A series of recent malware attacks have targeted Macs, infecting hundreds of thousands of computers. U.S. CERT recommends that Mac users review the security updates issued by Apple to address these new threats. You can also click on the apple icon in top left of your screen and click on “software update” to make sure that your computer is up to date. OnGuardOnline.gov is the federal government’s website to help you be safe, secure and responsible online, an excellent resource with very readable tips for for non-techies. You can sign up on their email list for updates.

Security and your WordPress Site

Malware (short for “malicious software”) is a major security issues for website owners, with WordPress sites being especially targeted. You CAN minimize your risk.

• Make sure you are secure locally – Keep your computer up to date and install an anti-virus solution.
• Make sure you are connecting securely – Use an SSL whenever on an unverified connection, consider using sFTP whenever possible.
• Check out your hosting company – How many blacklisted sites do they have or are infected with Malware?  Cheapest definitely isn’t always best.
• UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE – It’s important to have the most recent version not only of WordPress installed, but also of all your plugins (AND your web browser)

According to security software firm Kapersky, the recent Apple Mac Flashback Trojan that made such a splash in the news recently can most likely trace its roots back to infected WordPress sites.

Internet security firm Sucuri has stated that in each case they have analyzed, the site was either running an outdated version of WordPress or a vulnerable plugin.

Like many modern software packages, WordPress is updated regularly to address new security issues that may arise. Improving software security is always an ongoing concern, and to that end you should always keep up to date with the latest version of WordPress. Older versions of WordPress are not maintained with security updates. Read more about hardening WordPress.

Safer Surfing

Your browser is just like any other software application – it needs to be kept up to date.

Google Chrome
Google Chrome includes features to help protect you and your computer from malicious websites as you browse the web. Chrome uses technologies such as Safe Browsing, sandboxing, and auto-updates to help protect you against phishing and malware attacks.

Learn more: https://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/more/security.html

Mozilla Firefox
Firefox also using Safe Browsing and sandboxing, private browsing, anti-malware and anti-phishing, Customized Security Settings, Secure Software Installation, and more.

Learn more: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/security/

Safari, the default Mac OS browser
For the new OS Lion, sandboxing has been added – a security feature that helps prevent malicious websites from tampering with your computer – but Chrome and Firefox are still far more comprehensive in their protections.

Learn more: http://www.apple.com/safari/whats-new.html#privacy

Internet Explorer
IE is the default browser in PC’s. If you have updated your browser to IE9 you should be okay. Unfortunately, some older computers may not be able to update to IE9. Firefox and Chrome are available for PC and we recommend you use one of them instead of IE. A lot of usability and security flaws even in IE 8.

Compare versions of IE: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/internet-explorer/products/ie-9/compare-browsers

SECURE EMAIL

Spam is anonymous, unsolicited bulk email – it is effectively the email equivalent of physical junk mail delivered through the post. It is sent out in mass quantities by spammers who make money from the small percentage of recipients that actually respond. Spam is also used for phishing and to spread malicious code.

Rule #1 – 10: Never respond to spam. Most spammers verify receipt and log responses. The more you respond, the more spam you will receive. This includes clicking on “unsubscribe” links in spam. Don’t click on anything. Just delete it.

Make sure that you use the latest version of your web browser and that any security patches have been applied.

Use strong passwords everywhere.

I know, its a pain to create and remember your strong password. But, in this case – an ounce of prevention is really, really worth the pound of cure. If your computer is infected you are putting all of your family and friends at risk – anyone who is in your address book is potentially exposed.

No matter how many walls are placed around your machine, there is always a key for complete access: your password. There are countless programs that attempt to determine passwords, both by guessing common ones and by randomly generating possibilities and trying them all, or a combination of the two.

The best defense is a “strong password”. A strong password is a combination of numbers, uppercase letters, lowercase letters, and, if possible, other characters. This makes the password nearly impossible to guess in a reasonable amount of time, and ensures that all the hard work you put into keeping your machine well-defended does not go to waste. The longer the password, the harder it is to guess.

