Keeping your site secure or safe from hackers is not always easy but is something you need to be aware of. One thing I encourage you to do just in case your site is compromised is to always have a back up of your files and database. As a start, one plugin that can help with this is named BackWPup ( www.backwpup.com ). You can set this plugin to backup your files and database daily, weekly, monthly, or if you feel even hourly. But you can have it email it to you, save it to another server via FTP, or even save it to your DropBox account.

There are a few steps that you can take from the beginning when you first setup your WordPress site. The first thing to do is do not use the default table alias. WordPress by default will suggest that it use “wp_”. If you are only going to use the database for your site and not add any other tables I would suggest you take it off all together, but to make it even more secure use a different alias.

If you already have a site up and running and just want to take what you have now and make it secure here are the list of plugins and what they do:

• Change the login URL
  By default WordPress uses your URL / wp-login. To make it more secure  you can change the URL to be used to login. Sometimes people want /manger, /login, or /admin. Whatever it is that you choose you can use one of these plugins to change it from the default
  - Ozh’ Simpler Login URL – Link
  - Peter’s Login Redirect – Link
  - Custom Login and Admin URL’s – Link
• Limit Login Attempts
  By default WordPress does not limit that amount of tries to log into the Admin. It will instead inform the user instantly that it is not correct and allow them to try again. So using one or even both of these plugins will help you limit this and track what is going on
  - Limit Login Attempts – Link
  - Login LockDown – Link
• Find Out What Security Holes Your Site Is Susceptible To
  Run tests on your site to see what security holes may appear in your site. It is a full time job to stay on top of what the latest security risks are out there. So to help know what your problems are run one, or both plugins to evaluate your sites holes and close them up as you can
  - Ultimate Security Checker – Link
  - Secure WordPress – Link

These are just a few ways you can secure your WordPress site just using plugins. There are other ways that I may expound on at a later time but it requires editing code, editing configuration settings on the server, and even updating the .htaccess on the server.

Bonus Thought:
Another thing that I would encourage all to do that does not make your site a little more secure is in your robots.txt file that you have available to the search engines is to have them ignore your wp-content directory. There is no reason they need to go through these files. To do that you can add the following to your robots.txt file:
Disallow: /wp-admin
Disallow: /wp-includes
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins
Disallow: /wp-content/cache
Disallow: /wp-content/themes
Disallow: /wp-login.php
Disallow: /*wp-login.php*
Allow: /wp-content/uploads

What plugins are you using to secure your WordPress site?

When I heard the news that IE has dropped just below 50 percent market share on the desktops, I reflected on when I started to develop for the web. When I started web development seriously, I was working for the Davis School District in Utah. We were required to use IE5, but when IE5.5 came out I was so excited. So hearing this news brought back memories (some good and some bad).

To this date I do not use Internet Explorer. I still like Firefox myself, but I do have Chrome installed. I mostly use Firefox out of habit and knowing how to work my tools or plugins with it keeps me happy. But I have not used Internet Explorer myself since IE6. I moved on to a better, safer, faster, and more compatible browser.

I don’t have anything against Internet Explorer like some other developers. I think it is because I have built many PCs, I have worked on even more PCs, and I have had to interact with the owner of those PCs. They use Internet Explorer out of ignorance. You ask them what browser they use and most of them will say “I use Google.” Then if you follow up that answer with “Oh you use Chrome?” they will say no and you will discover that they use Internet Explorer and Google is their home page.

People don’t know the difference between browsers like developers or geeks. This is where we can help educate them. But before you can educate them you need to really know what the problems are. Don’t just hate it cause it is what most developers do. Know or learn why. I used to swear by Internet Explorer, not at it. But as I learned about ‘web standards’ and I started swearing at Internet Explorer.

Now with Internet Explorer falling below 50 percent market share on the desktop and less then 0.2 percent on the mobile, does this mean we need to stop cross browser testing? No. There are still people out there using the default browser that comes with Windows and they don’t know better.

