Posts Tagged ‘hosting’

Recently one of my Websites was hacked (not this Website!). The hackers had managed to populate the WordPress site posts (Blogs) with iframes that redirected visitors to a suspicious Website. It appears that a SQL script was run on every post to replace the contents of the posts with the redirecting iframe (WordPress and all plugins were fully up-to-date with the latest patches). Fortunately my AVG security software detected the unwanted iframe which was prevalent on both the hacked Website and the Feedburner RSS feed from that Website.

I have no idea how the hackers accessed the database however I have learnt that using shared hosting (the hacked site was hosted with GoDaddy) may increased the chance of being hacked; if one of the shared Sites is hacked then it may be more simple for the hackers to gain access to the co-shared Sites.

Recovering from a hacked WordPress Website is a time-consuming task and if recent (unhacked) database backups aren’t available then, well, the trouble in recovering is multiplied significantly. There are some good articles out there describing how to recover from a hacked WordPress Site but, more than anything, preventing being hacked is far simpler than recovery. Here are six absolutely essentially tasks related to your Site and Malware:

1. Create secure passwords (for WordPress, MySQL, FTP etc.) and change them occasionally.
2. Keep WordPress, Plugins and Themes well as all software on your PC/MAC updated to the latest releases and patches.
3. Backup your WordPress files and MySQL database regularly.
4. Check every one of your Websites at least daily for any suspicious data or redirection (an easy way of doing this is subscribing to the RSS feed from your Site)
5. If your Site has been hacked immediately take action to restore it.
6. Advise the Search Engines of Malware recovery if necessary.

I am certainly looking forward to using VaultPress which should further minimise the chance of being hacked.

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Load speed of WebPages is increasingly becoming important, not only for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) but also because people are becoming ever more intolerant of slow Websites. As Internet network speeds have increased (ADSL, 3G, WiMax etc.) so content of Websites has increased therefore negating some of the benefits of faster networking.

The obvious question that many people on my SEO and Web related courses ask is how to improve Website Speed. There are two factors here; Website speed and Webpage speed. Both are interrelated but probably best described separately (recommendations include on-page and off-page factors and range between non-technical to fairly technical):

1. Improve Website Speed

Website performance includes factors that will influence the entire site and every affected Webpage. The obvious candidates for improvement are hosting your Website with a high availability provider, ensuring that your Website host has high-speed servers and so on. Some other factors to consider are:

1.1. Host in the same country as your primary target audience

Having your Website hosted close to your target audience can realize big benefits in Website speed. Website I have targeting the U.S.A. are hosted in the U.S. whereas this Website is hosted in Australia due to my primary audience being located in Australia. There are various good cloud hosts such as Amazon EC2 which simultaneously host and deliver from multiple geographic regions. Although often more costly, for busy Websites with multiple targeted countries Cloud hosting is likely beneficial.

1.2. Use Expires header.

Expires header instructs compatible browsers to store the file and use that local file for reuse instead of downloading the file from the Website. An expiry date and time is added according to settings in the .htaccess file and the file is only downloaded again if the expiry date and time has passed or if the browser is otherwise instructed to download all files again (e.g. ctrl + F5 in Firefox). Expires Header settings hugely benefit visitors that revisit your site.

Here is how to enable Expires Header for gif, png, jpg,jpeg, ico, css and javascript:

1. Copy the blue text below

# BEGIN Expires header

ExpiresActive On

ExpiresDefault A0

ExpiresByType image/jpg A1209600

ExpiresByType image/jpeg A1209600

ExpiresByType image/ico A1209600

ExpiresByType image/gif A1209600

ExpiresByType image/png A1209600

ExpiresByType text/css A1209600

ExpiresByType text/javascript A1209600

# END Expires header

2. Open the .htaccess file of your Website which will be in the same folder as index.php or index.htm or similar (open .htaccess with notepad, notepad++ or similar).

