25 May 2016

Joomla 2.5 hacks, defacements and shutdowns 2016

If you still have Joomla version 2.5 (hopefully 2.5.28), it’s time to upgrade if you haven’t already.  In fact, it’s way overdue. If you’ve been untouched up to this point consider yourself extremely lucky.  Your hosting company is most likely above average when it comes to blocking specific script injections, known vulnerabilities and has a backup strategy.  However, due to the fact that Joomla has dropped support for 2.5, there’s only so much your hosting company will be able to do by mid 2016.

Hackers are coming. Joomla 2.5 defacements are coming.

Joomla issued a warning about this way back in December 2014. That said, they recently issued a patch to 2.5.28 which caught a vulnerability, and responsible developers applied this to all of their Joomla client sites.  Joomla stated at that time this would be ‘the final patch for 2.5’ and recommended immediate migration to 3.5. If a site is injected with shell code, hackers can create directories and programs inside your site. Mostly this is for defacing all of the sites on the server, or they will install fake pages that resemble PayPal and popular banks in order to phish out user passwords.

They can also redirect your site to a malware site that will infect your website visitors. Google will make note of this in their search, and will require you to prove that your site is virus-free before re-instatement.

Maybe worst of all, your host may shut down your site until it’s in the clear.

If you need help with your migration you should contact your web developer as soon as possible.  Stay current.  And find a qualified web host that will watch your back.

 

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20 Mar 2015

Joomla migration or WordPress conversion?

joomla or wordpress?It’s that time again. Joomla migration time. Joomla has stopped providing security upgrades (December 2014) and is forcing everyone to upgrade to the new Joomla 3.  This means the content and all the programming has to be part of the migration process, and that takes time. Considering the fact that WordPress doesn’t require these major migrations, should this be the time to convert your site to the dark side?

Let’s face it. Up until just about a year or two ago, WordPress was primarily just a blogging platform and didn’t come close to Joomla for anything near business-level quality and options.  Since that time it is our opinion that WordPress is the go-to CMS if you want a highly functional, portable, open-source website.  Yes, we’ve gone to the dark side ourselves.

Sitecats Inc. usually makes a decision when more than two good reasons indicate that a change is in order. WordPress complicated our normal operations by providing a far superior way of handling SEO through the Yoast SEO plugin. If we didn’t see it with our own eyes we wouldn’t have believed it, but there it was. Sites made with WordPress were consistently outperforming Joomla due to Joomla’s handling of URLs and pagination problems.

Now, that being said, the new Joomla migration promises much better SEO and we are monitoring that closely. Unfortunately we don’t have enough data. But for right now WordPress has the lead with better SEO, ease of use for the end-user, and no huge migration headaches.  The choice was simple for us, but you still might prefer Joomla 3 if SEO isn’t important. Some of our municipal clients for instance don’t require SEO at all and are used to Joomla.

Sitecats is currently offering huge discounts for existing clients either way.  Of course converting you to WordPress is a little more expensive because it will take more programming and approval stages, but if you consider you may never be in this position of migrating your Joomla site again, you might actually save significantly over the next several years.

For more information have a look at our FAQ, or contact us directly.  We can help you choose the best course of action.

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22 Jun 2014

Free hosting for one year just by staying on course. That’s $249.00!

web-hosting-doylestown

Most of our clients convey a need to get their new website up and running as soon as possible. We here at SiteCats ®  aim to do just that. Plus, we’re going to reward you for getting us the materials on time and keeping to the agreed schedules. When we propose our estimate, we’ll now include reasonable but firm milestones for the following:

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16 Jun 2014
19 May 2014
01 Mar 2014

Server improvements and free 30 day email trial.

New SSD Speed from SiteCats ®. We’re very excited to deliver solid state technology.  As of March 1 2015we’ve switched over to SSD.  If you would like to read more on the comparitive speed of SSD, see this article.  As our new SEO Jolt program goes into full swing, we can no longer ignore the fact that fast sites rank higher in search engines.  The decision was an easy one to jump to SSD.  There is no addition cost for you.

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01 Mar 2014

An SEO Jolt Can Help Any Business

A quality presence does not automatically occur simply because a website is created. Building a unique brand takes time and effort, and few companies have the ability to achieve that on their own. Industry experts, on the other hand, follow the rapidly changing trends in search engine optimization (SEO), and know the steps needed to make a company’s website stand out among the thousands of competitors.

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05 Feb 2014
19 Oct 2013

The Write Technology

Most organizations recognize the need for technology: websites, mobile apps, email…and yet focusing solely on the “hard” components of technology, can lead to minimizing the importance of the soft side.

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07 Oct 2013

Unoriginality & Stealing

In this brief video, Austin Kleon tells how he learned that the art he “discovered” was in fact a variation of another artists work from more than 200 years ago.

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