As I began thinking about the best way to come up with a totally new design for my site, The Cultivated Web, I wanted to do a good job thinking it through and having a good plan. I’ve used wireframes on a few projects but had never used Adobe Fireworks. I just wasn’t aware of how capable it is in this area. Besides, I knew how to use Illustrator, Photoshop, and Dreamweaver. What else would I need and why would I want to spend more time learning a new program?

I believe I got the answer to those questions from a presentation by Paul Dorian posted on Adobe Inspire site. It walks you through most of the details of creating a wireframe for a layout and then how to skin it (do the visual design work) all in Fireworks. The best part is how well you learn about the time saving aspects of prototyping your design, sharing with your client and other designers on the project, and generating the html and css code to boot. Fireworks is well integrated with the other programs in Adobe’s Creative Suite, so Illustrator, Photoshop, and Dreamweaver are still major tools to continue using.

Take a look at the Fireworks tutorial and leave a comment about your experience with Fireworks or you favorite tools.

I’m beginning to work on updating my own website, CultivatedWeb.com, and started to look around and at the websites of other web design firms. I like to see what other folks are doing to get some ideas. Some design work I see is really good, original, and progressive. Other sites I see are very useful in helping me decide what not to do. This is what I found today, a web design firm offering a range of “packages”. But they use an online web design service, which will remain anonymous to protect the innocent, to design their own website. I know this because of the <meta name=”generator” content=”Anonymous Program and Company Name“> tag in all the pages of their site. Give me a break!

A word to the wise: while this is a legitimate business, you get what you pay for. All their packages range between $199 and $649 (dirt cheap) for the one time design fee plus a monthly subscription fee ranging from $10 to $20 per month which is too much for web hosting these days. I have to assume they use the same online site building tool they used for their own site which means your not really going to get an original design. What you will get is a template they modify for you.

I find this approach to be somewhat misleading and somewhat of an insult to designers who really do design, not just pump stuff out of a template.

Buyer beware.

If you have a web hosting account, manage a website or blog, you really need to be aware of the security of your account.

Detection

Look at your server logs, statistics or analytics. Are there files you don’t recognize that are getting a lot of traffic? This indicates someone may have planted some fake websites on your server for the purpose of scamming and phishing. These people are very clever and devious, to the point of using content from other successful sites that many people legitimately search for and get high page ranks in the search results, even more than your site.

Look at the files on your server. Search for the same directory or file names that looked suspicious in your logs. Check for other folders you don’t recognize. If you find any, look at the files to determine if they are yours or if they are unauthorized files planted by someone who has gained access to your FTP account. A word of CAUTION; make sure you have a good antivirus and malware program running on your computer. The contents of some of these suspect files are likely to contain malware. I thought I had found all the bad files in a recent incident. However, as I began to download my site for backup, my antivirus program (BitDefender) caught and quarantined a trojan horse.

If you even suspect an unauthorized person has access to your FTP account, change the account password immediately and make it a really strong password.

Contact your web host provider so they can help you find and safely remove the files planted by the people who hacked your account. A good hosting company will have a way to scan for problems.

Prevention

If you use scripts or other web apps on your site, update them to the latest version available. Many blog applications and content management systems are based on PHP and MySQL that may provide hackers an avenue into your site. It’s a little extra work that might just save you a lot grief. Hackers like to get the biggest bang for their buck (don’t we all?). That’s why they target the most widely used products, like computers that run Windows. The same goes for products and services that are widely used such as popular blogging apps, content management systems, and social networking sites.

Minimize Impacts

Backup your site regularly; files and database. Backup the files on your computer.

Be careful when implementing free, third party scripts. Do a little research and determine if the script is widely used successfully without problems. Sometimes, free scripts are not written to eliminate vulnerabilities to hacking.

Limit access to your FTP account to your IP address. If you use a shell app to access your server, use the SSH protocol if possible.

Secure your own computer. It’s quite possible for malware to get into your computer. Consider this scenario. A trojan virus infects your computer undetected. It phones home and installs a key logger. Now, everything you type on your keyboard is recorded and available to the bad guys, including your user names and passwords. It should go without saying, use good antivirus software, keep it updated, and scan often. Keep all the software on your computer up to date also. This is especially most important to computers running Windows.

If you’ve ever had a server or site hacked, share your experience in the comment section below.

First and foremost, decide what you need. Here are the key elements to consider?

• Size of your site: affected by the amount of content you expect to have and if you’re going to use some kind of content management system. But the fact of the matter is many companies provide ample storage space.
• If you’re planning to build a site with static html pages, you’ll most like be able to get by with smaller, less expensive hosting package. Most content management systems and blog software make use of PHP and the MySQL database on the Linux based server running the Apache web server software.

Features: Most hosting companies offer more features than you can shake a server at. Just make sure they offer the features you’ll need for your site. The most typical and necessary are email accounts, FTP accounts, site building applications for beginners, installable apps such as WordPress for blogging, photo galleries, access to your email from the web, website stats and raw server logs (although service such as Google Analytics are much more useful), MySQL databases, PHP5 (the technical list goes on forever), and a good account control panel such as CPanel or Plesk.