Of course, as passwords get closer to random numbers and letters, they also get harder to remember. That doesn’t mean that you have to fall back on a weaker password, though. You can m15peLL w0Rdz intentionally, or use a mnemonic device like a strong passphrase. Always be sure to change your password if you think that there’s a chance that someone else has seen it.

Guidelines for Creating Strong Passwords

What is a Strong Password? A strong password is designed to be complex and therefore difficult to guess or crack. To be sufficiently complex, it must:

• be 8 characters or longer – 15 is considered optimal
• use a combination of upper and lower case letters, and
• include at least one numeric and/or special character (&, ?, @, etc.), punctuation, and spaces.

A pass-phrase or sentence is a very secure way of creating passwords that are both hard for others to crack and easy to remember by you.

Test how strong your password is: http://www.passwordmeter.com/

Generate a STRONG password here: http://strongpasswordgenerator.com/

Some tricks to strengthen a password – this is just an example, you can create your own rules for this:

• Replace all the ‘a’ with @
• Replace all the ‘s’ with $
• Repalce any space with %
• Replace any ‘o’ with 0
• Replace any ‘i’ with !

Finally, just like all hard drives will fail – all passwords will eventually be cracked. It is recommended that you change your password every 60 – 90 days.

RESOURCES:

Secure your local computer! FAQ’s, resources and software: http://usa.kaspersky.com/resources/faqs

WordPress theme and plugin creator iThemes recently partnered with Sucuri (web security service) created a WordPress Security video tutorial specific to WordPress websites: Lockdown WordPress: Security Tips from Sucuri. 

Scan your website for malware attacks or issues for free here: http://sitecheck.sucuri.net/scanner/

Keep your Google browsing private, from Read Write Web.

Protect yourself from spam: http://usa.kaspersky.com/resources/spam

Secure your Gmail account: http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-20070429-285/how-to-secure-your-gmail-account/

by Emily

www.alleymarantostudios.com

Design Services

• Custom WordPress theme
• Print design (Business card, postcards)
• Content development, photo editing
• Integration of Etsy account, MailChimp
• Event Calendar for Class Schedules
• eNewsletter template

Year Created: 2012

Site URL: www.alleymarantostudios.com

Alley Maranto Studios is a Chicago-based artist studio and workshop providing jewelry design, metalsmithing and knitwear classes. Artist and jewelry design Alley Maranto has been featured in Chicago magazine and her work is exhibited and sold internationally.

Custom graphic elements created to reflect the eclectic whimsy and nostalgia of Alley’s designs.

by Emily

NutritionThatFits.com

Design Services

• Responsive WordPress Theme (based on Themify framework)
• Image editing, customized slider feature
• Integration of Google Fonts
• Assistance with content development, writing, editing
• Integration of Social Networks, Branded Facebook page
• MailChimp eNews Template
• Various print design (business cards, other)

Nutrition that Fits is a professional website for Hannah El-Amin, Registered Dietician and diabetes educator. She provides nutrition counseling services and has been featured as a nutrition expert in local and national media outlets including CBS news and the Chicago Tribune.

by Emily

TammyLetherer.com

Design Services

• Responsive WordPress Theme (customized Themify “basic” framework)
• Integration of Google Fonts
• Integration of Social Networks
• Print design and MailChimp Template design
• Branding of Twitter and Facebook pages
• Book for print and Kindle

Tammy Letherer writes fiction and non-fiction, Hello Loved Ones is her first novel.

by Emily

Scrolling through the status updates, posts and tweets of my hundreds of very close friends – some of whom I have actually met – I wonder: Will these isolated likes, faves, check-ins and pokes amount to anything tangible?

The primary way that social engagement marketing works is to collect consumer data. Companies track behavior and trends and then provide the consumer “you” with the solution that you didn’t even know you were looking for. Getting married? Having a baby? Moving? If you tweeted or shared these “milestones” you have helped to create a digital portrait for companies that seek to woo your wallet.

