In recent weeks there has been an increasing number of attackers exploiting a vulnerability with insecure osCommerce installations, which allows admin access without a password usually resulting in spam mail-outs to your users.
As always, it is highly important to stay on top of security updates with all scripts, such as shopping carts and also to be proactive and ensure that you are taking adequate measures to secure your installation.
There are several useful threads discussing recent vulnerabilities for the different release versions of osCommerce on the osCommerce community forums including the following topic with updated reference information for securing your osCommerce installation:
How to Secure your osCommerce Site – http://forums.oscommerce.com/index.php?showtopic=313323
Scripting & Coding, Security, Web Development
hackers, osCommerece, Patch, Security, Vulnerability
WordPress.TV has released live videos from a range of speakers at the recent WordPressCamp 2009. Covering almost everything WP and WPMU related, there is bound to be some useful design and development tips for aspiring WordPress gurus.
Some highlights include Eric Amundson’s talk – 5 Free Ways to Bulletproof your WordPress site, which covers quick, free, and effective ways to make WordPress installations more usable, accessible, secure, and satisfying—all in one five minute video. You can view all of the live videos from WordCamp over at WordPressTV.
Web Development, Wordpress
Backup, dev tools, Security, SEO, WordCamp, Wordpress, WordPress.TV
One of the most common questions (after SEO) we receive from our customer’s, is about optimizing their website load times and overall performance. The most common area is almost always making sure you’re using the right image type and compression, for the right situation. With modern website design and development, there are of course a lot more considerations to take into account, such as database driven content and advanced scripting languages. All of which can be optimized to ensure a better browsing experience for your visitors! Read more…
Web Design, Web Development, Web Hosting News
AJAX, css, performance, scripting, Web Design, yslow
The header image of your website is the first thing a new visitor to your site sees and we all know, first impressions can be hard to shake.
WebDesignerDepot.com has put together 20 examples of great blog header design, that will hopefully give you some insight into the questions you should be asking yourself before designing the right header for your site and the viewers you want to attract.
You can view the tips, including 20 Great Examples of Header Design Best Practices over at WebsiteDesignerDepot.com
Web Design, Web Development
The following article features 10 useful CSS hacks and techniques – from cross-browser transparency and rounded-corners, to custom icon hyperlinks and a CSS lightbox!
Check it out over at: CatsWhoCode.com
Web Design, Web Development
With all the myths out there surrounding Search Engine Optimization, Google’s Webmaster tools is definitely the first stop any serious web admin should consider for managing their websites and SEO.
Google has just released a comprehensive “Google for Webmasters” presentation which aims to give you a complete and better understanding of SEO, from what is involved, to the best practices for your site’s optimization. As usual, it’s always best to get it straight from the horse’s mouth! You can view the presentation at the link below:
Google for Webmasters
Google, Web Design, Web Development
Google, SEO, webmaster
1stWebDesigner, has posted an article with 10 Important Tips for SEO on your WordPress blog. Detailing everything from tweaking your XML sitemaps, using “Nofollow” links, to installing some of the many available WordPress SEO plugins. Check it out at the link above.
Web Design, Web Development, Wordpress
Blog, nofollow, SEO, tips, Wordpress, XML
Interesting recent article on Pingdom, which makes a point against Adobe’s dominance and suite of products not necessarily being a good thing for innovation in the web and graphic design arena. It’s an interesting read which goes through the history and evolution of web and image design applications over the last 15 years, and how Adobe has slowly acquired or crushed them all to sit atop the heap. Read more…
Rambles, Web Design, Web Development
Adobe, DreamWeaver, Macromedia, Pingdom
Web designers and developers are continually pushing the boundaries with jQuery. However, there are many everyday website functions jQuery can bring huge improvements to such as menu and navigation styles. There are many things you can do with jQuery to spice up menus and WebDesignLedger.com has compiled 15 of the best techniques and solutions for enhancing your website’s navigation. From sliding menus and file trees to menus with tabbed navigation and animation effects, check it out below:
15 jQuery NavigationTechniques and Solutions
Web Design, Web Development
Java, javascript, jQuery, Menu, Web Design
WordPress is by far the most commonly asked about CMS with AUSWEB customers and an increasing number who’ve picked up smartphone devices such as BlackBerry’s, iPhone’s and HTC’s, are taking their web development mobile. By far the most useful tool we’ve seen is the official WordPress iPhone app, which will let you manage most of your site’s functions quite easily.
