Recently I read a couple of articles about HTML Sitemaps. The first one on HTML Sitemaps the second one on Custom 404 Error Pages, and the last was about an effective Archive page.

I have thought about website security lately. One underused way of securing a website is to look at the scope of your website. Most websites have a purpose, it may be a website for small local businesses, an e-commerce website, which servers a niche market. In most cases not every country needs access to view your site. With the correct tools it is possible to block countries based on IP Addresses. This can allow you to maximize your possible audience, while blocking populations of hackers.

WordPress is a great tool for creating websites. Some people believe that they do not need to keep their scripts updated.

When websites have security issues there is one cause of the problem which I see more than any other. Scripts that are not updated. When I ask people why they do not keep the scripts updated to the newest version I am told a few different reasons. In general they boil down to the site being abandoned, or to people using custom coding. Sometimes I’ve heard that people want to wait for a certain period of time until the scripts are “Mature enough.” The problem is that while this strategy can work for software, and operating systems scripts are a little different. We need to update scripts so that security holes. ograms and operating systems are compiled. Compiling means that the code is changed into code that the computer natively understands. A script, like the many used to run websites are not compiled. Each time it is loaded the software that is compiled is the result of constant coding, and as it matures bugs, and other problems are removed and it functions better. Scripts also have bugs, every time a script releases an update it has fixes for the previous bugs that hackers may be able to use to place malicious code into the web hosting account. Keeping your scripts updated is a way to make sure that hackers do not have as much of a chance to compromise your account. Many scripts in use today are mature products, and are not prone to major changes, which cause performance to degrade.

In my job doing technical support for web hosting I have assisted many people in getting their WordPress websites going. There tend to be people with two sets of issues that call.