That’s all fine for large companies that have marketing divisions and SEO people to analyze, optimize and filter the day away. But, how can social media help your smaller business grow without monopolizing your time? The short answer is, “It depends.” It depends on what your business is, how social media works with your style of communicating and whether social marketing is an efficient use of your time. Ultimately, your profiles on Facebook, Twitter and other sites are about being present. Active profiles do factor in local, organic searches and you want to make sure that you are providing all of the tools your customers need to find you and your services without thinking too much. Just like you need a website, you also need to take part (to some extent) in the social media sphere. There is a learning curve, and a very real investment of time, but being active on social media sites can give you access to a targeted audience of people who are already primed to be interested in your services (friends of friends, friends of people who like/share your page/posts/tweets).

Its not who you know, its who they know…

Based on my own experience, I would guess that most sole proprietors have referral based businesses – the majority of your work comes from personal connections. Social media is all about providing hyper-personal connections. Some basic tips for posting/tweeting:

• Ask questions – engagement with people (not merely self-promotion) will help keep your business page interesting and relevant.
• Respond to feedback – personally respond to any feedback, especially negative comments.
• Share information and resources – sharing resources that you find useful and that you think would be useful to your readers makes you a resource. Its a good thing to share information and links to sites beyond your own. That’s what the web is all about. And, it will help your search engine ranking over time when you make your site and blog a resource to your readers.
• Ask people to write a review for you on Google Places and on Facebook. It doesn’t hurt to ask! Referrals from friends are a very strong source of new business – you gain automatic trust capital when people see that a friend has liked and favorably reviewed your page or site.

If you're not sure how to do something, click the "help" button. Facebook has some good resources for page owners.

Initially, you may also want to “share” a Facebook business page with some of your personal friends and family. Add a Facebook badge to your actual website or blog so that visitors will know you have a presence there. The expectation with Facebook pages is that they will provide some information and offers that are more “of the moment” than what might appear on your website. Take advantage of the immediacy of social media by keeping your Facebook page well-stocked with useful resources, links and offers.

Think about it: If you go to a store and the shelves are empty – do you ever go back there again? Give users a reason to like, visit and share your Facebook page and/or Twitter profile.

With Twitter, short 140 character bursts of information called “tweets” will attract followers. You may get a lot of “follows” from people involved in marketing and SEO at first – you don’t have to follow them back. And, if something seems spammy, block that user. You should search for users who are experts in your field (and in related fields) and follow them. Retweet items that are of interest to you and reply or comment to those users. Twitter can move quickly, its not for everyone. It is good for live-tweeting events and engaging followers.

In general, you want to write about things that are interesting to you and useful to your readers. Don’t stress over the content too much. Just start writing and you’ll find your voice. This doesn’t need to be (and shouldn’t be) gimmicky. You are an expert in your field, right? Share your expertise. It is that simple.

So many profiles, so little time…

Choose the platforms that will work with your business services, products and/or goals. In no particular order:

• Facebook – be found, engage with consumers, add peer pages to your pages “favorites” – great for local brick and mortar businesses, artists. If your business doesn’t really deal with customers, or you deal mainly with other professional or wholesale companies, Facebook might not be the right place for you.
• Twitter – engage with peers, consumers – great for professionals in any industry
• LinkedIn – network with peers
• Pinterest – if you are in any type of design, fashion or food related industry – go for it
• Foursquare – be found, engage with customers, offer deals, check-in specials, create “badges”
• Google Places – be found, a resource for users/customers – google map, hours, services, any extra info like parking, coupons
• Yelp! – be found, a listing for your business, customer reviews, create special offers/deals

All of the above can help your business and website perform better in local, organic searches. If you are a brick and mortar business in any kind of service oriented industry I strongly recommend creating a Google Places account and a Facebook page for your business.

Once you get going, the first thing you will realize is that there are too many social platforms for any one person to manage them all well. There are tools that you can use to post selectively on different services and manage your profiles: HooteSuite and TweetDeck are two. Sign up for one of these time-savers and then add the social accounts you’ve chosen to participate in. Most of these management services will also have bookmarklets that you can add to your browser bar which allow for easy sharing of useful sites and stories that you find in your own web browsing/searching.

