Month: April 2016

On Current Web Standards

April 25, 2016

Reading Time: 3 minutes

In this article we will help bring you up to date with current website development standards. HTML5 was a many year project that was launched in 2014; mostly as the concerted effort by the W3C organization. The plan was, from that point forward to continue to publish regular incremental updates to the HTML standard; but a few things didn’t happen as planned. Now a newly named organization, the Web Platform Working Group (WP WG) is working towards a HTML5.1 to be released within the next 6 months. The project centers around a general workflow; which means the group will be releasing a stable version of HTML, as a W3C recommendation, about once annually moving forward. HTML Specification Goals The core goals for future HTML specifications are to: * match reality better, * make the specification as clear as possible to readers, * to make it possible for all stakeholders to propose improvements, * and to understand what makes changes to HTML successful. HTML 5.1 Timeline The current schedule is to ship an HTML5.1 recommendation in September 2016. This implies they will need to have a Candidate Recommendation by the middle of June 2016, following a “Call For Consensus” based on the most recent working draft. The updated working draft is published approximately once a month; changes are noted within the specification itself. They practice an evolutionary schedule of “rinsing and repeating”; making regular incremental updates to HTML that is relatively straightforward to implement. If you are interested you can see current chatter from the working group members @HTMLWG on Twitter. read_more Specification development The HTML 5.1 specification is on a public Github server so anyone who can make a “pull request” and can propose changes. Simple changes will generally be accepted by the editors after their review. The group is tasked with generally removing things which don’t have adequate support in at least two shipping web browser engines. HTML is a quite a large specification. It is developed from a set of source files. This automates links between the various sections; such as sectional element definitions. For substantial new feature requests/implementations, they prefer submissions separate modules to be developed or...

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On webmaster responsibilities for securing their website

April 18, 2016

Hosting Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Every day across the internet, hackers, malicious users, and cybercriminals, for whatever motive they may have, compromise thousands of websites. Their hacks are even sometimes invisible to users, but can remain harmful to visitors viewing the page, including the site owner. Unbeknownst to webmasters for some amount of time, their site has become infected with various forms of harmful code; some have shown able to record keystrokes on visitor’s computers, and even steal login credentials for financial account or online banking. You may ask: Is it my web host’s responsibility to protect my website? The answer is: both yes & no. Your web host, like 4GoodHosting, has implemented strong network security mechanisms and various other security measures to ensure your website works optimally. However, keeping each website secure is also the responsibility of the webmaster. Shared hosting is also by nature an “unmanaged” environment. This implies that each customer is responsible for updating their applications, website code and implementing security precautions to protect their website files and CMS (Content Management Service - such as Wordpress/Drupal/Joomla). Over the years we have seen various and some recent vulnerabilities with popular applications such as WordPress. Sometimes these breaches through Wordpress have impacted customer websites; because the site owners’ did not keep their applications up to date - even after receiving notifications that their installation needs to be patched due to vulnerabilities that have been identified. Some examples of these attacks are: SQL injections, Code injections, template holes and many more. If your site gets hacked what should you do? Here is where you should ask yourself: “Do I want to handle it myself? Or get help?” Here at 4GoodHosting we follow a well thought out and rigid methodology that enables us to automatically scan for and identify malware/hacks on our customers’ sites. We have built a rigorous process to resolve and fix the attack, “hack” as soon as possible. We employ the following steps: 1) 24/7 Monitoring 2) Scanning of the site 3) Assessing the damage (hacked with spam or malware) 4) Identify the vulnerability 5) If necessary, Quarantining the site 6) Validating backup files 7) Clean and maintain the website read_more However,...

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Website Redecorating

April 11, 2016

Domain Related

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Truly a picture is worth hundreds or thousands of words. Often we do not apply that knowledge towards improving the quality of our personal and small business websites. Images are naturally better, in many cases, because they are much much more conducive at communicating emotion, setting a mood or creating impact. There are many different kinds of visual media: video, artwork photographs, charts, infographics. Video is the new black Wherever presentable, video is becoming a “must-have” media for almost any professional marketer. Amazingly, all you need today is a smart-phone. We have all become video camera men and women. It becomes easy to film a basic overview or any kind of video on your phone, and touch it up by utilizing many video editing software applications which make it ready to add to your blog or website. Video can even create more engagement than static graphics; making it easier for you to allow your brand to shine. It can make it easier to explain the value of your products in a more engaging style and in more detail. People have limited time and limited attention span on the internet: so try to keep your video: smart, basic, and simple. Photography Today we have high definition cameras in our pockets and persons in the form of a smartphone. Ironically we still seem to find it a chore to present great or the best images for small business websites. If you’re not a DIY photographer, there are dozens of stock art websites. Here is our recent blog post detailing that: read_more https://4goodhosting.com/blog/two-dozen-free-valuable-wordpress-plugins/ Regardless of the imagery or video source, once in a while, spend time to make sure your site provides powerful & relevant images that will bring various content of your message to life. Graphs & Charts It turns out most people especial enjoy information when it presented visually; near 99% of time no matter who your customers are. For example, you can diagram the value of or the savings your product or service creates. You can also chart the performance of your product vs. a competitor? Intuitively simple graphics which express ideas in a focused, visual style; can have great...

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