Three external libraries included in WordPress received security updates:

• Plupload (version 1.5.4), which WordPress uses for uploading media.
• SWFUpload, which WordPress previously used for uploading media, and may still be in use by plugins.
• SWFObject, which WordPress previously used to embed Flash content, and may still be in use by plugins and themes.

WordPress 3.3.2 also addresses:

• Limited privilege escalation where a site administrator could deactivate network-wide plugins when running a WordPress network under particular circumstances, disclosed by Jon Cave of our WordPress core security team, and Adam Backstrom.
• Cross-site scripting vulnerability when making URLs clickable, by Jon Cave.
• Cross-site scripting vulnerabilities in redirects after posting comments in older browsers, and when filtering URLs.

Full details from the WordPress site:

http://wordpress.org/news/2012/04/wordpress-3-3-2/

Installation web hosting scripts updates

ocportal 7.1.6
ocPortal is a free and open source content management system (CMS) written in PHP and based on a MySQL backend database.

vanilla 2.0.18.4
Vanilla can integrate seamlessly with your existing infrastructure to provide you with a completely custom community discussion & support platform for your stack.

Some good news for you web masters out there, cPanel, the leading Web Hosting Control Panel Software provider, announced at its annual conference that Attracta’s Free Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Tools will become a standard feature in future cPanel releases.

cPanel powers the web hosting industry with its point-and-click software that automates the provisioning and management of websites.  The tens of millions of website owners who host their websites with cPanel’s hundreds of hosting partners use cPanel’s easy-to-use interface to manage every aspect of their websites. The bundling of Attracta adds the ability to easily manage their search engine presence with point-and-click SEO Tools.

As the Internet matures, and more businesses have websites, two things are happening:  the web hosting industry is getting more competitive, and it’s getting harder for website owners to make their sites stand out.  Attracta’s SEO Tools help solve both of these problems through giving web hosts a way to be more competitive by providing their customers with the tools to more effectively promote their websites.

Attracta is the world’s largest SEO service.  Over one million websites use the Attracta suite of tools to increase their traffic search traffic.

Attracta’s Free SEO Tools include:

• 1,000 page XML Sitemap Submission to Google, Yahoo!, Bing and Ask
• Google Blacklist Check
• Link Building Tools
• Social Networking Tools
• SEO Tips and Tutorials

Website owners who want more traffic can upgrade to paid plans that include automated SEO Tools and XML Sitemap submission, along with guaranteed listings in up to 100 of the world’s top search engines.

“Attracta is one of the first third party integrations to ever to be bundled in cPanel” said Aaron Philips, cPanel VP of Operations.  “Every website needs traffic, and since Attracta’s XML Sitemap technology has proven to work well for our customers, it only made sense to include it as a core feature of our control panel software”.

“cPanel is the world’s most popular Web Hosting automation.  When two industry leaders join forces the market benefits by having greater access to technology that helps both websites owners and web hosts become more successful” said Troy McCasland, VP of Business Development for Attracta.

Apple Email Tutorials
http://ukwebsolutionsdirect.co.uk/apple-tutorials.php

Once you’ve purchased your domains, you now need to link them to your UK Web Hosting space, this is when you park your domain.

Domain parking is done in two stages:

1) Park the domain from your cPanel control panel i.e. http://yourdomain.com/cpanel/
- Once logged into your cpanel, navigate to the “DOMAINS” section and click on “PARKED DOMAINS”.

2) Change the DNS on the new domain to the nameservers of the account you’re parking it on.

If you’re not sure of the nameservers you can view this from your Customer Portal(https://ukwebsolutionsdirect.co.uk/portal/clientarea.php), once logged in go to the “My Services & Domains” menu, click on the “Products & Services” option to view a lsit of your services. Find the service you need the details for and click the “Manage” button. You will now see all the details for the selected service.

Once you’re domains are parked and DNS has propagated across the Internet, viewers of all domains will see the same web site that you’ve uploaded to your UK Web Hosting space.

