Joomla Security: Simple Fix to Help You Sleep at Night

There has been a lot of hacking activities going on recently - for all types of websites, including Joomla websites.

There is a couple of steps one can take to protect a Joomla site and enhance its security:

1. Take regular backups and store them offline.
2. Purchase Akeeba security subscription for EUR85 and install it. Akeeba allows you to take backups in seconds and store them off-line with meaningful and descriptive file names. Joy to use.
3. Purchase OSE security component , note that to install it and use it you will need FTP access. What's sweet is this component is platform independent, you can use it on any site, not only on Joomla websites. It is $160 CDN.

Both Akeeba and OSE allow installation on unlimited domains. Both will enable double authentication: you will have two login screens one after another.

In addition, do not use "admin" for user names and "yourcompany1234" for passwords, and use a different set of logins for each authentication screen.

Overall, these two components overlap in some coverage, but OSE is more comprehensive, as it is installed at a server level. As a web designer, you would want to acquire both. 

Be familiar with your hosting environment. Check with your hosting company and ask them how long their logs are kept. You need an apache log for at least 7 days (the more the better!). Ask them about their backup policies. This is why I don't recommend re-seller hosting companies. They usually don't do any backups and don't keep logs for more than two days. Hostgator is not a reseller; we have been using them for over three years and we are happy with things. Hostpappa is a reseller through and though; I do not recommend them, their service is terrible.

That's it from me today, if you need help, contact me via my website design Ottawa site.