Blog: Web Security with SSL (More Posts)
A Note about Web Security
I have a few things I want to talk about in this blog but I’ll start with a little note about web security. A few days ago a client contacted me with a query about website security. Particularly a little padlock icon that you (often these days) see in your browser when you visit a website.
When you see that icon that means the website has a valid SSL Certificate. SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer which is a fancy term for an added layer of encryption to your website that makes it a ton harder for attackers to hack your website. It is recommended for all websites now and absolutely essential for e-commerce websites or any website that handles personal data. It is an SEO benefit and allows you to legitimately say to your customers that their data is safe in your hands. You can say to them that the data they fill out in your forms or shopping cards will likely not be intercepted.
This graphic talks about SSL encryption and other ways to make your website legal.
Access to SSL Certificates varies according to web host. Some can offer you an SSL certificate for free while some can offer even more secure certificates for an annual added fee.
You may have noticed my websites on my domain have the padlock included. All my websites including clients hosted with me are now padlocked with SSL. If your website is hosted with me it is supplied by my Web Host provider, LS25, I can offer you an SSL certificate at no extra cost. Or if you can prefer you can get advice on more premium SSL certificates that may be more appropriate for your needs. The offering at my web host is a £60 annual fee for a certificate you could add to your shopping site. This is not to say that paid SSL Certificates offer more protection from a user point of view than one that is free. It’s just from a supply point of view you get more piece of mind that your web host company will continue to provide that free protection.
This link from AboutSSL.org can provide a better description of the pros and cons of SSL than I can. I will end this part of the blog I explaining that while SSL is as good to use as it always was it has been superseded by TLS (Transport Layer Security) so in the future, this will be more and more coveted as we go forward.
There are things you can do as web developers as well. And another one of my favourite web graphics that I made talks about how to do this on a basic level.
Form Security with PHP
That said, there’s as secure as you make your website in code, what I always tell my clients is there’s no real substitute for adding that extra layer for security using technologies such as SSL which is why I’m happy my client was able to make there own arrangements for getting a valid SSL certificate on their website.
Photography Content Update
It’s that time again! A new content update went online earlier today. Changes this week include.
- Animals – +2 making a total of 79
- Birds -+4 making a total of 125
- Coast – +6 making a total of 54
- Minibeasts – +1 making a total of 24
- Other – +2 making a total of 17
I also added a new selection of photos to the Hardwick Park category too. I took a lot of photos for this category with still more to come. (I took a lot of photos for this category waiting to be seen check it out to see what’s new! And if you like my content it can be arranged to be buyable on my Picfair store!
WordPress Pagination.
Yes, I’m talking about WordPress pagination again. 🙂 Today I pushed some changes to my WordPress Starter Theme Repository on Github that focused on Pagination to lists of WordPress Core Posts. I still have some work to do with Custom Post Type list pagination but that is for another day. The Readme file contains everything you need to know if you want to clone it to your own systems, but finally, the pagination is fully working when it comes to front-page.php templates and home.php templates.
Simply removing “posts per page” option in code and commenting out had the pagination list of articles working perfectly. When that is done pagination is governed by the admin area reading setting in settings—-> reading instead.
Then for the article lists, knowing that pagination wasn’t showing up on that page, I simply removed that part of the code and added the same setting that I removed for the 2 templates above and gave that value a setting of 50. That allowed for all the articles to be displayed for the time being.
That’s all for today. I welcome of course any feedback you may have about anything I’ve talked about in this blog.