3. Paste the copied text into .htaccess at the next line after text already in .htaccess and save changes.

The A1209600 text as entered into .htaccess determines the time for the files to be stored by the browser. 1209600 is calculated as 60 seconds x 60 minutes x 24 hours x 14 days. If you don’t amend affected files often then I recommend increasing the time to, say, 31 days (of course, renaming files on your Webpage/Website will make browsers download the file).

1.3. Use caching

Server-side caching benefits include the minimising of code execution. For example, on almost all websites that include multiple pages and/or anything beyond just plain text multiple files are referenced in compiling the final Webpage. This means that every time a request is made to view a webpage, multiple files are run to produce the output which all results in execution time. One way of eliminating the need for the running of all the files every time a page is viewed is to use caching. Caching stores the files and/or output in a very easily and quickly accessible ‘dynamic’ memory/storage for a period of time. Although caching may not provide significant performance enhancements for Pages accessed infrequently, for busier sites, caching provides considerable speed benefits.

The ‘WP Super Cache’ WordPress plugin is popular in order to enable Website caching.

1.4. Minify

As described on the main minify page; ‘[minify] combines multiple CSS or Javascript files, removes unnecessary whitespace and comments, and serves them with gzip encoding and optimal client-side cache Read the rest of this entry »

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WordPress Wp-O-Matic not working with godaddy? Here is the solution…

GoDaddy is used by many people to host their websites. Among the many Tool offered with GoDaddy Linux hosting is a Cron Manager. Cron is very simplistically the Linux / Unix equivalent of Windows ‘Scheduled Tasks’. The GoDaddy version simplifies the usual command based Cron interface by providing a GUI where just a few options need to be filled. Because the GoDaddy Cron Manager is not command line based, many people find it difficult to get the Cron Manager to work. Below is a tutorial of how to get WordPress WP-o-Matic Cron to work with godaddy.com hosting:

Use Cron for WP-o-Matic

WP-o-Matic is a popular WordPress Plugin which creates posts from RSS feeds. The posts may be ‘Fetched’ by WP-o-Matic manually, by accessing a specific URL on your website (URL supplied in the Options tab of WP-o-Matic) or via Cron (Cron command supplied in the Options tab of WP-o-Matic). The Cron method is great for automating WP-o-Matic to fetch and create posts however there is a little trick that seems to have many GoDaddy users unable to automate the WP-o-Matic fetch.

In the first paragraph of this post it is described that the GoDaddy Cron Manager is GUI and not command line based. The Cron string supplied on the Options tab of WP-o-Matic is intended for Cron Command lines. So, to get GoDaddy to tell WP-o-Matic to fetch according to a specified schedule all we need to do is

1. Go to WP-o-Matic Options Tab in your WordPress install.
2. Ensure that in ‘Unix cron’ is checked (in WP-o-Matic Options in your WordPress install).
3. In the Cron command highlight all characters EXCULDING those before ‘/usr’ (i.e. in the Cron command field the value will look something like ‘*/20 * * * * /usr/bin/curl http://example.com/wp-content/plugins/WP-o-Matic/cron.php?code=ba360243’ however we only require ‘/usr/bin/curl http://example.com/wp-content/plugins/WP-o-Matic/cron.php?code=ba360243’ to be highlighted).
4. Copy why you have highlighted.
5. Paste into the ‘command’ field in GoDaddy Cron Manager.
6. Fill the other GoDaddy Cron Manager fields with your options and save.

(see the diagram below for an example of setting up a new ‘Cron Job’ to get WordPress WP-o-Matic to fetch posts at 6 P.M. daily.).

You will now receive an email from Cron Manager every time the Cron command is run.

Incoming search terms for this article:

• categorization pluginswp
• wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cron php?
• wp-o-matic campaigns show only next
• wp-o-matic cron job didnt post automatically
• wp-o-matic cURL error 7: couldnt connect to host
• wp-o-matic godaddy

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In general, small and medium sized organizations require a website which fulfils their objectives but do not ‘cost’ them unnecessary or unproductive time. Let’s face it, the Owners and Managers in Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) have their hands full with running the organization and don’t have the capacity to manage websites (never mind understand the technical jargon used such as SEO, Web Hosting, linking, Apache, PHP etc.) Read the rest of this entry »

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