On the other side of the fence, this means a lot of users are creating smartphone specific layouts for the increasing number of users browsing on the go, and boy are there a lot of options! Fortunately, Speckyboy dot com, has compiled a list of 7 awesome WordPress plugins to optimize your site for mobile devices, check it out below:
7-amazing-plugins-to-view-your-wordpress-blog-on-any-mobile-device-iphone-pda
Web Design, Web Development, Wordpress
BlackBerry, CMS, css, HTC, iPhone, Mobile, Plugin, SmartPhone, Wordpress
There have been a few automated tools to help you theme your WordPress installation, from automated theme generating web pages, to whole plugins for Adobe Photoshop designed to generate a theme from your .psd design files. However, for the most part they’ve all been fairly limited and quite hit and miss in terms of depth and sometimes just even working properly.
A promising new option however is ThemeDreamer, which has been built as a plugin for Adobe DreamWeaver, allowing you to easily break down the PHP file structure and dependent files of WordPress’ theme structure. Once installed Dreamweaver’s Design View editor shows the WordPress theme file ‘index.php’ reflecting the content of the linked files eg. ‘header.php’, ‘footer.php’, along with CSS styles and various WordPress Template Tag settings. ThemeDreamer simulates a typical post, and various template tag options by injecting sample data to allow you to visualize your various CSS style settings, without making repeated adjustments while testing the results in your browser, which is sure to save loads of time!
Check out the developer’s homepage for some demos and a link to download a trial version: ThemeDreamer.
Web Design, Web Development, Wordpress
Adobe, design, DreamWeaver, Photoshop, Theme, ThemeDreamer, Wordpress
The Joomla Project has announced the release of Joomla 1.5.14, which contains fixes for two material bugs that were introduced in version 1.5.13 and one low level security issue. Instead of waiting for the normal 6 to 8-week release cycle, this release has been made available to users now and we recommend all users of Joomla to upgrade.
You can find the latest release or appropriate upgrade package by following the link below.
http://www.joomla.org/announcements/release-news/5244-joomla-1514-released.html
CMS, Joomla, PHP Applications, Scripting & Coding, Security, Web Development
Please find attached the new important Fantastico software security updates for your cPanel Hosting account
- Joomla 1.5: 1.5.12 -> 1.5.13
- Open-Realty: 2.5.6 -> 2.5.7
- SMF: 1.1.9 -> 1.1.10
- TYPO3: 4.2.1 -> 4.2.8
- WordPress: 2.8 -> 2.8.2
- Coppermine Photo Gallery: 1.4.20 -> 1.4.25
- Drupal: 6.10 -> 6.13
- LimeSurvey: 1.82+ -> 1.85+
- OpenX: 2.0.11-pr1 -> 2.8.1
- osTicket: 1.3.1 -> 1.6 RC5
- PHPlist: 2.10.9 -> 2.10.10
- phpWCMS: 1.1-RC4 Rev. A -> 1.4.2 r327
- TikiWiki: 3.0 -> 3.1
- Zen Cart: 1.3.8a -> 1.3.8a [Patched]
- Zikula: 0.764 -> 1.1.1
Please always keep your scripts save and secure and up-to-date to the newest version to prevent server and system compromise, which would not just affect you , but lots of other clients!
Best Regards and thanks you for your cooperation.
AUSWEB Hosting , Domains and Dedicated Servers
http://online.ausweb.com.au/clients/
http://tutorials.ausweb.com.au/
http://ausweb.com.au
CMS, Joomla, News, PHP Applications, Scripting & Coding, Web Development, Web Hosting News, Wordpress, cPanel, drupal
A common question we receive from our customer’s is ‘How do I improve my Google search results?’. While there’s no easy answer, there are many opinions on SEO best practices. It’s easy to become lost in the various “do’s and don’ts”, and myths of Search Engine Optimisation practices (SEO), but as usual it’s best to head straight to the source for information and one of the most useful tools for managing your website(s) is provided by Google themselves, with their free “Webmaster Tools” suite.
