It is pretty easy to purchase an inexpensive wireless router, plug it in, and have your wireless network up and running.  But without additional configuration tweaks, your network may be exposed.  There are only a few steps necessary to secure your wireless router.  Three of the most important things you can do are enabling encryption, change the router password, and disable remote administration.

Wireless encryption has major benefits.  First, it prevents unauthorized users from accessing your network.  Secondly, your network traffic is encrypted as it is sent out wirelessly, preventing others from snooping in on your data and even internet activities.  Without encryption, someone outside could listen, without even being logged into your network, to any of your network activity.  By doing so, they can see the websites you browse, intercept emails, and even user names, passwords, and websites you enter them at.  Enabling encryption at the wireless router will encrypt all wireless traffic.  For someone to log in and get that traffic, they will need the encryption key.

To enable wireless encryption:  You will need to log into your wireless router’s control panel.  Locate the wireless encryption options.  It likely will have a couple encryption options, such as WEP, WPA, and WPA2.  As of this writing, WPA2 is the preferred encryption.  WEP should be avoided if at all possible since it is not very strong (mathematically, it can be hacked in 5 minutes).  When setting up WPA2, use a pass phrase that is strong and not easily guessed.  Once setup, remember to configure your network clients to use WPA2 and enter the pass phrase.

Change the password: Wireless routers come with a default password set by the factory.  These passwords are usually very easy to guess and are very often listed online.  Anyone with the password could access to your router and reconfigure it, possibly locking you out.  Choose a strong password and write it down somewhere safe.  The only way to reset the password is to reset the router which will reset any settings you’ve changed.

Disable remote administration: Remote administration allows users to configure your wireless router from the internet.  Rarely should you need to configure your wireless router from over the internet.  Disabling this option ensures everyone out on the internet can not change your settings.

Additional security: For additional security, here are some additional changes that can be made.  Disable SSID broadcasts.  SSID broadcasts are broadcasts the router sends out letting others know the router is available to connect to.  Users can still find your router.  This option just makes it a little less obvious.  Another option is to use MAC filtering.  A MAC address identifies a computer’s network interface, sort of like an IP address.  By adding only those computers’ MAC addresses to the router, only those computers will be authorized to connect to the router.  Both of these methods are not 100% effective.  But combined with encryption and using strong passwords for both the router and the encryption, these will help secure your network.

Making periodic website backups is critical.  It is especially critical if you are running a business or e-commerce website.  The question to ask yourself is how long can you afford your site to be down?  For most people, the answer is not long.  Having a recent backup of your site will allow you to get your site back up and running in minimal amount of time, versus the alternative which could be as horrible as having to recreate or reinstall your website by hand.

So how do you make a backup?  For CPanel, which is what all Tekro hosting plans use, go to your website’s control panel.  From there, find the “Backups” icon and click it.  Then click “Download or Generate a Full Web Site Backup.”  You now have a complete backup, including your MySQL databases (note, if you are using PostgreSQL, these do not get backed up from my experiences – this requires a manual backup).

To restore, click on “Backup Wizard” and select “Restore” and follow the directions.  You do not want to do a restore unless you are in a position to test the restore or your website truly needs a restore.

You will want to keep your backups some where off of your website.  A good place is on a home computer (password protected might be a good idea if you store sensitive information in your website).  Having an off-site copy of your website is an excellent idea in case something happens to the server and everything is lost (including your backups).

If you need help performing a website backup, let us know.

There comes a time when you need to decide if you will go with PayPal for all of your online payment needs or a merchant account. Here’s some things to think about, based on our experiences at Tekro.

When starting out, PayPal has much lower startup costs and is much easier to setup than a merchant account.  You can be up and running with PayPal as little as a couple days or whatever time it takes to verify your PayPal account, if you don’t already have one.  Then, its a matter of plugging your PayPal account information into your shopping cart software and off you go.

