The Internet can be a great place and a nasty place all at the same time. Hackers are a busy bunch, logging typically over ten thousand hack attempts per day trying to compromise your website, whether or not it is a  WordPress website.

Back in the 1990′s,  WordPress was insecure. This content management system (CMS) had dozens of scripts that hacker had found could be used to gain unauthorized access to ones website files. Often their exploits would be published, bringing in more hackers. Thankfully, that is no longer the case — security experts find only a few exploits a year. This is not news; literally all software, internet based or locally hosted is at risk.

All WordPress installations are still being attacked and for several reasons:

• Insecure Hosting Environment
• Insecure Plugins
• Insecure Themes
• Out of Date Software

 Secure Your WordPress Installation

Over the years HQ Secure has developed a suite of solutions to keep the hackers at bay. Today one can greatly improve the safety and security of ones website from hackers. The following list will detail much of what we provide with our WordPress Security Package.

We specialize in providing effective security of WordPress websites, recovery of sites that have been hacked, infested with malware or otherwise compromised. Give yourself peace of mind by preventing future attacks. HQ Secure has performed hundreds of malware removals and are successfully protecting WordPress based websites. I know we can help you recover from and help in the prevention of future malware infestations, repair hacked sites and protect against being compromised in the future.

WordPress sites have become the backbone of new websites and CMS systems. With a vast number of available plugins, the potential of having a security hole at some point in time is almost inevitable.

What Services Does HQ Secure Provide?

We provide a comprehensive WordPress CMS and website security package that has the following features.

• Off Site Redundant Backups of your site
• Proactive monitoring of
• Updates for WordPress and Plugins
• Security Holes in WordPress or your Custom Website
• Security Compromise (Malware Injection or Malicious Code on your site)
• Perform updates to WordPress or Website
• Update WordPress or other Site CMS System
• Update Plugins as necessary
• Verify that site updates have not broken your site
• Perform security fixes that may be necessary (removing Malware or Malicious Code

Cost: $250.00

Every WordPress website or blog has a functions file located in the theme directory. This function file makes things happen. It can determin what size your featured images appear at, whethor or not you have built in custom menu functionality, what widget areas are avaiable in your theme and more. WordPress developers find themsleves editing this file to add or modify functionality to ones website or blog. A problem occurs when ones theme is upgraded, resulting in the functions file being overwritten.

Enter Flash Buddy’s Funtionality Plugin. Not only do you get several of Flash Buddy’s handy shortcodes, but now too developers can add their custom functions code right inside the plugin and protect their modifications from being overwritten upon theme upgrades.

Line Break “Clear All” Shortcode
Does it drive you crazy when you want a new line to start below an image or other page element, but WordPress won’t let this happen? Use shortcode
and the problem goes away. What is happening behind the scenes? The plugin is inserting html code, which would otherwise be stripped out by the built in WordPress content editor.
Use shortcode [ br ]

User Adjustable Vertical Spacer Shortcode
Some themes just don’t leave enough breathing room around some elements. This shortcode will allow one to insert a defined amount of vertical space.
Use shortcode [ spacer height=XX ], where XX is the number of pixels of space one wants to add between elements.

Current Date Display
Ever need to have todays date displayed in your website or blog, but don’t want to open it up for editing on a daily basis?
Use shortcode and todays date will be automatically displayed and updated for you.

Private Comments
When more than one person is working on a site, this hand shortcode can add comments that only other admins or editors can see. Use it to provide directions or notes.
Use shortcode [ private ]This is content hidden from the public[ /private ].

Note: To allow one to see the shortcode, but not activate it, a space has been added between the square bracket and the trigger text within. In actual real world use, there would be no spaces.

A trade mark is therefore a ‘badge’ of trade origin. It is used as a marketing tool so that customers can recognize the product of a particular trader. A ‘sign’ includes words, logos, colours, slogans, three-dimensional shapes and sometimes even sounds and gestures.

The original creator is the trade mark owner and may also own copyright and design rights in products and packaging.

A trademark includes any word, name, symbol, or design, or any combination used, or intended to be used, in commerce to identify and distinguish the goods of one manufacturer or seller from goods manufactured or sold by others, and to indicate the source of the goods. In short, a trademark is a brand name.

A products name can always be trademarked if the name does not infringe another name.

What is a Service Mark

A service mark is any word, name, symbol, design, or any combination, used, or intended to be used, in commerce, to identify and distinguish the services of one provider from the services provided by others, and to indicate the source of the services.