The reputation and reliability of the company: The web hosting market is always in a state of flux. Some companies respond to the changing technologies of the internet more quickly than others. Some companies implement the technologies better than others.

Value: the combination of cost, server up time, features, and perhaps most importantly, customer service. Nothing matters more than good customer service when you have questions and especially if there is a problem with your account, which brings us to the next point….

Account Security – this may be difficult to assess any other way than personal experience. Here’s what I’m thinking of when I mention account security. How secure is your hosting account from hackers? Does your hosting company require strong passwords for your hosting account and your FTP logins? Do they monitor unusual account activity that would indicate problems and what action will they take if they find it.

The best advice is to read reliable reviews from independent sources and there are lots of them out there. Talk to other people in forums to learn about their web hosting experiences. The web hosting market is huge and continually changing. In the end, if you stay with one of the top ten companies, you’ll end up with something you won’t lose sleep over.

One final note: If you’re looking for a web host that will provide extensions for FrontPage, don’t. You will do yourself and your client a big favor if you breakdown and learn to build web sites with newer tools and techniques. FrontPage was good to bring web site creation to the masses. But the web today has come a long way, baby. Learn the fundamentals of using html5 and cascading style sheets for your design and layout. More and more web hosting companies are dropping their support for FrontPage, including Microsoft.

There are many commercial solutions to remote access if you’re willing to pay for them. Recently, I found a free (for personal, non-commercial use) and simple solution in TeamViewer. After reading reviews of several remote access programs, I tried TeamViewer on three computers running different operating system; Windows Vista, Window XP, and Ubuntu Linux. TeamViewer is also available for the Mac.

The Bottom Line

TeamViewer works. It’s easy to download and install. It’s easy to establish a connection between two computers regardless of which operating system they’re running. That’s right. It took only seconds to connect over the internet to my Ubuntu desktop from my Vista laptop. It was as if I was sitting in front of the remote computer running programs and even updating the operating system. Here’s a screenshot.

Connect to any computer running Windows, Apple, Linux, or mobile operating systems.

Check it out and put it to good use. But be careful who you tell. Once the word gets out, you may get more calls for help than you have hours in the day.

If you have experience with TeamViewer or other remote access software, leave a comment and share your experience.

The Free Software Directory from the Free Software Foundation (only for free operating systems)

The Free Software Portal from Wikipedia

And let’s not forget the venerable SourceForge.net.

Now, there are many other sources of “free” software and some of them are very good. Google offers some great stuff, WordPress, CNET’s Download.com, and SoftPedia to mention a few. But I wanted to bring to your attention a couple of sites that index software that is totally free in all ways; free to use, free to share, and free to modify.

If you know of other sources of free software, please leave a comment and share.

The story was a not so pretty on the HP Pavilion dv9000 laptop. The performance is good. But I had two key issues. First was was getting the right video drivers to work with Nvidia GeForce graphics card to work and second was getting the Atheros WiFi adapter to work. I now have both issues resolved to a level I can live with….sort of.

First, I configured the Nvidia drivers so that I can extend the desktop across two monitors. However, this setup is not capable of using the software that provides the special graphics effects that makes using your computer a little more fun if not actually more efficient. Just take a look at Gnome-Look.org to get an idea of what’s possible at no additional financial cost.

The second issue with no WiFi was a big one for me. This may have been a real deal breaker for me, expecially with a laptop. While looking for some information about another topic, I stumbled onto a solution that got my WiFi working. So I’m a pretty happy camper.

But here’s the rub for most people. Both these solutions required a series of commands at the command line interface (terminal) that required root access. It’s not the root access that’s an big inconvenience. Window Vista asks for the administrator password all the time. But most people, including myself, don’t really have a working level knowledge of the OS command line language. And this, my friends, is why Windows dominates. And Apple? You know Apple is built on Linus, right? Apple has done a great job of developing a graphical interface that most people can use. The catch for most people is the price.

So, here’ my conclusion about Linux. It’s a great operating system capable of going everything Windows or Apple systems do. It’s free, not only to acquire but also to adapt to your own purposes if you have the requisite programming skills. Linux is more secure than Windows with a lot less effort and expense. But is it for everyone? I doubt it. With that said, let me tell you, it may be for more people than we think. My friend Richard asked me for some advice on what to do with his aging laptop that was just about useless with it’s bogged down Windows XP OS. I suggested he might want to try Ubuntu Linux since he was about ready to dump the old laptop. I gave him a copy of the Ubuntu CD and sent him on his way. An hour later he called me to tell me how good his computer was running. Two weeks later he was raving about how he now has an Ubuntu family after he installed it on his wife’s laptop. Granted they are doing the basic task many of us do; using a word processor, surfing the web, using email. For them, Ubuntu Linux worked without a hitch.