But PayPal doesn’t always come off as “professional” for an e-commerce site.  Customers are used to plugging in their credit card information directly in the shopping cart and may not appreciate or trust the experience of being sent over to PayPal to enter their payment information. Also, PayPal takes a hefty percentage of each transaction.

The alternative is a merchant account.  The merchant account advantage is the customer never leaves your site.  It provides additional trust to your customer that your website means business and their business is secure and safe, making it more likely to complete the transaction.

The Merchant account benefit is they take a lower percentage of each transaction for the fee, but the merchant account has higher up front costs.  There usually is a “setup” fee and probably an “application fee” and when all is said and done, it may be about $300 or $400 dollars, just for the merchant account.  Plus you have to setup a payment gateway.  They have their own setup fees, which likely would be in the $25 or so range.  Then you have the SSL certificate and dedicated IP address you would need.  The SSL certificate can be as low as $25 a year and the dedicated IP address another couple dollars.  Add to that fees for PCI compliance monitoring, which can be in the $100 range per year.

So there are some steep initial costs involved with a merchant account.  But with that merchant account, you like will get a per transaction fee between 1 and 2 percent of each transaction while PayPal will take almost 5%.  So which one do you go with?

For Tekro, we calculated roughly how many transactions we thought we would do in a month and a year.  Then we calculated out all our fees we would have to pay for PayPal and with the merchant account and then worked backwards to find the break even point.  For us, it was about 20 to 30 transactions a month.  Anything below this, PayPal was the better way to go.  Anything above it, and the merchant account was better.

If PayPal will fit your e-commerce needs, it might be the perfect fit for starting up.  Once you get some income, upgrading to a merchant account will make sense when the time is right.

If money is not an issue, I highly recommend starting out with the merchant account.  It costs more to get setup and requires more effort.  But once setup, it just works and provides plenty of room to grow and save money in fees in the long run.  Every business is different and you will have to judge which service is the better fit.

Also to keep in mind, PayPal may not be the only game in town.  There are other services cropping up such as Google Checkout.  If you are serious about PayPal, check PayPal’s competitors out.  You may find a better deal.  And if you do, let us know!

At Tekro, we provide web hosting as well as web development.  One of our existing clients came to us and commented how his main business website was not ranking well in Google.  In fact, it wasn’t ranking at all when you searched.  The client suggested switching the template based design over to Joomla to provide more SEO friendly URLs and metadata, as well as enable easier updates to the website.

The client was proficient with PHP, but didn’t have the time to tweak the existing site template to work in Joomla.  Tekro was able to jump in and tweak the template and port the live website content over to the Joomla site.  Note, Tekro used a staging area to do this, so the client could observe the progress, provide feedback, and request changes at any time.

After two weeks, the content was ported over and the site was ready to go live.  After 1 month, the site is already ranking on the first page in Google’s results.

In this example, Tekro was able to provide the Joomla expertise to port the site template and quickly get the existing content ported over and set live without disrupting the client’s business or website up time.  This allowed the client to focus on their business, post meaningful content for their clients, and drastically improve their search engine rankings.

Thinking about getting into blogging?

Tekro offers the following blog applications with a simple install (requiring only a couple clicks) from your website control panel:

From “Site Software” in your control panel:

B2Evolution

WordPress (highly recommended)

From “Softaculous”:

Dotclear

Serendipity

Open Blog

You can also install any of the other blogging applications out there, but the install will be a manual process.

If you need a hand with your website, submit a support ticket to Tekro and we will work with you to update your site.

If you have installed a web application on your website, please take a moment to check that you are running the latest version.

Some applications, like Wordpress, offer the ability to check for updates and install them automatically.  This is a pretty handy way of keeping your website up to date and hacker free.

If you need a hand with your website, submit a support ticket to Tekro and we will work with you on how best to update your site.

During the holidays, Tekro was busy adding new features and functionality along with new ways to stay in touch with Tekro.

