If you work with WordPress and have ever needed to create a secure page (or site), you know that there are a multitude of small but tedious tasks required to be successful. Thankfully, there are some steps you can take to ease the burden and shorten the time needed to make everything come together.

For the purpose of this post, I’m going to walk you through the process of how I setup my Make A Payment page.

First Things First

You need a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate in order to make your site, or a page within, secure. In my case, I have a really awesome hosting company that I work with in order to offer hosting with my web development packages. I contacted Mark over at Maxim Hosting and he set me up with an AlphaSSL certificate.

WordPress HTTPS

Once the SSL certificate was purchased and in place, I installed the WordPress HTTPS plugin. Configuration is easy, but you need to make a couple of decisions prior to configuring the plugin. Do you want to secure your entire site or just one page? Do you want to secure the WordPress admin area? I chose to secure everything.

Here is how I configured the WordPress HTTPS plugin:

Note: After you click the Save Changes button, you will be instantly logged out of WordPress. Return to your login page and login again.

The WordPress HTTPS plugin also adds the ability to force SSL on any of your site’s pages. Simply edit the page and you’ll see an HTTPS box above the Publish box in the right column of the edit screen. Click the Secure post checkbox, then click the Publish or Update button, and SSL will be forced upon that page.

Tell WordPress About It

Now that you have the basic needs setup, we need to tell WordPress that everything is secure. This is as simple as editing the WordPress General Settings, by changing your WordPress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL) to use https:// instead of http://.

Note: You will again be kicked out of WordPress, so you’ll have to login and return to the admin area.

Automatically Fix Non-SSL Links

At this point, you have setup all the necessary parts to make your site secure. However, there will most likely be some problems with links to Javascript libraries, links to external services and other anomalies. While there is no instant fix for all of these issues, there is a plugin that does a large chunk of the work for you. The plugin is appropriately called Fix SSL Non-SSL Links and can be found here. There are no configuration options, just install and activate it.

But Wait, There’s More

Now you need to check to make sure your site truly is secure. If visitors are greeted with large red pages in Firefox or an icon in their browser that makes them queasy, you still have work to do. Visit a page on your site using Google Chrome, then right-click on the page and select Inspect Element. Now click the Console tab and see if you have any errors. If you see any errors, they will give you clues on what needs to be fixed to make that page truly secure.

In my case, I am using the Facebook Like Social Widget, which refers out to the Facebook servers using http instead of https. Sadly, that meant I had to edit the plugin’s core file directly, so I’ll have to revisit this fix every time it gets an update. I also discovered that my theme was using an http link to Twitter, so I had to fix that function file.

As you can imagine, this could become a rather tedious excursion, depending on how many errors you discover in the Console. But once you have addressed all of these issues, your address bar (in Google Chrome) should now look something like this:

Summary

Securing your WordPress site really isn’t that difficult, but it can be tedious, depending on what plugins, widgets and/or themes you are using (and how many of them). The above should give you a good starting point to making your site secure. Cheers!

If you work with WordPress and have ever needed to create a secure page (or site), you know that there are a multitude of small but tedious tasks required to be successful. Thankfully, there are some steps you can take to ease the burden and shorten the time needed to make everything come together.

For the purpose of this post, I’m going to walk you through the process of how I setup my Make A Payment page.

First Things First

You need a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate in order to make your site, or a page within, secure. In my case, I have a really awesome hosting company that I work with in order to offer hosting with my web development packages. I contacted Mark over at Maxim Hosting and he set me up with an AlphaSSL certificate.

WordPress HTTPS

Once the SSL certificate was purchased and in place, I installed the WordPress HTTPS plugin. Configuration is easy, but you need to make a couple of decisions prior to configuring the plugin. Do you want to secure your entire site or just one page? Do you want to secure the WordPress admin area? I chose to secure everything.

Here is how I configured the WordPress HTTPS plugin:

Note: After you click the Save Changes button, you will be instantly logged out of WordPress. Return to your login page and login again.

The WordPress HTTPS plugin also adds the ability to force SSL on any of your site’s pages. Simply edit the page and you’ll see an HTTPS box above the Publish box in the right column of the edit screen. Click the Secure post checkbox, then click the Publish or Update button, and SSL will be forced upon that page.

Tell WordPress About It

Now that you have the basic needs setup, we need to tell WordPress that everything is secure. This is as simple as editing the WordPress General Settings, by changing your WordPress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL) to use https:// instead of http://.

Note: You will again be kicked out of WordPress, so you’ll have to login and return to the admin area.

