SUB-Ingredient:

Security

Training Videos - Requires Adobe Flash Player How to Auto-Redirect Visitors coming from Certain Sites How to stop others from using your graphics How to Very Easily Password-protect a web page How to Encrypt your JavaScript Code How to easily add Very Secure Password Protection How to Create Password-style input boxes How to hide Folder Contents with a blank index file How to hide folder contents with HTACCESS How to set up instant re-directs using HTACCESS

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Training Documents (PDF) - Requires Adobe Reader Coming Soon

The Security of your website becomes more and more serious as your site ads functionality. Any kinds of Downloads or database interactions (such as memberships) and even the use of forms can all leave ‘back doors’ for hackers and even just the common freeloaders who have learned a trick or two.

For instance, did you know that if you have a sub directory of your domain, such as a “downloads” directory, but you don’t supply an index.htm, index.html. or index.php file for that particular directory, then anyone who simply types it in their browser can see a complete listing of contents for the whole directory? This is the most common security hole that is overlooked, even by webmasters who know better.

And the hackers and freeloaders know it well. That and about 20 other hair-raising tricks that can allow them access to your web files in ways that can make you uncomfortable. 

Just image having a membership site or section of your site that you charge money for access, and along comes one smarty-pants who is familiar enough with your system to take advantage of it. Depending on what kind of access you have, and how well it was installed, he or she can either download everything from the section that you can, or even stop everyone else from accessing it!

Another very important thing you can’t afford to overlook is PHP installation scripts. Usually when you install any kind of PHP script to your server, (and almost all website applications are written in PHP these days) there is a file called install.php, or something very similar, which allows you to configure the program for the very first time.

But if you fail to delete that file after using it, then anyone else who can guess where that file might be can run it again later… Effectively wiping out all your hard work!

Luckily, most PHP programmers usually give you warnings about this in their installation instructions, but then again, some don’t!

Needless to say, this is an important Ingredient for everyone to peruse who has a website with any more functionality than a basic AdSense site. If you use affiliate links on your site, run any kind of membership database, or most importantly, sell anything, then the videos above are required viewing for you, as they will most likely give you a great idea of what is and what isn’t possible and plausible to do on your website without painting a bulls-eye on your homepage.

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