First off, we’ve added new ways to reach us.  Visit Tekro.com or our new web hosting website, Tekro-web.com and you will find a Live Support link (we plan to add the link to the billing software shortly).  If it says “online,” click it to chat with one of our Tekro people.  Contact us if you have any questions or problems!

Tekro is on Twitter!  http://twitter.com/tekro_com

Why is Tekro on Twitter?  We will be posting announcements, such as new blog posts from our new blog (http://blog.tekro.com).  Also, if we have any maintenance issues, they will be announced here and status updates provided if there is an outage.  And watch, you might find web hosting discount coupons.

As you know, we finished rolling out our new billing system.  We just implemented a new feature in it where you can order software to be installed automatically, either at the time of ordering a new website or to add on to your current website, FOR FREE!  The software installs automatically and instantly.  You do not have to worry about setting up and configuring databases or uploading files and configuring the install.  Just order the addon you want and off it goes.  You will receive email notification when the install is complete and it will have the admin user name and password as well as the url to use to log in to the administrator interface.

At this time, we are offering Wordpress and Joomla (v1.5).  We hope to add additional addons such as phpBB, Gallery, and Zen Cart.  We take requests too so let us know what you would like to see.

Note:  Both of these installs will overwrite whatever is currently on your website and will require 1 free database to be available with your hosting plan.  If you have questions or concerns, please contact us before ordering and installing these addons.

Here’s how you can install these free addons:

Click https://secure.tekro.com/whmcs/cart.php?gid=addons and find the addon you wish to install (Wordpress or Joomla as of this writing) and make sure your desired website is listed in the drop down box.  Then click Order Now and follow the checkout instructions.  The order will be free so there is no cost to you.

If you wish to install other web software, we have additional options.  Log into your control panel.  Then under Software / Services, click on “Site Software” or “Softaculous”.  Both of these links provide additional applications available to install on your website with minimal amount of time or effort.

These services are new.  If you encounter any problems, please let us know!

Thank you for hosting with Tekro, LLC!

Rob
Tekro, LLC

http://www.tekro.com

This article will address on some of the things to think about when setting up a shopping cart or e-commerce solution on your website to take online credit card payments.

To setup a shopping cart to take credit cards, you will need the following:

• An internet merchant account.  A merchant account usually requires a business bank account to be established (which usually requires a tax ID depending on the state).
• A payment gateway.  Some banks may bundle the merchant account with a preferred payment gateway.
• A web hosting account
• An SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificate so credit card numbers can be safely transmitted.  This is required for PCI compliance.
• A dedicated IP address for the SSL certificate
• A shopping cart application within your website

Merchant Accounts

An internet merchant account requires an application an approval from a bank.  Do shop around.  Internet merchant accounts are not created equal and different banks have different terms, percentages, and features.  For example, in Tekro’s experience, we discovered one bank would not deposit funds until 48 hours or so after the transaction.  Tekro switched banks and now funds are available the next business day, sometimes less than 24 hours.  This alone can be very valuable.

Payment Gateways

The payment gateway is the interface between your e-commerce website and the bank.  When your site takes a credit card, the moment the page is submitted, the payment gateway is contacted.  A conversation between your website and the gateway takes place.  The conversation is about getting authorization for the payment.  The payment gateway determines if the transaction is good and if so, authorizes the payment and lets your website know the transaction was successful.  At this point, your website lets the user know the payment was successful.  But behind the scenes, the payment gateway is working with your customer’s bank to transfer funds to your bank account.

There are many payment gateways available.  Tekro prefers Authorize.net as its payment gateway.  It is a well known and established gateway and almost every shopping cart supports it.

SSL Certificate and Dedicated IP Address

The SSL certificate encrypts the traffic that goes between your website and your customer.  Typically, everything on the internet is transmitted in plain text, where everyone could read the content if they really wanted to.  But SSL provides a means to encrypt the data so only the website and the customer’s computer can read the data.  SSL also ensures the website is who it says it is.  To acquire an SSL certificate, your business identity has to be proven to the SSL provider.  Once proved, they provide the SSL certificate and it can be installed on the server.