TweetDeck Admin Panel

HooteSuite Admin Panel

With a service like HootSuite or TweetDeck, you can choose to post items to all of your profiles or just one or two specifically. This is good because Twitter relies on hashtags (#myimportantthing) and @ tags ( @TwitterUserName is a direct mention, meaning your tweet shows up on that user’s wall) but those notations don’t have a function in Facebook or LinkedIn. Using a social media management service is free and it can save you time. And, because the Powers That Be like dynamic content (they like unique, dynamic content even more), you can help your website in organic searches over time by creating and sharing useful content on social media sites.

Why doesn’t anyone like my status update?

One area of frustration for small business owners getting started with social media is whether people actually see their posts and tweets. This is the age-old conundrum of advertising. You don’t really know. There are many factors involved in whether or not someone sees your post – how often they check their page, whether they have a filter on their wall or feed, and (I suspect) the level of engagement your posts elicit from users will also improve your visibility on the main “home” page or feed. You might need to experiment with when you post items and how you frame your shares (the status update that accompanies the blog post you share, for example). The more popular a topic is, the more relevant it will be deemed by those Powers That Be, and your posts will have more visibility. Frequency is also important. You just have to experiment and try to find the right balance. People are also pretty sophisticated when it comes to the sales pitch – dial down the selling and focus on sharing great, useful content. You know, the kind of things that you would want to read about.

There are some pretty neat tools available to admins of Facebook pages that allow you to chart your Facebook engagement levels. Again, this is geeky “fun” - but there isn’t really much for you to do with this information except maybe see when posts got a lot of activity. These insights might tell you if there are certain topics or times of day when a post is more successful but don’t spend too much time worrying about “likes” or “shares”. Social media is a very fluid medium so just keep moving.

Finally, don’t feel shy about liking and sharing your own post. Get the ball rolling. Humility doesn’t really belong in social media (you may have already noticed this). And, engage with other users – comment, like, share and “@” reply to your peers, and on their business pages. This human effort will be mutually beneficial.

Referrals are made of People

Growing your business through social engagement marketing can be time-consuming and involve a lot of trial and error – but – there are ways that you can put social media to work for you. Keep it fresh, share useful resources, engage with your users.

You will need to cultivate your web audience on different platforms. It won’t happen in 1 week or even 3 months. And, you still need to keep in touch with your clients through traditional means like personal mailings, phone calls and enewsletters. The contacts that you already have are a precious resource.

Referrals come from people – not “likes”.

Further Reading:

Your business on Twitter – http://business.twitter.com/

Create a Facebook page for your business - https://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

Get your business on the Google map - http://www.google.com/places/

by Emily

buzzkillerespresso.com

Design Services

• Customized WordPress “Twentyeleven” Theme (CSS, PHP)
• Customization of eCommerce application styles to match the branding in WordPress site
• Integration of Google Fonts
• Content development, writing, editing
• Integration of Social Networks

Buzz: Killer Espresso and Buzz: Artisanal Coffee Roaster source the finest coffee available worldwide and roast it with care and sensitivity. Their mission is to embrace the modern push for a new level of coffee quality, along with sustainable and responsible practices.

Eat Paint Studio was hired to update an existing WordPress blog site into a fully functional website and content management system that integrated with the companies recent eCommerce site.

www.buzzartisanalcoffeeroaster.com

The next step was to redesign the eCommerce site to look and feel like their new cafe website for a consistent brand identity. Migrating the CSS styles to apply to the eCommerce framework plus the addition of SEO and payment plugins. eCommerce store managed by Chicago Web Management.

Site Launch: 2011

Site URL: www.buzzartisanalcoffeeroaster.com

by Emily

“WordPress 3.3.1 is now available. This maintenance release fixes 15 issues with WordPress 3.3, as well as a fix for a cross-site scripting vulnerability that affected version 3.3. Thanks to Joshua H., Hoang T., Stefan Zimmerman, Chris K., and the Go Daddy security team for responsibly disclosing the bug to our security team.”

Via WordPress.org

by Emily