Automatically Fix Non-SSL Links

At this point, you have setup all the necessary parts to make your site secure. However, there will most likely be some problems with links to Javascript libraries, links to external services and other anomalies. While there is no instant fix for all of these issues, there is a plugin that does a large chunk of the work for you. The plugin is appropriately called Fix SSL Non-SSL Links and can be found here. There are no configuration options, just install and activate it.

But Wait, There’s More

Now you need to check to make sure your site truly is secure. If visitors are greeted with large red pages in Firefox or an icon in their browser that makes them queasy, you still have work to do. Visit a page on your site using Google Chrome, then right-click on the page and select Inspect Element. Now click the Console tab and see if you have any errors. If you see any errors, they will give you clues on what needs to be fixed to make that page truly secure.

In my case, I am using the Facebook Like Social Widget, which refers out to the Facebook servers using http instead of https. Sadly, that meant I had to edit the plugin’s core file directly, so I’ll have to revisit this fix every time it gets an update. I also discovered that my theme was using an http link to Twitter, so I had to fix that function file.

As you can imagine, this could become a rather tedious excursion, depending on how many errors you discover in the Console. But once you have addressed all of these issues, your address bar (in Google Chrome) should now look something like this:

Summary

Securing your WordPress site really isn’t that difficult, but it can be tedious, depending on what plugins, widgets and/or themes you are using (and how many of them). The above should give you a good starting point to making your site secure. Cheers!

When consulting with prospective clients, typically, one of the main topics of discussion is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Each of our clients’ websites is built from the ground up with SEO in mind. But there’s so much more to it than that.

Search Engine Optimization
The process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the “natural” or un-paid (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results.

Back in the mid-1990′s, webmaster and content providers began optimizing websites for search engines. The search engines were just emerging, but like any other new web technologies, there were a few techno-geeks riding the cutting edge. In those early days of SEO, a website owner would simply submit the site’s URL to the search engines, which would trigger them to send out a “spider” to “crawl” the submitted page and add it to an index. Soon, site owners began to realize the benefit of ranking high in search results, hence the birth of an entire SEO industry.

Search engines have evolved to a very sophisticated point, often dictating how a website is to be built and structured. There’s little reason to even submit new websites to the search engines for crawling due to automation. However, this also means that your website needs to be built, written and maintained in such a way that appeases the search giants (particularly Google).

Search engines continually tweak their algorithms, which often cause ripples throughout the internet. There is a balance of good versus bad SEO practices, which are very important to the visibility of your site in search results. For years, there have been some less-than-honest SEO “specialists” that would use underhanded techniques to achieve high search results. However, the search engines are getting smarter and will penalize sites that are using such nefarious methods to enhance page rank.

As you might surmise from the information above, walking a proper SEO line can be like walking a tightrope — balance is key. Here are the most critical aspects of SEO, not necessarily in order of importance:

Content, Content, Content

You must have good content that is updated regularly. Building a website with a few pages and then leaving it to die will achieve exactly that. The search spiders need a reason to index your site, so it is important that you write appropriate blog articles regularly.

Navigation/Structure

Good navigation is critical to good search ranking. Much like site loading speed, visitors need to be able to find what they want quickly and easily. Page structure, internal linking and menu layouts are more important than ever.

Speed

Your website needs to load quickly. Attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, so keeping the attention of your visitors is becoming very important. In fact, Google recently revised it’s algorithm to consider load speed when ranking the websites it indexes.

Sitemap

Every spider loves a good sitemap. It tells them what the site contains and where to find it. That sounds a lot like your visitors! But there’s a right way to accomplish a sitemap that spiders love. You can also submit your sitemaps to the top search engines, such as Google, which basically gives them a heads-up.

Other Considerations

You might have heard about the importance of keywords and meta tags at one time. While meta tags aren’t as critical as they once were, it doesn’t hurt to still make use of them. Keywords — in regards to keywords used in your content, not in meta tags — are still very important, but you have to be careful. One of the underhanded methods of SEO consists of purposely planting certain keywords and phrases in your site’s content in such a way that it severely affects quality and readability. New algorithms at Google can now identify “keyword stuffing” and will penalize you for using it.

SEO is not for the faint of heart. Make sure you are using proper techniques. The best way to do this is to hire someone who is respectful, ethical and knowledgeable about the proper methods of SEO.

FileHippo.com is a great resource for software and obtaining the very latest versions. But the best part about FileHippo is their Update Checker software:

The Update Checker will scan your computer for installed software, check the versions and then send this information to FileHippo.com to see if there are any newer releases.

