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8 Security Tips for Basic Catholic Web Site Development

Introduction

At first, Catholic web site development and Catholic blogging may appear safe, especially if it only involves building information as a service to others. But as Catholic web site owners learn to eventually excel in search engine optimization and in web site development, these web sites get exposed to security threats as well. This article lists down 8 basic security tips for a safer Catholic web site development and Catholic blogging.

Create strong passwords

To really create strong passwords, it is best to use a combination of 14-16 alphanumeric letters and numbers and non-alphanumeric symbols. For the alphanumeric characters, you can alternate between uppercase and lowercase letters. With strong passwords, you are more assured of the long-term security of your basic Catholic web site development. Furthermore, it is advisable never to use any part of our personal information as a password. And whenever given the opportunity to include many non-alphanumeric symbols (such as #@!&), we should do so in combination with uppercase/lowercase letters and with numbers. Just note down the password well so that it can be confirmed easily online. As we go on and create these strong passwords, we might suddenly find ourselves in a situation were our Catholic web site network security has been breached. When this happens, we should change our important network passwords at once. We need to create a stronger password that we find difficult to remember ourself at first, but eventually will remember in time. We can then store these strong passwords along with very important family documents that we keep in a safe with combination lock or key.

Conservative use of third-party applications

In basic Catholic web site development, we can use third-party applications to enhance the usability of our web site. But it is important to be selective with these applications and to conservatively use them in the web site. We can also note down which web pages of our site contain these third-party applications and regularly monitor them if they are working. Whenever we notice something unusual or amiss in a third-party application, then we can just remove them from our web page, to keep our basic Catholic web site development intact and well in order. One wise rule we can follow in using third-party applications is to obtain them from well-reputed web sites. But we must also be reminded and never forget the possibility of a third-party application's security being breached. If a third-party application that needs a user id and password combination to access them, can still have its security breached, how much more riskier are third-party applications which allow easy access!

Online security

For the online security of our basic Catholic web site development, we should set up the firewall of our Windows XP or Vista operating system. This is our first line of defense. Our second line of defense is an antivirus software program. Two free antivirus filters available online for easy download are avast! 4 Home Edition and ZoneAlarm 6. For personal use and for non-commercial web sites such as a Catholic web site, these two antivirus web sites have free antivirus programs that also continually update themselves regularly against new virus threats online.

Fixing a hijacked blog post

Part of basic Catholic web site development is to network with a blog site that updates our readers with anything new in the web site. If we monitor well our Catholic blog site with Google's Webmaster Tools, then we can check our blog site for "warnings" of blog posts getting "hijacked" and being redirected to another site. For recently posted blog posts, all we need to do is to delete this hijacked post, and re-post it again with a different blog url. As for old blog posts that have been hijacked, the best thing to do is just to delete the hijacked blog post. We can always replace this old hijacked blog post with newer, more recent, and updated information that would better serve our readers on Catholic web site development and networking. And as a final step for a hijacked blog post, we must change immediately the password of our Catholic blog with a stronger password.

Download as less as you can

For our system to operate fast, we must take it easy on our downloads. A minimum of downloads also protects our computer system from malicious code and malware that may enter our computer system during the download. If we want out computer system to last longer, and also for our basic Catholic web site development to be rooted in only the essential applications and software needed for its long-term growth, then we need to be wary of just downloading anything we find interesting online. Windows Vista operating system has a built-in dialog box that opens up and warns us of possible security threats when we decide to download from a site we have visited.

Avoid using public computers

We should avoid using public computers as much as we can, and only use them for an emergency task in our Catholic web site development. If ever we really have to use a public PC system, we should only do the emergency task that is urgently needed, and then clean all our electronic tracks. We should not just click the red x on the top right corner of our browser, but completely log out from the web site where we have entered a username and password. There is a great need to heighten our vigilance and alertness on anyone behind us or anyone who may be also able to glance at our screen or keyboard in a public PC system.

Don't open email attachments as a rule

If ever we get an email attachment related to our basic Catholic web site building, as a rule, we should not open them - even if it is from someone that we know. Always keep email attachments under suspicion, because even the person that we know who sent it may not be aware of any virus or malicious code that may have entered it during the process of adding the attachment online. If we can already use the information in the text of the email without needing to open the attachment, then that would be safer and less riskier. If there is a need to really open an attachment, we can either have an email program that scans viruses for attachment or open the attachment in a public PC system (only for important messages) which are often fully equipped against virus threats.

Restrict access to our computer system

This is a very basic security move for anyone in web site development and blogging. If you have a PC at home using Windows XP or Vista, then the first basic security move that you have to do is to create an administrator user account and a limited user account. For the administration of our basic Catholic web site development and our Catholic blogging, the admin user account entitles us to do anything with the computer system. If ever a member of the family wants to use our PC, then we just let them use the limited user account. This account prevents the computer user to just install programs or to change system settings without our adminitrator privileges.

Conclusion

These 8 basic security tips are just for computer system, email and web-browsing security. We can already basically secure our web site development and online tasks with these 8 cost-cutting and money-saving tools and software. If we want more details and more information on online security, we can check out PC Magazine at www.pcmag.com. To also keep updated of any new security tip, we can subscribe by email to their free online newsletter on Web security.

Related resource

PC Magazine Philippines, January-February 2006 edition, "Maximum Security: 94 Essential Tips for Staying Safe"

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Dennis Emmanuel Cabrera
Web Developer Methods for Catholics
www.c-web-developer.net
My Main Catholic Blog
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