Southern Exposure January 2016

Page 1


Delaware President

*** Jim Hill

George Singleton gsingleton@SEPPAonline.com

1st Vice-President

Kevin Jiminez kjiminez@SEPPAonline.com

2nd Vice-President

Mary Fisk-Taylor mfisktaylor@SEPPAonline.com

Secretary-Treasurer

Janet Boschker jboschker@SEPPAonline.com

Salon Exhibition Chair Executive Director

Jessica Vogel jvogel@SEPPAonline.com

District of Columbia

Florida

Georgia

Rick Gibbons ExecutiveDirector@SEPPAonline.com

S out he r n E x p o su re

Souther n Exposure magazine is an online publication of SEPPA and is published monthly. Editor V ictoria Kelly vkelly@SEPPAonline.com 919.818.0726 Ad Sales & Business Manager Rick Gibbons ExecutiveDirector@SEPPAonline.com 336.687.1943

Maryland

Mississippi/Alabama

North Carolina

***Anthony Maril Joe Tessmer

*** Cindy Strickland Jackson Koontz

*** Spencer Smith Jason White

*** Lidia Miller Steve Clark

*** Shauna Denney Gil Brady

*** Rose Mary Cheek Rose Mary Cheek

South Carolina

*** David Junker Patty Hallman

Tennessee

*** Dorma Tabisz Barbara White

Virginia

*** Jim Carpenter Robert Holman

Article & Ad Submissions 5th of every month OnLine Publication 20th to 29th of each month SEPPA 3710 North Main Street High Point, NC 27265 336.687.1943 Acceptance o f a d v e r t i si n g d oe s n ot c a r r y w i th i t en dor se m e n t b y t h e p ub l i sh e r. Opi ni o ns expre sse d b y Sout h e r n Exp osure o r any o f i ts aut h or s d oe s n ot n e c e ssa r i l y refl ect t h e p osi t i on s of t h e Sou theaster n Pro fessi on a l P h ot ogr a p h e r s A ssoc ia t io n . Asso ci ati on f i n a n c i a l i n f or m a t i on avai l a b l e up on re q ue st .

West Virginia

*** Pat Dodd Brent Kepner

*** state president SEPPA representative


Delaware

Mississippi/Alabama

District of Columbia

North Carolina

www.ppsgw.org

www.ppofnc.com

Florida

South Carolina

www.fpponline.org

www.ppofsc.com

Georgia

Tennessee

www.gppa.com

www.tnppa.com

Maryland

Virginia

www.delawarephotographers.com

www.marylandppa.com

SEPPA is a regional affiliate of the Professional Photographers of America and hosts an annual District Image Judging. To learn more about PPA, click HERE.

www.ppma.net

www.vppa.org

West Virginia www.ppwv.org











5 WAYS to tighten wordpress security... Kira Derryberry

I just finished helping a fellow photographer clean his hacked website, a problem you yourself may have encountered before if you are a WordPress user. There are various ways hackers can get into your websites. Some of it involves security holes in WordPress, some of it is due to holes in the many user created plugins that are out there. But if your website has been hacked and you are on a shared server (which most of us are) then your hosting provider should be made aware because there are things they’ll need to do to tighten security on their end. The bottom line is, there is no sure fire way to keep them out forever, but putting up as many roadblocks as you can to prevent and recover is your best line of defense. Here are 5 tips for tightening your WordPress security. 1. Change your WordPress user, FTP, and hosting control panel passwords. You should do this right now. I know, you don’t want to. I don’t want you to have to, but it must be done. And it’s 2016, so it’s time to stop using your first cat’s name and the year you were born exclamation mark. That’s simply not enough. If you need help coming up with one, Wordpress has a password generator you can use or simply Google the search term “Password Generator” to find several sites that can create them for you. It's also a good idea to create a new user for yourself with Administrator as a role and


remove the default admin user name once you have done so. This will help protect you from “Password Guessing Brute Force Attacks” where hackers try and simply guess patterns of easy to remember passwords, hoping to they’ll crack the safe and get in. 2. Make sure your version of WordPress and all your installed plugins are up to date. This is a pretty simple step nowadays. When you log into your WordPress dashboard, there’s an update button on all out of date plugins, themes, and WordPress installations. Most of the latest versions of WordPress are now auto updating so you don’t even have to think about it. 3. Harden your security. Lots of things are left unlocked and open upon installing Wordpress that usually don’t cause a problem, but for added security, install the Sucuri “Security – Auditing, Malware Scanner and Hardening” plugin. This plugin can help you lock down open areas of the site to keep unwanted visitors out of it. Once you’ve enabled this plugin, double check your site and make sure your other plugins and features are still working. As a rule, if something breaks right after you install it, you should uninstall the thing that broke it. Seems simple, I know, but you’d be surprised how often someone installs a plugin or a feature of a plugin without checking to see if their website is still working. Always, always double-check your work! You can also install a plugin called WordFence that does a pretty bare bones scan for security risks, reminding you to update plugins and catching any security red flags as it can. It’s also got some other great features to help keep out the big bads like the ability to block IPs and see failed login attempts. Like Sucuri, WordFence is free! It doesn’t hurt to have them both as far as I can tell. 4. Have a back up system in place. The bigger your website, the harder the fall. WordPress is composed of 3 things: The core files that simply make WordPress run, a database file that fills in all your content you’ve actually written, plus tells WordPress where you’d like everything to go, and then your actual content files like your images, plugins, themes, etc. that you’ve uploaded to make your WordPress website go from a plain old blog to the beautifully skinned website you’ve created. WordPress doesn’t perform back ups on it’s own, so I recommend installing a good back up plugin that will not only back up your database file, but do a full back up of your website. This plugin needs to be able to do a database back up AND a full back up occasionally. The latter is going to take longer, depending on how large your website is. If you only back up your database and your site gets blown away, you’ll have everything you’ve ever written, customized and organized still, but you won’t have any of the visual items, like say, the last 3 years of images you’ve uploaded to your blog and galleries. So be sure you do both. How often is up to you, but I would go with at least a weekly back up of your database file and a monthly


back up of your full site. My current free favorite plugin for this is called BackUpWordPress. There are paid plugins that offer more functionality. And finally… 5. Check ratings on anything you install. WordPress is Open Source and free to the world, meaning lots of people develop products for it. Most plugins out there are completely third party user created. Whenever searching for a new plugin, check the reviews and star ratings. Check that it is compatible with the version of WordPress you are running and see how well it is supported. A plugin that is updated often with patches means someone out there is paying attention and trying to help us all keep our sites secure and functioning. So right about now you might be saying to yourself that there’s no way that you can do these things on your own. Managing your website can be tricky and overwhelming. If you run into snags and questions, you can always call your hosting provider’s tech support line. It’s not your job to know how to do all the things and that’s what they are there for, so don’t be afraid to give them a call. Now you’ll be armed with the knowledge of exactly what you are looking for so odds are your support calls are going to go more smoothly. If you are looking for even more hands on training with WordPress, not just for security, but how to really make your website work for you, then join me this summer for my course, WordPress for Photographers at Florida Photography Workshops. For info on how to sign up visit http://www.fpponline.org.


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