Notes

Business names can be trademarked if the business provides a service, such as marketing, legal, accounting, etc. Business names, such as IBM, HP, Coca Cola may be trademarked, but only if there are goods or services with that name.

• IBM is a registered trademark because it is the name of a company and provides a service
• Coca Cola is  a company name and provides a product.

The U.S. Trademark Office is very sticky about the difference between business names and product names. They have specific rules.

Business directories are a good place to check for names that are already in use, thereby avoiding infringement. Also consider checking with the Secretary of State in your state, local county clerk’s office for DBA filing, and the United States Patent and Trademark office (online).

Links

All Mark – Establishes Trademarks for a Fee

Trade Markia -Registers Trademarks for a Fee

Trademark: How to Name your Business & Product – Book by Kate McGrath

ThomasNet.com – Search ThomasNet to find manufacturers, distributors and service providers that my conflict with your choices

United States Patent and Trademark Office -Online Trademark Database

Service Mark -Legal Definition

What is a service mark?

We believe our agreement with you is simple — we will provide services, all we ask is that you pay us within thirty day of having received our invoice. We do not need reminders to provide services, we don’t believe you should need several reminders to pay us. The more important the work you need and the quicker you need that performed, the more important your payment to is is and the quicker we would like to receive it.

Invoicing: We will send you an invoice at the conclusion of the project. We will send the invoice to the e-mail address specified by you. This email address can be confirmed and updated by you 24/7 through our online customer portal. If the e-mail bounces, we will attempt to contact you by other means. If the e-mail does not bounce, we will assume you received it.

Due date: Payments are due and payable upon your receipt of our invoice. We would like to have payment in our office within thirty days of the invoice due date.

Late payments: If we have not received your payment in our office within thirty days of the invoice due date, we will send you a email reminder. If we have not received your payment within forty five days, we will require a fifty percent down payment on future work. Also, we will add a 2% late payment fee to your next monthly invoice. The minimum late payment fee is $20.00. The purpose is to defray the costs associated with collecting late payments.

Credit card payments declined: If you have given us your credit card information, so that we can automatically charge your credit card for your periodic billing, and if your credit card is declined for payment, we will send you an e-mail notice. If your credit card is declined for more than one monthly payment, your account may be subject to a $20.00 late payment fee. (If your credit card has expired, we will not add any fees to your account. Instead, we will send you an e-mail notice asking for updated credit card information.)

Late payment (2rd occurrence in a 12-month period): We will require prepayment for all services ordered for a six-month period.

Non-payment: If you refuse to pay us, or do not respond to our e-mails, we will make every effort to collect the debt. As a reminder, you have agreed that all costs we incur associated with collecting debts, including attorneys’ fees and court costs, will be paid by you. If you would like to review the Agreement itself, please click here.

If you have any questions about our policy, please ask here.

Content

All services provided by HQ Secure.com may be used for lawful purposes only. Transmission, storage, or presentation of any information, data or material in violation of any or United
States Federal, State or City, or any International laws is prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to: copyrighted material, material we judge to be threatening or obscene, or material protected by trade secret and other statute. The subscriber agrees to indemnify and hold harmless HQ Secure.com  from any claims resulting from the use of the service which damages  the subscriber or any other party.

Pornography and sex-related merchandising is prohibited on all HQ Secure.com servers. This includes equally sites that links to such content.

If you are unsure whether or not your site falls into this category feel free to contact us with a description before signing up for an account or publish material as an existing customer.

HQ Secure.com will be the sole arbiter in determining violations of this provision. Also prohibited are sites that promote any illegal activity or present content that may be damaging to HQ Secure.com servers or any other server on the internet.  Links to such materials are also prohibited.

Examples of unacceptable content or links:

	Pirated software.
	Pornography and sex-related merchandising.
	Violations of Copyrights.
	Hacker programs or archives.
	Warez sites.
	Hate propaganda.

Spam is a direct violation and will get the site deleted without notice or refund. Selling of software and or bulk email addresses is not acceptable on our servers. MP3 and other types of sites designed for downloading of material by a mass user group. This includes but is not limited to, Music, video, audio, Software or Freeware or Shareware, Free Images and backgrounds, and anything else that makes it an excessively high bandwidth site with the sole purpose to distribute freely products for download.

HQ Secure.com will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of  this provision.