This is a great service that helps keep your computer up-to-date. This is important because software developers will often release new versions of their software that fix problems and add new features. But even more importantly are the security holes that are patched in newer versions. So it is vital to system health and security that you stay on top of the latest versions of software installed on your computer. FileHippo makes this process very easy.

After you download and install Update Checker, you will notice a new icon in your Windows taskbar. From here, you can run it, review the results of a previous scan, change the settings or close it completely. We recommend that you right-click on the taskbar icon, select Settings and then uncheck the “Beta versions” checkbox. For most people, stable versions of software is highly recommended over beta versions, so you are better off just turning of those notifications. Also, if you don’t want it to run in the background, you can choose to not have it load when you boot up your computer. Instead, you can just run it from the Start menu whenever you like.

Now that you have your configured your settings, right-click on the taskbar icon and start a new scan (or run it from the Start menu). When Update Checker is done, it will open your default browser and display a page with a list of recommended updates. It even provides links to download each program, making it even easier. Just download and install each update.

We recommend including Update Checker into a weekly routine along with our other recommended maintenance software, such as CCleaner, Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware, etc. Keeping your computer’s software updated is very important yet often neglected. Between Windows Update (with Microsoft Updates enabled) and FileHippo’s Update Checker, there’s no reason why you can’t keep your computer safe and up-to-date. It’s worth the marginal weekly effort to avoid costly and time-consuming repairs later.

Download the FileHippo Update Checker

The arsenal of weapons you use to fight the malware, spyware and adware on your computer should always include Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware. Here’s what the developers themselves say about it:

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Free utilizes Malwarebytes powerful technology to detect and remove all traces of malware including worms, trojans, rootkits, rogues, dialers, spyware and more.

While it’s good to have at least two different malware scanners installed on your system, we find Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware to be the most effective. It’s also the fastest scanner we’ve ever tested, which is in stark contrast to the humongous amount of time SpyBot Search & Destroy needs to perform scans (don’t get us wrong, SpyBot is also a great tool). Despite its speed, it finds threats that even the commercial software programs miss. What are we waiting for? Let’s get started.

Using Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware

This part of the article almost isn’t worth writing. Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware (MAM) is easy to use because it walks you through everything. Right from the get go, during MAM’s installation process, it asks you if you’d like to update the definitions. Later on, when you open it again, MAM will check to see if you’ve updated the definitions recently and ask if you’d like to update (of course you should click the Yes button).

When you arrive at the main screen, you are presented with three scan options:

1. Perform quick scan
2. Perform full scan
3. Perform flash scan

During your regular weekly housekeeping routine (you do that, right?), you really only need to use the Quick Scan option. The first time you ever run MAM, however, you should perform the Full Scan. After that, maybe just run the Full Scan once every month or two. The Flash Scan is for registered users of MAM only, but if you register, then you can use it to scan your computer’s memory and autorun objects.

Once you’ve made your selection, click the Scan button to get started. If you are using the Quick Scan option, you’ll find that the scan will complete in just a few minutes. The Full Scan takes significantly longer.

After scanning is finished, if MAM found any threats, you will be presented with a new button that allows you to review them. From there, you can choose to remove all selected items (they should all be selected by default). You’ve now removed all the threats that MAM found. Wasn’t that easy?

Conclusion

As stated above, Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware should be a part of your weekly housekeeping routine. You can proactively spend a few minutes scanning once per week or you can spend hours recovering from infection later, disrupting your work, browsing or even gaming activities on your computer. No tool can completely protect you from these threats, but having the right tools keeps the odds on well on your side.

Click here to download Malwarebyte’s Anti-Malware

We’ve been installing CCleaner on client computers for years. In a nutshell, it keeps things running very smoothly and keeps your PC computer running efficiently. As Piriform, the developer of CCleaner, puts it:

CCleaner is the number-one tool for cleaning your Windows PC. It protects your privacy online and makes your computer faster and more secure. Easy to use and a small, fast download.

We concur.

Maintaining your computer means more than just blasting out the dust with compressed air in a can (although that’s also a great thing to do from time-to-time). It means taking care of it from a software standpoint as well. That’s where CCleaner comes in. We use it for the initial cleanup of client computers because it will hammer out many issues before we even get into the malware and virus scanning.