Whether you have a personal website or an e-commerce site and you want to incorporate a blog, the first choice of many is WordPress web hosting. WordPress is a fantastic blog application that is extremely customisable and is easily integrated into your website with seamless effort. What’s more, you can tweak your blog to your own taste with plenty of free themes available, as well as lots of paid-for premium themes if you want to invest in a professional layout.

WordPress web hosting means you can also use your blog with a range of social media platforms. Social media continues a gargantuan rise and many businesses use it as a marketing tool as well as reaching out to their customers. When you post updates to your wordpress blog you can also make sure they are received to Facebook, Twitter and other sites you may use.

You are also able to make the most of search engine optimisation with WordPress hosting, as you have access to a range of plugins that help you optimise your content to ensure it gets seen by Google bots. Integration with Google Anaytics and Web Master Tools means you can also keep track of visitors to your websites, making it easier to adjust your web strategies in line with your traffic.

As an open source-style application, WordPress is also privy to regular developers to increase its functionality. When you choose WordPress web hosting, you are guaranteed a website that grows with the times as well as growing with your business. With the numerous plugins and add-ons that you can use to personalise, it is not difficult to see why it continues to be one of the most sought after content management systems there is.

The basics for a secure password

Here’s some basics guidelines you can follow to create a strong password:

• Use both upper- and lower-case letters.
• Incorporate numbers or punctuation marks.
• Use at least one of these special characters: ! @ # $ % * ( ) – + = , < > : : “ ‘
• Make it at least 8 characters long.
• A strong password does NOT, in any way, use your personal information, such as name, phone number, birth date, address or names of anyone you know.
• Come up with something you can remember easily, but would be virtually impossible for anyone else to guess.

So, what can happen when you don’t have a strong password? If someone else is able to guess or crack your password you potentially give them access to your e-mail, your bank accounts, your contact lists or anything else you may have on your computer. They could start to alter or destroy files or even overtake your computer and turn it into a zombie. (A zombie computer is one overtaken by a hacker and used to perform malicious tasks, such as sending out large amounts of spam.)

How do people crack passwords?

There are a lot of techniques being used to steal passwords. Some of the most common include:

• Guessing. There are a number of programs designed to guess a user’s password based on information found online about the user, such as names, birth dates, names of friends or significant others, pet names or license plate numbers. They can even search for a word spelled backwards.
• Dictionary-based attacks. Programs and software also exist that will run every word in a dictionary or word list against a user name in hopes of finding or guessing a password.
• “Brute Force” attacks. This attack method refers to trying every conceivable combination of key strokes in tandem with a user name to find the password. There are programs that can run brute force attacks in very quickly. The best way to beat a brute force attack is to have a long and complex password, using upper and lower case letters, numbers, special characters and punctuation marks.
• “Shoulder surfing.” Be careful when logging on to a computer in a public place, such as a computer lab, cybercafé or library. There may be hackers lurking around for the express purpose of watching people enter their user names and passwords.

Secure your website hosting password

Our website hosting has brute force protection in place to protect users cPanel, FTP and mailbox passwords but within your web hosting account you will create other passwords such as your passwords for web applications such as WordPress and Joomla, it’s critical that you secure your accounts by ensuring that these passwords are secure, a strong password will safe guard your account from hackers.

NEW Version phpbb 3.0.10

Here’s the full changelog from phpBB.com detailing what’s been updated, plenty of bug fixes and improvements:

http://www.phpbb.com/support/documents.php?mode=changelog&version=3#v309

During 2011 we worked on migrating our existing web hosting and reseller hosting platform over to brand new Dell web servers to further enhance the performance, plus we implemented CloudLinux to improve on the both the performance and stability of our shared hosting service, this has been a great success and we’ve had positive feedback from our customers as a result.

We aim to deliver the best service that we possibly can, our customers are very important to us and we will continue to provide the reliable website hosting service that you’ve come to expect from us, here’s to the pending 2012 and we hope that you have a happy new year!