All Accounts

We have found most our
customers to stay within “reasonable limits”  However, to maintain
the integrity of our service, we must state the  following
restrictions:

To all our accounts applies the following
restrictions:

	Multiple hosts resolving at an IP or domain name that we provide.
	Sites with cgi’s running from their domain used on other domains.
	Sites using more than 20% of system resources.
	HQ Secure.com will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of this provision.

Commercial Advertising – Email

Spamming, or the sending of unsolicited email, from a HQ Secure.com server or using an email address or domain that is maintained on a HQ Secure.com machine as reference is STRICTLY prohibited. As delegated by our backbone provider, any sites using spam or selling of spam related software or bulk email content will be closed. HQ Secure.com will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of this provision.

Chat Rooms

We do not allow clients to install their own chat rooms. These tend to be a large drain on system resources and we cannot allow it as an account option.

Resellers

In the event that you become unsatisfied with our services within 30 days of your account activation, you would only qualify for a refund if you have not yet added additional domains to
your account. We do not refund domain registration fees. We can not be responsible for any fees that you charge your clients.

Billing

Recurring Billing: The credit card information you supply us when you join is kept on file.  Upon sign up, charges are immediately made to your card for your first months’ hosting and the setup fees (if applicable… see plan details).  Then on the first day of each month following, you will be charged for your next month’s hosting. If you initially sign up after the 15th of the month, then you will get the rest of that month for free, and you first monthly charge (after your initial payment) will NOT be the first of the next month, but the month after that.

Account Deactivations: Any account deactivated due to non-payment will be deactivated and we require a reactivation fee of $5.00 per domain to be paid prior to reactivating the account. Reseller’s deactivated due to non-payment will also result in the deactivation of all accounts under their reseller plan. Prior to reactivating the reseller accounts we require a reactivation fee of $2.50 per domain.

30 Day Money Back Guarantee

If for whatever reason, you become unsatisfied with our services within the first 30 days of your account activation, we will refund your hosting fees, no questions asked. Domain name registration fees however, cannot be refunded.

If you have already added additional accounts to your plan, you are still eligible to receive your full refund. As long as you cancel within 30 days of your initial signup, you qualify for the full refund.

If you wish to cancel your account(s)  after the 30 days has expired, we do not refund partial monthly fees. Your account will still be accessible for the duration of the period you’ve paid for (typically until the end of the month).

Cancellation of Account(s)

Upon cancellation of an account(s), no further charges will be made to your credit card.  If you are canceling prior to the end of your billing term (i.e. in the middle of the month, or the
year if you paid for a year), there can be no refunds for that portion of the term you did not use. If you are canceling your account(s) within the first 30 days of your initial signup date, you are entitled to a full refund of your hosting fees. We cannot refund domain name registration fees under any circumstances.

Background Running Programs

CRON JOBS: We may allow programs to run continually in the background. These are considered on a case-by-case basis and an extra charge will be incurred  based on system resources used and operational maintenance needed.

IRC: We currently do not allow IRC or IRC bots to be operated on our servers.

Server Abuse

Any attempt to undermine or cause harm to a server, or customer, of HQ Secure.com is strictly prohibited. Offenders will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Refusal of Service

We reserve the right to refuse, cancel, or suspend service at our sole discretion.

Sub-domains

HQ Secure.com reserves the right to transfer any sub-domain in domains of its possession to an alternative domain.

Limitation of liability

Your use of HQ Secure.com’s services are at your sole risk.  All  HQ Secure.com services are provided on an “AS IS” basis WITHOUT  WARRANTIES OF ANY  KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED,
IMPLIED, CONSTRUCTIVE, OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,  NON INFRINGEMENT OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of implied warranties, so this exclusion may not apply to you in full.

HQ Secure.com makes no guarantee of availability of service and reserves the right to change, withdraw, suspend, or discontinue any functionality or feature of the HQ Secure.com service.

Liability

IN NO EVENT WILL HQ Secure.com BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR UNITIVE DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE HQ Secure.com’s SERVICES OR ANY CONTENT THEREON. THIS DISCLAIMER APPLIES, WITHOUT LIMITATION, TO ANY DAMAGES OR INJURY, WHETHER FOR BREACH OF CONTRACT, TORT, OR OTHERWISE, CAUSED BY ANY FAILURE OF PERFORMANCE; ERROR; OMISSION; INTERRUPTION; DELETION; DEFECT; DELAY IN OPERATION OR TRANSMISSION; COMPUTER VIRUS; FILE CORRUPTION; COMMUNICATION-LINE FAILURE; NETWORK OR SYSTEM OUTAGE; OR THEFT, DESTRUCTION, UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS TO, ALTERATION OF, OR USE OF ANY RECORD.