Cleaning Up Unnecessary Files and Caches

When you first open CCleaner, you’ll see a long checklist of items. For most people, leaving them at the default settings is sufficient. If you want to make any changes, be sure to examine the options under both the Windows and Applications tabs. Some people like to uncheck the Cookies checkbox because it retains their settings on various websites. It’s a safer bet to let CCleaner clear them out, but if you are really stuck on saving your cookies, we highly recommend that you do some serious spy/mal/adware checking after running CCleaner. Check out Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware and SpyBot Search & Destroy to handle those tasks for you. Also, if you don’t want to lose any saved passwords, you might want to uncheck the Saved Passwords checkbox for each browser you regularly use. It’s more secure to let CCleaner delete them and just remember them yourself, but not everyone is comfortable with that.

Clicking the Analyze button starts CCleaner on its way to examining your system for things that can be removed safely. After it shows you what it wants to remove, you can decide if there’s anything you want to keep. Then click the Run Cleaner button and let CCleaner do its magic.

Registry Cleaner

CCleaner has its own built-in registry cleaner. Just click the Registry icon on the left vertical menu, then click the Scan for Issues button. After it shows you all the problems it finds, click the Fix Selected Issues button. CCleaner will ask if you want to backup the changes — please do it! Tampering with the Windows Registry is not something to take lightly, so do yourself a favor and back it up when CCleaner asks. That said, we’ve never had a problem after running the Registry cleaner in CCleaner.

Startup Review

Under the Tools section, you’ll find a Startup button. Click that to see what programs are loading when you first start Windows. You may be surprised when you see how many programs are there. Disabling unnecessary programs from this list can increase your boot-up speed significantly. But be careful not to disable anything critical! A good rule of thumb is to not change anything you don’t recognize or can’t identify. However, when in doubt or if you just want to satisfy your curiosity, you can search for items in the startup list at Bleeping Computer.

Generally safe items to disable in this list usually have to do with preloading software, like Adobe updaters, Quicktime Task loaders and the like. As stated previously, however, don’t remove anything you might actually use or anything that is important.

Other Features

Check out the other sections of CCleaner to find more useful tools. We particularly like the Settings in the Options area, where you can specify how many passes to make during file deletion (the more passes, the better security), which drives to include, whether or not to wipe free space and other miscellaneous settings.

In Conclusion

No PC computer should be without CCleaner. However, in order for it to be effective, you need to update and run it occasionally. We recommend putting your computer on a weekly maintenance routine that includes CCleaner, among other things.

Click here to download CCleaner

Sharing files with friends, coworkers, clients and others has gotten easier than ever before. Here at Harness Technology, we regularly use free online services to help us send and receive files, mostly to and from our clients. One great benefit of these online storage services is the ability to upgrade when and if you ever need more space. Of course, upgrading will cost you a few bucks, but when you analyze the services and what they do for you, they are all great deals.

Here are four popular services we use regularly, listed in descending order of our preference.

Google Apps

If you have your own domain(s) and would like free email, calendar, document collaboration, online storage, message groups, contact management and oh, so much more, you need Google Apps. In fact, we love it so much that we offer free Google Apps setup and configuration for any and all of our website clients. You can have up to 10 users for free and you may just find that you never open a Microsoft Office program ever again.

Find out more about Google Apps

iDrive

Unlike other services like Minus and Dropbox, iDrive also has a nice backup utility you can download and install on your Windows computer. You can schedule backups and specify exactly what folders you want to send to your iDrive account. It’s actually very painless. We use it in addition to local backups, so we always have a backup somewhere just in case we have a worst case scenario type of day. Of course, you can also selectively store specific files there, too.

Find out more about iDrive

Minus

We’ve just gotten started with Minus after having used Dropbox since about the time they launched. So far, we prefer the Minus website, downloadable utility and overall usability. You start with 10GB for free and you get an additional 1GB for each referral who signs up for the free service (Dropbox only gives you 256MB per referral).

Find out more about Minus

Dropbox

The similarities between Dropbox and Minus are mostly cosmetic, although our experience has shown that uploads to Minus is a bit faster. Otherwise, however, it’s just a matter of getting used to the interface. Even though we’ve placed Dropbox in the fourth position in this article, we still love it and highly recommend it.

Find out more about Dropbox

Your logo represents your company by defining its identity and giving it purpose. It is an integral part of a company’s brand strategy and is not to be ignored. Without a logo, it is impossible for a consumer to identify one product or service from another.

Many consumers have strong opinions when it comes to their favorite brand. Their opinions are emotionally-based, which is why some brands resonate with people more than others. The feelings they have cause them to form emotional attachments to these brands and they will completely disregard other — sometimes superior products and services — in the name of loyalty to their chosen brand. In some cases, the brand name will become so synonymous with a particular type of product or service that consumers will begin to recognize it by the brand name itself (for example, people often refer to a facial tissue as a Kleenex).

