How to Launch My First Website

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If you are like many business owners, you may be ready to launch your first website. Maybe you have not even launched your business yet, but you want to stay ahead and have a strong online presence right away! That’s a great idea! Launching your first website can be done in many different ways. There are also a lot of little details that need to go into it to ensure it’s a site you are proud of. Keep reading while we talk about how to launch your first website.    You will want to pick out a domain that typically is the name of your business followed by .com. There are various hosting sites to use for this. Once you have decided on a name, simply purchase it and you will be ready to connect it to your WordPress site.    If you are looking for a website to blog or you want a blog on your website, it’s a great idea to set this up right away so you can have content going out on a regular basis. Many people wonder how to start a wordpress blog on hostgator tutorial and think that they will simply connect your domain with the host and start blogging. It’s very popular to have just a blogging website, but even if you do, you will want more content on it than just the blog.    If you feel unsure of what theme you want on WordPress simply go and look at other websites. They can be in your niche or just general websites. If you are selling products online, try and look at other sites that also sell products. You can take notes about what you like and what you don’t like. This will help you to narrow down what kind of theme you most want for your website. Never copy a companies website, but this can shed light on your specific style, especially if you have absolutely no idea where to start. This process will start your creativity flowing.    Once you have your domain and theme set up you will need to make decisions on how you want your website set up. Although your theme will allow it to be laid out, you still want to make decisions. Even small decisions like what picture should go there or what should we talk about in that box. You can start on a page that is fairly minimal like the contact page. This will start giving you more confidence when you work your way to other pages.    The number of pages on your website will depend on what kind of business you have. There is no set amount. Make sure to have a home page, an about us, a blog and at least one page about what you are selling.

More is not always better, but it’s important for people to understand what kind of business you are and what your goals are. 

  The writing on the website is very important. This allows people to know who you are, what you do and everything in between. Most websites have a professional voice but are easy to follow. Having an easy voice while writing will allow customers not to get confused while on your website, and it will also help your search engine optimization (SEO). A strong and professional voice will catch readers attention and will also allow them to stay on the website longer and read more. This will make them more likely to contact you, purchase something or come to your store.    When you are first setting up your website it’s important to ensure it is mobile friendly. Over half of all sales are now made using the mobile. If your website is not mobile friendly you are missing out on a lot of potential business. If people don’t like the set up of your website when they are on their mobile, they will simply click back quickly and head over to a competitors website that is set up for cell phones.    We mentioned earlier that you will want to have SEO incorporated into your website. This is very important because it is how companies will find you online. The stronger your SEO is the more people will click on your website and convert into customers. SEO is how high you are ranked on sites like Google and Bing. Can you imagine how many more people are going to click on your website if you are at the top of page one? Can you imagine how few people are going to click on your website if you are on the bottom of page 6? It will be a huge difference. That is why an SEO strategy is important when launching your website. Some small things you can do is to find out what people are typing into Google to find your site. Once you learn this you can strategically place those keywords in the copy of your website. You can have a blog set up and posting on regularly which will give you fresh content. Also, make sure that any links you have going anywhere else on the web are correct and trustworthy. There are so many things you can do to ensure your website is ranked as high as possible, but these quick things will make a big difference.    As you can see there are quite a few small steps in launching your first website. It’s an important part of not only your online presence but of your overall business. If you are having trouble getting started or are stuck on a specific step, we will be happy to help! Contact us today for any of your website questions.

Tips For Hiring An SEO Company

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To understand SEO, you would not need to worry about it since this is something which is quite essential. If you would get yourself to be involved in the online business, then you would have to make sure that your website would be up and run, besides operating correctly. That is something which you will be able to do with the help of keywords as this would allow you to derive organic search results. While this is something which would require a bit of time and effort, it would all be worth it in the end.

That being said, you might consider that SEO would be something which you will be able to handle on your own. After all, how difficult could it get? However, once you would get to do the actual work, you would realize that this would not be your cup of tea. Due to the existence of some technical matters, this is not something which you will be able to handle. It would be because of this idea that it would be in the best interests of your company to hire an New York SEO company.

If this is what you are planning to do, it would seem like a good idea to keep a couple of tips in your mind. To know more about them, continue reading below.

  • Expertise

One of the first information that you would need to look out for in a potential NYC SEO company is their level of expertise. Since one of the main reasons for hiring them would be that you will be able to count on and look towards an expert, that is positively what they should be able to provide you with.

While most of these things would be quickly available on their website, it would not hurt to give out to them via email or telephone. In this way, you will be able to gather more information about their service offerings and then determine whether it would be suitable for you or not.

  • Past performance

While they might be doing fantastic work in the present, that does not in any way mean that you should not look at some of their previous projects. In this way, you will be able to understand the kind of work that they usually tend to do and if it would be worth your time, money, and effort. Useful ways of doing that would be looking for client testimonials and customer service. This is something which you would quickly be able to find on their website.

  • Attributes of the company

When looking for a New York City SEO company, you would need to pay close attention to particular characteristics such as customer service, transparency and reporting, and leadership.

That being said, the highest level of priority would need to be set on reporting and transparency. That is because they would be quite essential to the success of any company. This would help you to see the tasks that have been accomplished and if they would require any improvement or not. As for customer service, that is something that you will be able to understand from the first meeting. This would allow you to evaluate the approach they undertake to get work done and how the employees tend to be handled. In other words, it would be imperative that there would be freedom of creativity as it would allow unique solutions to be derived.

