Posted on

How to secure your wordpress based website?

Securing your wordpress installation is the very first task that every webmaster or blogger should do before making your website public. With the advent of automatic scripts and other automatic tools, hacking has become a doodle. Even a 13 year old script kiddie can sit front of his computer and start hacking websites. To protect yourself from this here are the few tips that one can follow to make their wordpress based websites more secure.

Keep your wordpress installation updated

WordPress as you know has a large pool of developers and they release updates from time to time in order to add functionality and to cover up any security holes or exploits found. If you don’t update your wordpress installation than you will be vulnerable as there is always a probability that your present wordpress install has some security holes which can help hackers to compromise your website. Updating wordpress installation is probably the most simple and easy as compared to updating of other CMS such as Drupal and Joomla. Just with two clicks you can update your website to the latest version.

Always keep a backup

Backups are always important. Even if somehow your site is hacked than also you can always restore your backup and come back online and than fix the exploits which were responsible for the hacking of your website. If you are on a cPanel server than there is a option in that where you can download the entire backup copy of your account. If you don’t have cPanel than there are wordpress plugins available that can help you to backup your sites database.

Changing the default database table prefix from wp_ to something random

If you perform this step than you can save your website from automatic or script attacks. This is not a full proof method. It is just a added layer of security for your website. If one is determined he can still know your new table prefix.

Removing the generator attribute from your wordpress

Hiding the version of wordpress from hackers is always an important towards site security. WordPress by default add generator attribute to a meta tag in your HTMLs head tag. You can download the WSD security to remove this attribute.

Protecting your WordPress admin panel

Secure you wordpress admin using a .htaccess file. This will allow only you to be able to login into the admin panel of your wordpress. Click here to know more about securing wordpress admin directory with wordpress.

Turn of the database errors

If something wrong occurs in core functionality of wordpress than it produces database errors. These are useful to admins for debugging purpose but it can also provide some sensitive information to the hacker. Hackers deliberately tries to produce database errors. You can turn them off using plugin WSD Security

Do not install untrusted plugin

Always install plugins from wordpress plugin directory. Do not install plugin from sources other than the official one.

Posted on

RIM to stop manufacturing 16GB playbook

bb playbookRIMs attempt to capture tablet with its playbook faced a serious blow when RIM decided to stop manufacturing 16 GB model of the playbook. The main reason for this move is contributed to the declining sales of their tablet playbook. Even after performing some serous price cuts, playbook fails to impress the end user, as they still prefer apps over hardware and thus prefers go with either iPad or an Android tablet which features much more apps than BB Playbook.

Blackberry Playbook is the first attempt by RIM to foray itself into the huge potential tablet market. But from present situation it is definitely makes one thing clear that RIM should take some more serious steps if they want playbook to compete with other tablets. It would be very wrong of me if i say that RIM had done nothing to protect playbook. In fact they had made some good improvements in the core OS of the playbook. After this update, some quality apps which till now is available only on Android, also comes to BB Playbook. RIM ties up with Gameloft studio and gifted all the users of Playbook with two exciting full version games. But even after that BB Playbook fails to take off as far as sales are concerned.

They had also announced that they will continue to manufacture 32 GB and 64 GB models of Playbook.

Posted on

Is this the right time to invest 30K+ rupees on a mobile phone?

If you are a mobile buff or an mobile enthusiast who want the best of the best smartphone available in the market that according to me this is not the right time to invest Rs. 30K+ on a smartphone. I am here not considering the 20K bracket because that range is already saturated with the offering from Sony (Xperia U, Xperia Sola), Samsung (Ace Plus), HTC(One V) and Nokia (Lumia 710). Slowly and slowly Rs. 30K+ range is also becoming saturated but still the main contender in that range is missing that is Apple IPhone 5.

note 2Samsung had already launched Galaxy S3 for around Rs. 37,500(local retail) which is the biggest competitor to upcoming IPhone 5. HTC One X is the another quad core contender to compete with both Samsung Galaxy S3 and Apple IPhone 5. There is also a rumour going around that Samsung is Going to launch Galaxy Note 2 in near future. It will also be powered with a quad core CPU but will feature a 1.5 GB RAM and a 5.5 inch display.

But among all these rumours, the rumour regarding the launch of the upcoming IPhone 5 is the most prominent which is expected to be launched in September of this year. If rumour are to be believed than Apple IPhone 5 packs some serious improvements over it’s predecessors. Here is the list of the improvements that is expected to be featured in IPhone 5:

  • First and foremost is the 4.0 inch retina display. Apple was always criticized for keeping the display size of their flagship IPhone 4S at 3.5 inch. 3.5 inch smartphones are usually available in 20K bracket here in India and everyone will expect something bigger at 40K price range. So this improvements will remove this bad point. 4 inch is a decent size.
  • Resolution of the screen will be 1136 X 640
  • HD Front facing camera for high quality video chat
  • Maximum aperture size for the rear camera lens can be increased from 2.2 to 2.4
  • Improved LTE support

So 2 of the 3 beats of the smartphone are already released into the market but we are still waiting for the final one. So i will recommend you to wait till September at least and get your smartphone after comparing all 3 with each other.

Posted on

Galaxy S3 is now readily available in India

Galaxy S3 6Now if you want to own this beast than you don’t have wait any longer, Galaxy S3 is now readily available at you local retail outlet and at online shopping websites like Flipkart, Homeshop18 etc. Priced at Rs. 38,990 on Flipkart, Galaxy S3 is the most premium and expensive offering from Samsung presently. Though you can get the same phone at around Rs. 37,500 from your local retail store if you know how to bargain.

At 38,900 there are plethora of options available to a buyer. One can buy HTC One X and save himself a massive amount of Rs 1,500 to 3,000. If someone want to spend some extra bucks that he can always buy Apple IPhone 4S for Rs. 42,000 from Aircel. That would also be a good option. The price of Galaxy S3  is bound to fall in coming months because this always happens! Companies always release their products at maximum price so as to gain maximum profit by selling their overpriced products to fanboys and enthusiasts. But in case if you are not any of them than i will suggest you to wait for 2 to 3 months. After that time the price of Galaxy S3 will be in the range of Rs. 30K to 35K.

Galaxy S3 features a quad core CPU and quad core Mali 400MP GPU which gives it a edge over other quad core and dual core smart phones. Though Galaxy S3 for USA features a dual core CPU instead of quad core because of the presence of 4G LTE chip in US version which is not yet compatible with quad core CPU.

Posted on

LinkedIn hacked: Passwords of 6 plus million users leaked

As per the latest reports, professional social networking website LinkedIn.com gets hacked and the hackers responsible for this, leaked the entire data on the Internet. The hackers are from Russia as per the reports and these hackers are inviting other hackers to crack the hacked passwords as they are in encrypted form.

After this i have also been receiving suspicious emails from LinkedIn users requesting me to add their accounts in spite of the fact that i don’t have nay account at LinkedIn. Security firm Sophos performed a deep analysis of the leaked data and claims that users should change the password asap.

Linked in response to this have tweeted that they are searching and acquiring more info regarding this hack and security breach.

LinkedIn is a social networking site for professionals. Like Facebook it also provides social networking interface to professionals. Most of the companies in USA search for the profile of the candidate on LinkedIn before recruiting him/her. LinkedIn also have a strong presence in India.