Based on this information, it is important for a company to form a strong brand strategy that includes a solid, unique and easily-identifiable logo. This can be particularly important for relatively new small businesses who want to break into a particular market or venue.

Here are 5 important reasons why logo design is crucial to your business success:

1. Consumer trust
   A professionally-designed logo and/or brand identity gives a company an established, professional aesthetic. This increases the trust clients will have in the products and services your company offers.
2. Remembrance
   People have an easier time remembering images rather than text. A properly designed logo that is easily recalled later will have more impact on potential customers than even the coolest business name. As the old saying goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”
3. Loyalty
   As your company grows, a good logo breeds loyalty with your existing customer base. This not only leads to repeat business, but it also lends itself to word-of-mouth referrals and your perceived reputation by potential clients.
4. Representation
   A logo can graphically display what services or products you offer. This can be particularly important in cases where your business name does not fully explain what your business offers.
5. Value
   Brand identity adds value to your business, for all of the reasons explained above. Even if your physical assets have only a specific value, a logo and other brand strategies can help increase your perceived value, which can be helpful for attracting investors, buyers or even exemplifying the value of your products and services to your clients.

Harness Technology takes into account all of these important design factors when building your brand identity with all of our graphic design services, including logo design, business card design and brochure design. We’re happy to consult with you about developing your brand strategy to fit the needs of your business or organization.

These days, a good website is a required tool for your business’ marketing arsenal. Regardless of what products or services you provide, you likely have a lot of competition in the online arena. But there are steps you can take to stay ahead of your competitors. Sure, maybe they are using some or all of the same techniques you should be using — but shouldn’t you level the playing field? The answer is yes.

So we offer to you the following list of five great things you can do to keep yourself and your business at the top of your game.

Blogging

Maintaining a list of recent news articles, an advice column or a simple blog can do wonders for your website and the visibility of your business. Probably the most important aspect of blogging is to create a connection with your current and prospective clients. You can tell them about your products and/or services and give them insights on how you can help them. You can provide news about your industry or typical interests of your clientele. They not only appreciate the information, but the blog gives them a reason to visit your site. Another important aspect of blogging pertains to search engines and their love for new content. You can also broadcast your blog posts to social networks, as we’ll see below.

Social Media Integration

If you already have links on your website that point to your various social network accounts, that’s a great first step. But to really take advantage of your potential visibility, you need to be more integrated. For instance, are you broadcasting your latest news or blog articles to your Facebook and Twitter pages? You should be. There are tools available that will automatically generate posts on your Facebook page, Twitter profile, LinkedIn account and other social networks so you don’t have to manually create those links back to your website. Of course, you should also have buttons for Facebook Like, Twitter Share, Google +1 and other popular networks. Also, if you have a user-based website (meaning that visitors can register for an account to participate in article comments, forum posts, etc.), you can integrate ways for your users to connect using social networks, making it very easy for them to register on your website and get started using their existing credentials.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Yes, you’ve probably heard it a thousand times by now; search engine optimization is key to a modern, visible website. SEO is more than just placing the right words in the right places and submitting your site to the various search engines. It starts with a structurally-sound backend, i.e. design layout and coding that validates with existing web standards. You don’t necessarily have to know what that means, you just need to have your website built using the latest standards. It’s not just good practice — it’s good for the usability, speed and efficiency of a website that can be found easily by prospective and existing clients.

Video

Incorporating video on your website might seem like a time-consuming and costly task, especially if you don’t know how to do it. But really, you don’t need a professional studio to create small, informative videos. A Flip Video camera, your smartphone with built-in video recording capability or even a good webcam can provide a suitable means for obtaining video clips. Brief videos of you (or someone within your business) explaining what products and/or services you provide can be very helpful to your visitors. Instant availability of information in this modern era has actually made people impatient, so placing informative videos on your website gives them the “quick fix” they are looking for. Recent studies have shown that more than 50% of visitors to video-enabled websites take action (meaning that they click on something on your website to find more information) and nearly 20% of them actually make purchases. In addition, you can upload your videos to sites like YouTube, giving you another route for prospective clients to find you.

Competent Webmaster

Keeping up with the latest internet trends and keeping your business above or on par with your competition requires a good relationship with a savvy and competent web development firm. You won’t necessarily need their services all the time, but it’s a great idea to have them as part of your arsenal when the need arises. We won’t name any names, but a great web developer will harness the technology of the Internet to make your website rise above the rest.