 

Preventing MySQL Injection

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In this tutorial I am going to explain what MySQL injection is and how important it is to prevent this attack on your database(s). It is vital that all security measures are in place before you make your website live because the effects can be devastating especially if you store sensitive data. Lets start with the basics and learn what MySQL injection is.

What is MySQL injection?

“MySQL injection is an attack technique used to exploit applications that construct SQL statements from user-supplied input.” [Cyferweb.com] This statement for me sums it up perfectly. It is a way of exploiting the background SQL statement by entering specific logic to a form (or other means of user input) and then sending their own commands to control your database. This could be as simple as gaining access to an admin/user area to even deleting an entire database. When sensitive data is stored it becomes even more vital to prevent this attack else you risk losing this information into the wrong hands.

How often does this attack occur?

It is diffult to estimate just how many websites are suffering from these attacks but it is really dependant on the level of coding. Poor coders who don’t consider the risks of MySQL injection run the risk of losing their entire database or more importantly – a client’s database. PHP developers that put the effort it to prevent such attacks are those considered much more advanced and in the long run saving lots of important data.

Can you show me an example of MySQL injection?

MySQL injection is really very easy and anyone can do it. Take the following example: a user supplies a username and password to enter the administration section of a website. A poorly written login script will query the database directly for either the username, password or both without stripping/escaping each string first. Check out the code below:

<?php
$query = mysql_query("SELECT id FROM users WHERE username = '".$username."' AND password = '".$password."'");
?>

As you can see the database is queried for a record matching the username AND the password. Now, if I was to enter my password as ‘ OR 1=1′ then this would cause the query to match 1 to 1, which is of course true – 1 does equal 1. This will result in a positive login and the hacker gaining access to a restricted area of the website. This is a very simple example of how MySQL injection can occur.

How do I prevent MySQL injection?

All you need to do to prevent these attacks is to ensure that you escape each item being passed into the query. Normally you wouldn’t query the users table for both the username and password but for the sake of this tutorial I will keep the query the same. The best way of going around it would be to query for the username (escaped) whilst returning the password from the table, then matching the string passed through the form with the password that is returned. That way you can match hash/salts for encrypted passwords.

I normally always use mysql_real_escape_string() to escape my user-inputted data because it escapes any special characters (such as ‘ and “ which are the prime cause of MySQL injection). Therefore your new query would look like this:

<?php
$query = mysql_query("SELECT id FROM users WHERE username = '".mysql_real_escape_string($username)."' AND password = '".mysql_real_escape_string($password)."'");
?>

The password is now escaped meaning that if that same injection string was to be passed through the form, it would actually look for a password matching that instead of manipulating the query. The hacker would have no way (using MySQL injection anyway) of altering or even deleting your database.

Good Reasons to Work with PHP

Terra Henry Work with PHP

In the world we live in, the presence of the Internet in our environment and our daily lives is increasing. This leads to an increase in the number of web projects that are carried out and makes this area a field that deserves the attention of entrepreneurs and new programmers.

PHP is one of the many technologies that can be used to tackle a web development. PHP came about by chance, like many other significant discoveries throughout history, when Rasmus Lerdorf was looking for a “homemade” solution to the overload problem that the web server had where he hosted his page and curriculum. His intention was not to use it beyond the personal and private. This is how he created PHP (Personal Home Page ) in 1994.

From there, others were interested in the small program, and in 1995 Rasmus released the source code and created a mailing list to exchange ideas, improvements, corrections … Since then, the language has grown and developed as project Open- source. What was later born as a mailing list today is a great community worldwide.

In 1996, only one year after its release to the public, it was already used on 15,000 websites. In 1998 this presence on the web amounted to almost 60,000 domains, which accounted for about 1% of the total at that time. Currently, PHP is present, approximately, in 24% of the existing pages, a figure undoubtedly to be taken into account.

It’s not just about quantity; it’s about quality and importance. Many of the sites that we know and use every day or with some assiduity are developed in PHP. Who has not consulted (or many) the Wikipedia, has created his blog in Word Press or does not live a little bit hanging on Facebook

Why Use PHP

Terra Henry PHP Advantages

We have already mentioned some of the advantages of PHP, but it is worth emphasizing. PHP is a free and open language. It has a shallow learning curve, its syntax is simple and meets basic standards of object-oriented programming. Complex development environments are not necessary; they even need their learning period. You can program in PHP with no help other than the notebook, all available IDEs are free, and the development environments are quick and easy to configure.

It is easy to deploy a project in PHP because you have self-installing packages that integrate PHP: Apache and MySQL, both for UNIX (LAMPP) and for Windows (XAMPP). Both easy to install and configure, as if it were a desktop application. You get a local server with access to your database on your computer, ready for you to quickly develop any project you propose, without wasting time on compatibility problems or installing adds on what you may need. Also, PHP offers easy access to databases and supports many of them, not only MySQL.

Advantages of PHP

  1. Language free and open
  2. A shallow learning curve
  3. Development environments are quick and easy to configure
  4. Easy deployment: fully self-installing packages that integrate PHP
  5. Easy access to databases
  6. Huge community

Without a doubt, all these things make starting and becoming a fan of PHP much more comfortable. For the programmer who wants to enter this world and is determined to learn PHP and convert it into their way of life, PHP offers the most significant advantage of all: it has, probably, one of the largest Internet communities concerning other languages. And it is within this community support, documentation, components, libraries and solution to almost any doubt that may arise.