To install the SSL certificate, it requires a secure web server which requires its own dedicated IP address.  One trick hosting providers can do to lower costs is share IP addresses.  For SSL to work, the IP address can not be shared.

Once the SSL certificate is installed, you can enter your website’s address with https:// (not the added “s”) instead of just http://.  This lets the browser know to use the secure server and the SSL certificate and to encrypt all the data going to and from the browser.

Without an SSL certificate and a dedicated IP address, you can still run a shopping cart, although without the added security, your customers’ credit card information is at severe risk of being intercepted.  This can tarnish your business’s reputation.  Although customers today are savvy to recognize a website with and without SSL and likely will not purchase from a website that does not have an SSL certificate.

Shopping Carts

Shopping carts come in many different flavors.  There are shopping carts for specific functionality and carts that are more generic for selling any product.  Carts are designed with different languages and this is important to find one that will fit the requirements of your existing website (if you don’t have a website, then keep in mind when you do shop for one what features it will need).   Shopping carts may be freely available to download and use and others may require payment.  You can even custom build a cart, although this requires time and expertise in credit card handling, security, and web programming and development.

At Tekro, we have worked with osCommerce and Zen Cart.  Both of these carts are free to download and use, have been around for quite some time and have had the bugs worked out of them, and provide many features.  Other shopping carts will likely work fine too.  Make sure to review and demo several carts before making a final decision.  Also make note what payment gateways they support.

Getting Started

The difficult thing about getting started with a shopping cart is figuring out where to start first.  Tekro recommends picking out a shopping cart first.  Find a shopping cart which will match your needs and fit within the features of your website (for example, if you find a PHP based shopping cart, make sure your web host provides PHP).

Once you picked out a shopping cart, note the payment gateways it supports.  You might wish to print these out or jot them down.  You may need them while you are at the bank asking questions.

The next step is to find a bank that offers an internet merchant account.  You will want to research what the costs and terms are.  Make sure they will be able to work with a payment gateway that your shopping cart can use.  Note, this process can take a bit of time.  Tekro once completed this process in 1 week (merchant account and payment gateway) and with another bank it took 3 months.

Setup your merchant account and find out from the bank how to go about getting setup with the payment gateway.  The bank may or may not set you up automatically and may require you to contact the payment gateway to get setup.  If so, you will need the merchant account information the bank has provided you once approved.

After getting the merchant account and payment gateway setup, it is time to get the SSL certificate and dedicated IP address.  Both of these can take a little bit of time, usually up to a week or so depending on how quick the web hosting provider is.  They may do all the work or they may provide instructions for you to install the SSL certificate.  Handling of the dedicated IP address is almost always done by the hosting company and they will handle moving your website to the new IP address if you are already hosting with them.

With the SSL certificate installed and working, and all of the bank account information setup, it is time to install the shopping cart, test it, and then open it for business.  It is recommended to run a couple test transactions to make sure the shopping cart is communicating with the payment gateway.  Once those work, it is recommended to do an actual transaction with a credit card in your possession.  That way you can verify the funds have been taken from your credit card and deposited into your business banking account.  You can also verify how long it takes to go from one account to the other.  If this works, then it is time to open the shopping cart for business!

Tekro LLC has setup several shopping carts and runs a shopping cart of its own to manage its hosting business.  If you are a customer or thinking to be a customer, contact us and we will be happy to provide assistance in getting your business setup to take online payments.

Once you found a web host, finding a web hosting plan can be a little tricky.  Here are some things to think about.

First, think about your web hosting requirements.  Do you already have a website?  If so, you have it easy since all you need to do is check your current plan and determine if the new plan will fit.