We as web developers need to still provide the best web browsing experience possible to the end user no matter what browser they use. We need to test the site fully to ensure that it will work in Internet Explorer as best it can. This may not be the exact same experience as when a user uses Firefox, Chrome or Safari but we need to support the Internet Explorer users. Even if you don’t like Internet Explorer there are users out there that will visit your site, your companies site, or your own personal blog that use Internet Explorer.

Another responsibility we have as web developers is to educate the users or your clients to the differences the end user will experience when using different browsers. Not only different browsers but different operating systems with different browsers. Fonts render different, colors are different, and at times the code will need to be tweaked to display differently.

Internet Explorer is still here and still the biggest and strongest player on the Internet. On top of that it is job security that we still have jobs fixing bugs. With the growth of popularity of Macs and more people using mobile browsers I feel that Internet Explorer will become just another browser out there, but will not dictate how the Internet should be displayed as it used to. The browser that will become the biggest player on the Internet will be the one that works well on desktop and mobile.

What browser do you use most often? Where do you see Internet Explorer in 5 years?

I can’t give a perfect answer because everyone likes to surf the Internet in their own way. So somethings that matter to me (add-ons and plug-ins) may not matter to you. But one thing that should matter to all of us is security. Another that should be important but the average public does not know about is web standards. Microsoft is trying to be better at this but is still falling short, but many of the other browsers follow the standards.

I am a huge Firefox fan, and I use the browser on my home computer, although I use a combination of IE, Firefox and Opera, (for testing purposes). Each browser has its own strengths and weaknesses. However, I have found Firefox to be a strong contender for the best all-around web browser.

Firefox 3 

(download)

• Strength – Thousands of add-ons, themes and the community of developers / designers behind it.
• Performance – It employs Gecko 1.9 to enhance the existing layout engine. It passes Acid2 test and gets better results on the Acid3 test compared to Firefox 2. Basically, it means that Firefox 3 is more CSS and javascript friendly.
• Security – Does not allow a website to download onto, install onto, or execute code on a user’s computer without the user’s agreement.
• Usability – The download manager and bookmark storing system are redesigned, and are easy to use. Also, it separates the themes for Mac, Linux and Windows, and that means users will have a more native look and feel on different operation systems.

Opera 9.6 

(download)

• Strength – Fast and small, standards-compliant, and available for many operating systems.
• Performance – Provides textual content before ANY other browser, and noticeably faster than IE for total page loading time. Opera’s cache (especially the back/forward performance ) is simply faster than any other browser.
• Security – Opera has a very good reputation in the security community for always fixing any possible security issues as soon as possible
• Usability – The first browser to introduce mouse-gestures. The whole User Interface, including all the menus, keyboard commands, mouse gestures, tool bars, and even individual buttons are extensively and easily customizable, using a user-friendly GUI driven interface for most features

Safari 4 Beta 

(download)

• Strength – It is the default browser in Mac, and it has an elegant interface.
• Performance – It has support for CSS Web fonts and animations and improves support for SVG and HTML 5 media.
• Security – Uses robust encryption to ensure that your private information stays private
• Usability – As-you-type text search, Quartz-style font-smoothing

Google Chrome 

(download)

• Strength - It is fast, secure and multi-processing structured.
• Performance – Chrome uses V8 JavaScript engine to generate javascript code dynamically and hide class transitions automatically. It also uses multi-processing architecture, which allows the browser to shut down a single Tab or a plugin wherever problem occurs but to keep the whole browser alive.
• Security – Chrome warns users when they attempt to visit a harmful website based on google’s phishing and malware blacklists, which is being updated periodically.
• Usability – The Tabs are placed at the top of the window in order to make the navigation faster and smoother. Additionally, Chrome displays 9 most visited web sites and sites most often searched on the home page.

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 

(download)

• Strength – It is the default browser in Windows
• Performance – Accelerators, Automatic Crash Recovery
• Security – InPrivate, allows IE8 not to save searching and browsing history, cookies and form data. In another words, it clears the browser cache by default.
• Usability – Search Suggestions, Web Slices, Tab Color Grouping

Acid3 Scores:

Safari 4: 100/100
Chrome: 74/100
FF3: 71/100
Opera: 60/100
IE 8: 17/100