All that’s needed is a Google account, and to add and verify all websites you own and wish to monitor. From fine-tuning your robots.txt file, used for managing how Google’s robots crawl your website, to analysing your search term keywords and managing your sitelinks – Webmaster Tools is a handy first port of call, especially before extending to other Google services such as Analytics, and Adsense.
Google, HTML, Web Development
analytics, crawl, Google, robots, SEO, Webmaster Tools
HTML5 is the next major revision of “hypertext markup language” specification – the core markup language of the world wide web. The specification of HTML5 is ongoing and expected to continue for many years, however parts of HTML5 will be finished and implemented in browsers well before HTML5 reaches final recommendation status.
SmashingMagazine.com have put together handy little primer for web designers and developers looking to stay ahead of the curve. Interesting reading as there is already quite a bit to get a jumpstart on for the future. From new structural element and tags, to extended API’s opening up huge possibilities for web applications with application cache and offline data storage.
Google is making extensive use of HTML5 features with their online collaboration software Wave, while Apple’s latest Safari browser has also implemented several HTML5 features. Apple has also been busy on the iPhone side of things, taking advantage of HTML5’s application caching features and database support to speed up the end user experience with iPhone OS3.
HTML, Web Browsers, Web Development
application cache, Google, HTML, HTML5, iPhone, offline data storage, safari, Wave
Joomla! has recently updated to 1.5.12 with a host of bug and security fixes. You can download the latest version and view the release notes at the link below:
Joomla! 1.5.12 – As usual pay close attention to the upgrade instructions, especially if you are upgrading a live or heavily modified Joomla website!
CMS, HTML, Joomla, News, PHP Applications, Web Design, Web Development
CMS, Joomla, Patch, Security, Update
Updates for Drupal versions 6.13 and 5.19 have been released this week with a host of maintenance fixes as well as some critical security vulnerabilities which have been fixed.
As always, upgrading and keeping your installations up to date is highly recommended. As always follow the Drupal upgrading procedures with a current and tested backup of your site.
CMS, PHP Applications, Scripting & Coding, Security, Web Development, drupal
CMS, drupal, Patch, php, Security, Upgrade
Here at AUSWEB we have a huge number of users running WordPress websites from personal blogs, to business oriented websites and even us here on the AUSWEB Blog!
Thanks to the huge community of WordPress users there exists a huge pool of custom scripting, plugin and theme/design resources out there for you to add various features to your blog. Often overlooked however are some of the more recent in-built features for WordPress such as shortcodes which allow you to easily call php functions within your posts, thus saving time by speeding up repeated tasks.
Read more…
Blogging, CMS, Scripting & Coding, Web Development, Wordpress
API, Blog, Blogging, CMS, php, shortcodes, Wordpress
More helpful tips for all you web designers and developers out there. Google has recently introduced a tool called Page Speed which tests a web page based on a set of rules and best coding practices for fast-loading websites. It then gives you advice on what you can improve to make your website faster. It works as an add-on to Firefox and needs the Firebug extension (mentioned in our last post) to work.
Google’s new service is uncannily similar to Yahoo’s YSlow tool, another add-on for Firefox (with Firebug) which tests web page code based on fast-loading criteria and gives suggestions accordingly. Funnily enough Steve Souders the guy who created the first version of YSlow, now works for Google, although his involvement on the project if any is unknown. Of course more options are always a good thing and both services might offer valuable advice for improving the speed of your website.
Plugins, Scripting & Coding, Web Design, Web Development
firebug, firefox, Google, optimization, page speed, performance, tools, Web Development, webmaster, yahoo, yslow
For both the budding and seasoned web designers out there, here is a list of 20 useful tools that will make your life as a coder/designer a little easier and hopefully give your website that winning touch over the competition.
From in-browser CSS/HTML coding plugins such as FireBug for Firefox, to sites like IconFinder that will help you find exactly the right icon graphic for your needs, or the excellent FontBurner for embedding custom fonts in your site, there is bound to be something useful for everyone!
Plugins, Scripting & Coding, Web Design, Web Development
css, design, guides, HTML, Plugins, scripting, tutorials
