Web Design Book - Beware of UK-based online shops running CPanel

The ScanSafe security blog has reported that a number of small online shops are being used by hackers to distribute spyware onto Windows computers.

The thing all the websites appear to have in common is that they’re using CPanel, a server control panel that’s common on low-end web hosts.

What can I do about it?

If you visit online shops:

a) Buy a Mac

or if you’re using a PC

b) Make sure your security and virus software is up to date and can recognize these latest exploits

c) Uninstall Apple Quicktime until Apple release a patch for their latest security glitch.

d) Turn javascript off in your web browser

e) Search using Scandoo, rather than Google

If you own a small website.

a) Be wary about using C Panel.

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My web design company, Richard Quick Design, does a lot of search engine and Google pay-per-click work for clients.

Getting visitors to a website is obviously very important if you want that website to help the business make money.

We’re currently doing some work for 1st 4 Mortgages, a company who do mortgages in Cornwall, and I thought it would make an interesting case study.

Mortgages is a very competitive market and so it’s often quite hard to get results. I’m going to keep a record of exactly which techniques we used, what worked and what didn’t.

The first article, which I hope to post at the weekend, will be about pay-per-click advertising, using Google AdWords.

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The next version of Internet Explorer, version 8, will be released in a few months.

Traditionally, IE sucks .. at least from a web designer’s point of view.  It’s buggy, insecure and .. worst of all .. it doesn’t follow the same Web Standards as most other browsers.

This means significant extra work for web designers, as they struggle to get their beautiful and well-coded websites to work in Internet Explorer.

However, there’s a piece of good news on the IE blog.  The development version of Internet Explorer 8 now supports the Acid 2 test.

If that doesn’t mean anything to you don’t panic.  All it means is that IE 8 will support Web Standards far better than its predecessors.

That’s the best Christmas present any web designer could have hoped for!

Every January, thousands of people have to update the copyright message on their websites to include the correct date.

© My Company 2004-2008. All rights reserved.

More than likely, they forget.

A simple way around the problem, is to use a small bit of PHP.

© My Company 2004-<?php echo date("Y") ?>. All rights reserved.Simple but effective.

Remember, you’ll need to make sure the page is a .php page, rather than a .html one.

1. Spend less time on Facebook
2. Eat less junk food while I’m at my desk
3. Spend less time checking and writing email
4. Get a new Mac, as I’m still on my old G5
5. Discover a way to easily run multiple versions of Internet Explorer on Windows Vista
6. Write a CSS framework
7. Start work on my next book
8. Finally spend some time redesigning our company website, instead of concentrating all my efforts on client websites

What would yours be?

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