins to ensure that they will not cause any issues during or after the upgrade. Once the upgrade is complete, reactivate the plugins one at a time. If activating one of the plugins causes the site to break, go and delete that plugin’s folder inside wp-content/plugins. This will force the plugin to disable and should give you access to your site again.
5. Ask yourself if you need to upgrade now – Getting back to the main topic, you really should consider if you are 1) prepared enough for the upgrade and 2) your site is ready for the upgrade. I’ll talk about this in more depth in the next section.

How important is your site?

Your site is a source of income for you, has very high traffic, or could be severely hurt by any downtime. A new WordPress version just came out. Should you upgrade right now? Frankly, if you can’t accept any amount of downtime, wait a minimum of two weeks after the new version comes out. This will give the WordPress developers enough time to identify and fix any major issues that were found immediately after release. The same goes for giving your plugin and theme developers enough time to ensure that there aren’t any problems.

If your site is just a hobby site or you don’t mind having some downtime, go ahead and update as soon as you are ready. You could end up finding a problem that helps out the community.

To hit the main point again: If you rely on your site and maximum uptime is important to you, wait at least two weeks before upgrading to a new version of WordPress.

Safest choice: run a test site

I’m a huge fan of test sites. I actually have numerous test sites. I have a primary one that I use to test any code that I plan on moving over to my personal website. I have a primary development test site that I use to build and test new code for clients. I also have a running version of most of the major versions of WordPress.

This type of solution is overkill for most people, and I really have a hard time recommending it to the average user. However, I do think that every person who runs a WordPress site that needs to have maximum uptime should have at least one test site. What makes a good test site? I’m glad you asked.

1. The test site should reside on the same server as your live site. This will ensure that differences in core software on the servers won’t create unpredictable results. In other words, it creates a level playing field that makes your testing environment simulate your live site much better.
2. Ensure that your test site is a duplication of the live site. The data isn’t what is so important here; rather, you need to have the same version of WordPress installed complete with exact copies of the theme and every plugin. The theme and all active plugins on the live site need to be activated on the test site.
3. If you are concerned about people stumbling onto your test site, simply protect the site with a username and password. You can do this by creating .htaccess and .htpasswd files and then loading them onto your test site. Instructions can be found here.

Once you have your test site up and running, always run any upgrades, new plugin installations, theme modifications, etc through it first. If your test site breaks, breathe a sigh of relief that it isn’t your live site. If your test site keeps running, you have as good of assurance as you’re going to get that your live site should work just fine after the change.

Closing thoughts

For those of you that don’t like the massive amount of information I’ve thrown up here and just want quick answers, here’s a summary:

1. Always backup your site data in Tools > Export before upgrading WordPress.
2. Always update all of your plugins before upgrading WordPress.
3. If your site’s operation is critical for your business, reputation, or because you don’t want the hassle, wait at least two weeks after a new version release before upgrading WordPress.
4. The best way of knowing what will happen to your site after an upgrade is to make a personal test site that has all the same plugins and theme activated and running the upgrade on the test site first.

Our Tampa website design company always trusts WooCommerce when we build a E-coomerce Website Design! It is one of the most popular eCommerce plugins available for WordPress. This means that if you decide to use this plugin to build an online store, you will be helping to increase the 3.2 million times this plugin has already been downloaded from the WordPress plugin directory.

However, just because everyone else is doing something, it doesn’t mean you should automatically follow. To help you decide if WooCommerce is the right eCommerce solution for you, this article will highlight some of the main attractions of using this plugin.

The Core Plugin is Free

While free doesn’t automatically mean better, if you are starting out with a basic online store, then being able to use an eCommerce option that is free can be a real advantage. With WordPress also being free, and with plenty of free themes available, you can get an online store up and running with just a domain, a web hosting account, and an investment of your time. As a website design agency we always make sure plugins stay unto date.

As your store grows you can choose to upgrade to a premium theme or commission a custom WordPress theme design. You can also reinvest some of your profits in making your store more powerful by installing one or more of the premium WooCommerce addons that are available.

Our Ecommerce Website Design Agency knows that WooComerece is Highly Expandable

While you can build a functional eCommerce store by using the free core WooCommerce plugin, if you want to increase the features and capabilities of your store, you may need to install one or more of the extensions that are available for WooCommerce.

With a large number of extensions available, spanning many categories, whatever type of features you would like to add to your store, there should be an existing addon available. If there isn’t, there are many freelance WooCommerce developers out there who will be happy to build it for you.

These extensions can both help improve the administrative side of your store, such as adding more payment options to your store, through to the more customer-focused, options such as displaying a product of the day, a name your price option, or adding a points and rewards system to your store.

With so many people using this eCommerce solution, there is a large incentive for developers to keep creating new extensions for WooCommerce.

Also, as this plugin is so popular, that our Ecommerce Website Design Agency ensures that our designs are built for maximum compatibility with WooCommerce.  For those themes that aren’t 100% compatible, such as the child themes for the Genesis Framework, there is usually an effective solution available. This gives you plenty of options when it comes to choosing a template for your WordPress site, whether you are looking for an off the shelf theme or a custom design.

Large Existing User Base and Community

Thanks to the large number of online stores using WooCommerce by our Ecommerce Web Design Agency, if you do decide to use this plugin for your website, you will be joining a large user community. The advantage of this is that there are a lot of people out there who are sharing ideas and techniques for maximizing the potential of this plugin.

If you are ever stuck when it comes to trying to get your WooCommerce-powered eCommerce store to function in a certain way, then there is a good chance there is someone else out there who has already implemented such an approach and documented it online.

Also, with so many people using this plugin, a whole industry of WooCommerce-focused developers has sprung up. These third-party developers offer their services in a number of ways. This includes creating commercially released extensions, building compatible themes, and also offering their services on a one-to-one basis to create custom solutions for your eCommerce needs.

If you can’t find a pre-existing solution such as an extension or theme, then finding a reliable Ecommerce Website Design Agency isn’t difficult.

Conclusion

As we’ve seen there are plenty of reasons why our Ecommerce Website Design Agency uses WooCommerce and WordPress for our online stores.  By being able to get started with the core plugin for free, and then add premium extensions as and when they are needed allows you to set up an online store for just the price of a domain and web hosting.

The large community of users to learn from and share ideas with, as well as the eco-system of products, services, and developers, is another great reason to use WooCommerce. If ever you run into any problems or need to extend the features of your store, there will always be someone to turn to.