The Caveena Solutions Blog
iThemes recently held a free two-part webinar discussing WordPress Security. The first video takes an introductory level approach but I still grabbed a couple good tips from it.
The second video talks about the company’s iThemes Security Plugin and also hosts a Q&A session with Chris Wiegman, the developer of iThemes Security, as well as Tony Perez, CEO of Sucuri. Unfortunately the sound was non-existent during Chris’s portion so you might want to skip that section until it’s fixed.
I found Tony’s section particularly interesting as he talks about higher-level approaches to security. He also touches on the wide-spread belief that using a shared host is less secure because you run the risk of other websites on that host being infected or hacked. The tl;dr is this does not happen much today with reputable web hosts (Tony specifically mentions BlueHost, HostGator and GoDaddy as being OK).
Here’s that portion of the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyI8eXXAIY4&list=UUhPXycSAGDUzBF-xMzMq6uA/#t=1h30m50s
CSS veterans probably know this already but it’s one of those minor things that tripped me up when I was learning CSS.
Much like our little Chinese New Year re-skin we decided to dress the website up again for Hari Raya. Hey, if everyone else is going to be flaunting new clothes and accessories I think our website deserves a little bit of shine on this day as well.
In The Easy Way to make nice looking Gradients I shared a technique to create pleasing gradients easily using a graphics application like Inkscape. The thing is you can just as easily apply the principles to CSS. Browser support for CSS3 gradients is quite good across the board (save IE9 & Opera Mini) so this’ll work fine.
Here’s a simple tip I learned to create clean, presentable gradients. The key word is subtlety.
I have a feeling Jakob Nielsen may balk at this design but I like it all the same.
When you go to the University of Cambridge’s Research section you’ll be greeted with this menu in the sidebar:
Pretty standard fair. But click on any link under Research at Cambridge…
and you get something that looks like the fair-headed child of a menu and breadcrumbs. The pages higher in the menu hierarchy have upward pointing arrows signalling “click me for a higher-level view” while also having a downward pointing nub that invites the user to drill deeper.
Very sexy!
So it looks like Google is getting in on the Domain Registration Business. I’m all for another player in the field but am cautiously optimistic considering this is Google.
Domains come with up to 100 email aliases which forward your emails to existing accounts. I wouldn’t be surprised if eventually they integrated this with Gmail through Google Apps for Business. More information on their Features page.
And like all things new at Google, the service is under an invitation-only beta.
Domain Privacy at No Extra Cost
One thing I do applaud Google for is they will be providing Domain Privacy (what they call Private Registration) at no extra cost to the buyer. I’ve been a huge proponent of Domain Privacy and even included a section on it in our Websites 101 article. Kudos to Google for taking this step.
Google Domain Pricing Revealed? USD 12 a year
If you’re anything like me you quickly asked “OK Google, how much?” So far there is no official word but an image on their Features page seems to indicate a price of USD 12 a year. Considering they are throwing in Domain Privacy as well, that’s not too bad.
Today I learned that there is a Malay translation of WordPress… version 2.9.2. Last updated on 24 November 2011.
Let’s just stick with the official releases, yeah?
I had to do a double-take when I saw this banner at the local government hospital. At first glance it looked as if the finger was making a rude gesture.
I really liked the design of Bru-HIMS‘ other posters so I’m willing to look past this little snafu.
I was surprised to receive an email attachment from Brunei’s Tabung Amanah Pekerja (TAP; Employees Trust Fund) that was formatted as an OpenDocument Spreadsheet. I am not familiar with their in-house standards of practice but I acknowledge them for using the OpenDocument Formats. However, I question the utility of actually sending these formats to people outside their organization considering that most would likely have no idea how to open such a file.
I think it would better serve by exporting the document to PDF or a Microsoft Office format. OpenOffice and LibreOffice have all this built-in. It would certainly help avoid confusion on the recipient’s part.
ODF Logo courtesy of ODF Community
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