11 Must Follow steps to Secure Your WordPress Website

By Deepak Sihag in PHP, Tutorial, Useful Tips, Wordpress
11 Must Follow steps to Secure Your WordPress Website

Credit: Mark Anderson

So you too love WordPress same as we do and decided to have your website developed in WordPress? WordPress is most popular blogging platform also used for websites, almost 70 million websites are WordPress today.

But with so many positive point comes a most common threat of getting hack, WordPress is a powerful and easy to use but can be heaven for hackers if you don’t use proper secure methods. Here are 11 steps which shall help you to secure your website as well must do after a WordPress install: Continue reading

Why Register a .COM domain

By Deepak Sihag in Tutorial, Useful Tips

Internet is changing too fast. Are you ready for the new wave of internet.why-register-dot-com
With more and more businesses going online and requirement of new gTLD (gTLDs are generic top level domains such as .com, .net and .org), 617 new domains in process of being launched in coming time. Some of them are already available for registration and getting attention.

So why do I need a new gTLD?

That’s a good question to ask. Well lets assume you have a business dealing in used cars and want an online presence. Your first preference possible may be usercars.com? Getting a domain name of choice it too difficult in this growing online world.

Here comes new gTLD for you rescue, how about if you can have your website name as “user.cars”, sounds
interesting?

There are plenty of choice to choose like:
.club / .expert / .dance / .संगठन / .reviews / .services / .guru / .lawyer / .sexy
View complete list here HostWebsite.us

Any new gTLD is launched in 3 phase:
1) The Sunrise phase (60 days) : Trademark holders who have listed their trademark in the Trademark
Clearinghouse can apply for the matching domain name.
2) Landrush (30 days) : Special period where more entities can apply and auctions will decide who gets the domain name
3) General launch : will be open for all without requirements.

Below is a easy graphic representation by ‘European Domain Centre’ to show new gTLDs and their launch date. You may also like to REGISTER domain here at 10% off

How to add SSL on apache2 ubuntu

By Deepak Sihag in How to, Tutorial, Useful Tips
How to add SSL on apache2 ubuntu

SSL is short form of ‘Secure Sockets Layer’ and is a crystallographic protocol that provides security for communications over networks by encrypting segments of network connections at the transport layer end-to-end.

Installation of SSL is different on Linux compared to windows. I assume you already have a certification file from your provider before proceeding ahead with this tutorial. Further I will be using www.mysiteforssl.com as example domain in this tutorial. You can replace it with your domain name while actual implementation is in process.

As a basic information SSL listens to post 443 and there is only one SSL vhost per IP address. Mutiple SSL vhost may require multiple IPs.
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How to Login using Email Address in WordPress

By Deepak Sihag in Useful Tips, Wordpress

Default option allow ‘username’ only to login in WordPress. Allowing login using email is a general approach in most cases and here is a quick code snippet to allow login in WordPress using email address as well username:

[code]
function login_with_email_address($username) {
$user = get_user_by(’email’,$username);
if(!empty($user->user_login))
$username = $user->user_login;
return $username;
}
add_action(‘wp_authenticate’,’login_with_email_address’);
[/code]

You can also change ‘username’ label in to ‘Username / Email’ using:

[code]
function change_username_wps_text($text){
if(in_array($GLOBALS[‘pagenow’], array(‘wp-login.php’))){
if ($text == ‘Username’){$text = ‘Username / Email’;}
}
return $text;
}
add_filter( ‘gettext’, ‘change_username_wps_text’ );
[/code]

No change in core files is required and just by adding these in functions.php you can have provide more flexible login option to user.

How to disable WordPress admin bar

By Deepak Sihag in Useful Tips, Wordpress

Here is a quick tip to disable admin bar in WordPress

[code]
/*
Disable the WordPress Admin Bar for all Users and Visitors
*/
remove_action( ‘init’, ‘_wp_admin_bar_init’ );
[/code]

[code]
/*
Enable the WordPress Admin Bar for admins only
*/
if ( !current_user_can( ‘manage_options’ ) ) {
remove_action( ‘init’, ‘_wp_admin_bar_init’ );
}
[/code]

How to force www prefix in PHP and Asp.Net

By Deepak Sihag in asp.net, PHP, Useful Tips
How to prefix WWW to URL in PHP and ASP.NET

It is quite important to understand difference between URL prefixed with www and without www.

There seems to be not much difference in those as both represent same URL but this can be pain while coding some if its a bad day. It also make a difference in case of SEO and better to have uniformity in all URLs of website.

If you have adedicated server with IIS, its quite easy to force website to have each URL prefixed with www but in case of shared hosting you may be required to make some addition in code to acheive this. Here is a code snippet to force URL to prefix www in asp.net:
Continue reading

Why Hire a Consultant?

By Deepak Sihag in Useful Tips
why-hire-a-consultant

Why do companies update or upgrade their systems and equipment?

One reason is to be perceived by their clients as up-to-date and relevant with current technology. Other times the motivation is to increase productivity and profitability; or to cut expense and streamline operations. Whatever the reasons, the temptation often is to decrease project expense by utilizing internal resources or hiring hourly contractors to research the various manufacturers’ products.

If you are tech savvy in a company looking for new ways to increase profitability, productivity or customer retention with technology, you may have experienced something like the story below:

The Production Manager of a major regional newspaper runs his fingers through his hair in frustration. Looking at his desktop, he realizes that, once again, he is going to be working through lunch and after hours to do his regular job. Yet again, he turns his attention back to the white pages sent by the person hired to research the new IT systems being installed next year. Composing several questions for the sake of clarification, he embarks on an email dialogue knowing that this is only the beginning of a large, quickly overwhelming task.
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