If you are at all curious about escaping from some of the pitfall of Windows, test driving Linux is not that hard. You don’t even have to install it on your hard drive. Just download it and burn the ISO image to a CD. Then you can run it right from CD to see how it works with your hardware. I encourage you to visit Ubuntu.com to read about it yourself, download it, and take it for a spin. I believe you will be pleasantly surprised at what you see.

By the way, did I mention I’m writing this post using my Ubuntu installation? Sweeeet!

You’ll find this article on the USA Today website very interesting and educational.

http://tinyurl.com/5olver

Then take a look at the blog post I wrote back in November.
http://www.cultivatedweb.com/blog/category/online-security

It’s about rootkits and provides links to some of the preventive measures and tools you can use. Here’s what I’m using on my PC now.

Signature Based AntiVirus: BitDefender
http://www.bitdefender.com/PRODUCT-2216-en–BitDefender-Antivirus-2009.html

Behavior Based AntiVirus: Threatfire
http://www.threatfire.com/

COMODO Firewall
This is a great firewall. It monitors inbound and outbound network traffic, unlike the firewall in Windows that I’ve read only blocks inbound traffic. Think about it. If you get a virus that tries to phone home, the Windows firewall may not stop it or notify you of it. Firewalls must monitor outbound traffic too. But COMODO is almost too good. it also monitors program behavior. I get a lot of warnings about legitimate programs creating files, trying to launch another program, or accessing memory. Maybe I just have not configured it adequately yet. I suggest you may want to consider a less technically demanding firewall. Take a look at the firewalls reviewed at Top Ten Reviews and see what’s available for free at Download.com.
http://personalfirewall.comodo.com/download_firewall.html

As I mentioned, keeping ALL your software updated is an important step to thwart malicious software. I use Secunia Personal Software Inspector.
http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/personal/

I’m also running a program from TrendMicro to detect bots like the Conficker virus that’s been in the news. It’s called RUBotted.  Still in beta and free but has not caused problems. Although, it does seem to be giving me a false positive on the 404 error pages (the page that you see when a page doesn’t exist) from sites hosted with IX Web Hosting. I’m working through the problem with IX and TrendMicro.
http://www.trendsecure.com/portal/en-US/tools/security_tools/rubotted

Read a review here:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=802

Finally, read this series of pages on “Ten free security utilities you should already be using”.
http://content.zdnet.com/2346-12691_22-95490.html

This is a ton if info so take your time to work through it and be a responsible internet computer user. The fact that I’m still using these programs after about 6 months and don’t have any problems (as far as I know) is my testimonial and recommendation.

Mitch

1.    An old Dell Dimension 4600 with an Intel Pentium 4 2.8Ghz CPU, 80GB hard drive, and 512MB RAM
2.    A 1 year old HP Pavilion dv9000 with a AMD Turion 64 X2 Mobile Technology TL60 2.0Ghz CPU, and 3GB RAM

Here’s my conclusion so far in comparing Windows to Ubuntu Linux. When it comes to productivity, I think it’s a draw. If I had as much experience with Linux as I have with Windows, my productivity would be about equal. One thing Ubuntu has yet to do is make software installation drop dead fool proof. But the one thing Windows does not do is give you the depth of control over your OS and computer that Ubuntu can, and that’s where the learning curve is.

But how does this relate to web design? I believe it boils down to productivity and efficiency. Productivity in getting the work you need to do as quickly as you can. Efficiency in how much time and money you spend getting your work done. There are free programs available for Ubuntu for office applications such as Open Office, graphics, web design, audio and video editing, and much more. One of the glaring shortcomings of Linux distributions is the complete lack of Adobe software.

The most obvious benefit of Ubuntu is that it does not cost anything and you can adapt it to your purposes as best you can. Although no OS is 100% immune to virus and malware attacks, Windows is much more susceptible for several reasons, the most obvious of which are it is a huge target and in its underlying architecture, the way it’s built and operates. Make no mistake; I’m not making the case here for the use of one OS over the other because they both have strengths and weaknesses. So, why not use both if for no other reason than to be able to use your computer when a malware or virus hoses your Windows? The Ubuntu installer can set up a dual boot arrangement so you can choose which OS you want to use. I’m not ready to forsake Windows but I may be using it a little less. Stay tuned as I continue my journey of discovery into Ubuntu and please feel free to share your experience by leaving a comment to this blog post.

But I digress. Gravatar is not the gem I am talking about, although I believe it will prove to have value. Gravatar.com is the starting point that led me to 24 Ways to Impress Your Friends, a wonderful collection of web design and development articles and tutorials posted each year on the first 24 days of December. The authors are a diverse group of rather pretigious personas in the web design and development world such as Jeffrey Zeldman, Eric Meyer, and Kevin Yank. As you might expect, the design is a good example of blending functionality, information architecture, and content. Make no mistake, it’s the content (as should be with all web sites) that is the real value here.

I’m interested in what you think about 24 Ways, so leave a comment.