The formation, construction and interpretation of this agreement shall be controlled by the laws of the United States of America.  Any dispute relating to this agreement shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts in the United States, and the parties agree to submit to the personal and exclusive jurisdiction and venue of these courts.

HQ Secure.com reserves the right to change or amend these Terms of Service at any time without prior notice. By submitting your order  to HQ Secure.com, you signify your agreement to these Terms of Service.

If you do not agree to these Terms, then please don’t submit an order! Violations of these Acceptable Uses Policies and Terms of Service should be referred to admin@hqsecure.com

All complaints will be investigated promptly.

Late last night these emails began flooding it, masked in a solicitation for “search engine registration” and they’re after one thing – your money. The only catch is you have to give away your hard earned money over to the scammers for something that is already provided for free.

If you read the fine print carefully you’ll see that…

• “This is not an invoice”
• It’s for “Search Engine Registation”
• It’s a “solicitation”
• “This notice is not in any part is associated with a continuation of services for domain registration.”

At least you won’t lose your domain if you fall for this scam, but you will lose up to $295.

Here’s what to watch for, by email, with the subject line –

Here’s what the letter contains…

The dead give-aways…

The email address I have been receiving these from is Domain Services <domserv227834@hotmail.com>. The email address (if it’s even valid) that they bury in their fine print is unsubscribe@dssubmissions.com, which does not exist. Other emails have used globedomainservices@gmail.com, hidden behind a different version, globedomagbd77782@gmail.com. (The first would actually look more professional, so it’s odd that they set it up the way that they do.) However, you should always be a bit cautious with a notice from a company that does not use their own domain name for their email address. Remember: scammers and phishers are almost always going to use an email account at Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, or some other free email service.

The company name is…. uhm, maybe they’re just shy? The fact that it’s not branded is a big clue, though just having a brand/logo doesn’t imply that it’s on the up and up. The fact that it does NOT have that however, is a good sign you should trash this message.

Conclusion

As with all situations like this, if you’re not really sure what something is, don’t send money. Know who your domain registrar and hosting provider are, and always call or email them if you have questions about something you receive.