If you are setting up a brand new website, finding a plan to fit your needs is a bit more difficult.  The two biggies you need to think about is how much web space and bandwidth will you need?  There are of course, other items to think about, but these two are universal regardless of the technology or features you need.

Bandwidth

Since this is a new website, your bandwidth needs likely will be minimal at first, since the site will be starting out with minimal visitors.  As time goes by, word gets around to the search engines and people in general, more and more visitors will stop by and eat up your website’s bandwidth.  How soon will this happen?  It depends, but it can take a couple months to get your new website into the search engine rankings.

For starting out, a minimal plan with low bandwidth might be a good fit.  You can always grow and add more bandwidth.

Disk Space

If the website is brand new and hasn’t been developed yet, this can be a bit more difficult to estimate.  Some things to think about:  Will this site be the next Youtube or Flickr?  If you plan to host photos or video, you will need a lot of disk space.  Or is your website a brochure site that will have some photos and a handful of web pages?  If so, you likely can go with a minimum plan, 50mb or 100mb will likely be plenty.  Usually at any time, you can upgrade to more disk space.  So you can grow your website’s content before emptying your wallet.

Features

Once you have determined how much bandwidth and disk space your website needs, determining what features your site will use will be important.  Some plans will offer a world of features, but it doesn’t make sense to pay for them if you are not going to use them.  And most times, you can easily upgrade at any time to get those features.

For features, you will want to check out what languages are available and make sure they are inline to how you will develop your website.  If a web developer is building your site, get them involved immediately so they can ensure you get the right hosting plan to fit your website being developed.  They will understand what options and features you need.

If you are going on your own, what languages are you willing to work with?  PHP is pretty popular and most hosts usually provide this.  If ASP is more inline to what you need, a Windows plan will be a better fit.

How many email boxes will be provided?  How many do you think you will need?  Note, most email boxes get their disk space from the hosting plan, so if you only get a 10mb plan and setup a mailbox with 10mb of storage, you may run out of space very quickly for your web site.

Do you need a database for your website?  If so, which one do you need?  MySQL?  PostgreSQL?  Microsoft SQL?  These are very important to note and if you are working with a web developer, they will be able to help you select the appropriate one.  How many databases do you need?  Usually for small websites, one database will be plenty.  For larger websites, having multiple databases may be necessary.

Price

Price is important.  You don’t want to over pay for functionality and features you are not able to use.  Yet, you don’t want to get too small of a plan where your website will exhaust all its resources by mid-month.  By reviewing your needs, you will ensure the price you pay matches your needs.  Otherwise, if the price is too high, you may need to compromise on website features and select a cheaper plan.

For new websites, a low-end plan likely is a very good fit.  The number of visitors will not be very high when starting out (unless you have an existing website, in which case you will already have a good idea of what plan you will need).  The disk space may seem low, but likely you will not fill it up initially.  After the first year, you can review how much your website has grown and determine if an upgrade is necessary.

Summary

Hopefully this sparked some ideas on what to look for when looking for a web plan.

Tekro LLC provides web hosting plans and we would hope you consider us for your web hosting needs.  We have been providing hosting services since 1999!

Tekro LLC offers three “out of the box” hosting plans as well as the ability to build your own web hosting plan!  Take a moment and check out our web hosting plans.

At Tekro, we provide Awstats for tracking your website statistics.  For most people, this might be enough.  But we also recommend getting hooked up with Google Analytics.

It is a free application from Google which analyses your web traffic and produces easy to read reports.  You can use it to discover what is and is not working on your website.  This feedback allows you to fine tune your web content and measure the results.  For example, you can see where your visitors are coming from and at what time.  You can measure campaign effectiveness or which search engines are driving traffic.

Log into Google and go to http://www.google.com/analytics.  Add your website and Google will provide you a snippet of code to add to your website.  This snippet should appear on every page of your website for accurate results.  If your website is template driven, just insert it into the template.

If you need a hand with your website, submit a support ticket to Tekro and we will work with you to update your site.