1. Specialization. If you drive a Honda, would you prefer to take your car in for service to a generalist or to a Honda specialist? If it’s a matter of routine minor tune-up most mechanics would probably do. If the matter is more complex, such as a timing belt replacement, you probably want to go to someone who knows the Honda engine very well, uses genuine Honda parts or their true Japanese off-brand equivalent, has all the service manuals for your car and can inspect related equipment with thorough knowledge of your car’s standards. Similar to car service, it pays in the web development world to specialize in a more specific set of technologies. This is useful to capture economies-of-scale in both production and marketing efforts.
2. Popularity/Community. The open-source project website WordPress.org is the 50th most popular website whereas Joomla! and Drupal rank neck-and-neck 353rd and 358th, respectively in the United States as of April 9, 2011. Magento, a highly popular commercial CMS, ranks 779th. If you check the podcasts directory in Apple iTunes, WordPress is on fire with dozens of free podcasts compared to the handful for other systems. The number of free and commercial themes, plugins and frameworks available to WordPress starts with around 14,000 free plugins and 1,300 free themes on the WordPress.org official community repository alone.
3. Ease of Use. WordPress is commonly referred to as the most easy to learn and maintain. Why? Because it’s a breeze to install, configure, update and publish content to relative to the competition. We say this from personal experience with which we consider ourselves adequately informed on the current editions.
4. Customization. Popular open-source CMS platforms have more similarities than differences, and are all quite customizable. WordPress as a platform can be used for pretty much anything. Why not adapt the easiest and most popular open-source platform for your client’s specific purposes? After all, adaptations are required for whichever CMS is chosen in order to truly meet the requirements of any good sized project.
5. Architecture. WordPress has a vast API that supports several different types of custom coding. These custom plugin coding options, such as widgets, dashboard widgets and meta boxes, allow for clean, efficient and modular extendability for adding various functionality to many parts of a website. As a framework, WordPress provides many abstractions that free the developer from reinventing the wheel. This includes the database, users/roles, menus, URL mapping, emailing, templating, administrative settings and more.
6. Market. WordPress grew from a popular tool for bloggers and has shown exceptional growth for being used for a wider variety of purposes. Bloggers are content people. Content is king on the web in terms of SEO because that’s mostly what search engines see. The biggest battle content people have with building websites is getting a good design installed, being that they don’t typically like to work with much code. Therefore, WordPress has evolved to think like a writer and a designer.
7. Great for SEO. Using WordPress for your website can be extremely effective when it comes to search engine optimization. The main reason why this is true is because the WordPress platform itself is extremely SEO friendly in terms of how search engine spiders crawl a WordPress website. The WordPress platform offers a built in structure that guarantees online success if followed correctly.
8. Secure. As far as online business is concerned, security is of the greatest importance. If your platform is insecure, this is a threat to everything you do and you just can’t afford to go for an insecure platform. Fortunately, in regards to security, WordPress tops the list. It is true that there is no hack-proof software and nobody can guarantee you that even with the most stringent security measures your WordPress site will never be hacked, but due to the large number of WordPress developers whom are concerned with security, one can dramatically minimize risk. Read about WordPress Security Hardening »
9. Highly customizable. You will certainly want your online platform to have a unique look. With WordPress this is easy to achieve. There are thousands of themes you can choose from and thousands of plugins to add in order to get exactly the functionality you need. If you are a web designer and/or web developer, you can also use existing themes and plugins and modify them exactly to your liking. Not many other CMS offer such customization freedom!
10. Great community. Last, but not least, another reason why WordPress is such a great online platform is its community. The forums at WordPress.org and the other WordPress-related sites contain tons of threads about everything WordPress-related. Additionally, almost always when you are stuck with a problem and ask for help, knowledgeable and skillful WordPress gurus rush to your help. The WordPress community is simply great and you should experience it yourself.
11. Respects Web  and Typographic Standards. I can write in XHTML, knowing the CMS won’t mess it up. Or I can write in text, knowing it will get converted to standards-compliant XHTML, complete with typographically correct punctuation. Some other high-end blogging software does this, too, but you have to install plug-ins to make it work. WordPress does it out of the box.
12. Pretty in Print. Even though this is the web and not print, as a designer I still care how the type is going to sit in the page. Over 90% of web users never change the default font size. WordPress’s live preview, continuously updated as I write and save, shows me what most readers will see, and lets me revise for better copyfit with one tenth the effort I used to make. Even if you’re not a copy-fitting freak, there’s something about previewing your writing in your layout that’s better than seeing it in someone else’s. There are other great web writing tools out there, but this is the first I know of that lets me see my site as I’m writing. It helps layout, it helps tone, it helps everything.
13. The Need for Speed. WordPress has the potential to run extremely quickly. HQ Secure loads in roughly one and a half seconds and there are a couple of little tricks I use to deliver my customers content quickly and securely. The chief “trick”, if you can call it that, is to use W3 Total Cache. It’s an absolutely brilliant plugin which caches your site, thus reducing the amount of “work” that has to be done each time somebody loads your site.I’ve often heard accusations levelled at WordPress of the code being “bloated”, but I’ve never seen anything to back this up nor have I seen this reflected in load times. WordPress can be slow if used irresponsibly, but a couple of simple steps and you’ll be flying.
14. Spam Protection. Owners, users and search engines despise blogs or sites that are affiliated with spam activity. Sites or blogs with spam activity can be penalized severely. They will get low rankings or they will get sand boxed. Low rankings mean that a site or blog will not get a sufficient amount of organic traffic (traffic from search engines). WordPress provides plenty of spam protection to help blog masters avoid falling into this pitfall.
15. Social Media Capability. All WordPress Blogs come with social media capability. Social Media is one of the easiest ways of getting thousands of people to visit your blog. There are dozens of social media sites in existence today. Taking advantage of one or several social media mediums can help you get thousands of visitors to your site with ease. Simple integration using a rich theme or a plugin can help share your content easily and get it to reach thousands of eyes.Your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn social accounts can easily be connected to your blog. More social interaction such as comments and email sign-ups will take place. Your blog can be a social medium for visitors from all over the world.

Any CMS system is a good idea to keep design, content, and logic separated and optimized for your website. Many of the CMSes out there run on modern technologies such as PHP and MySQL that can be affordably scaled to suit sites of all sizes. Some of the CMSes are so popular that you can easily find plugins, themes, and training materials for them. While all of this is true, specializing in the most popular, flexible and open-source CMS is a good way to go.

And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled ’till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store? What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more?

From Flash and the Team at HQ Secure