The founder of WordPress: Matt Mullenweg, has confirmed that plugins should NOT be used in this situation: Most other advice isn’t great — supposedly this botnet has over 90,000 IP addresses, so an IP limiting or login throttling plugin isn’t going to be great and infact may bring down your server if pointed at your website.

We have updated each of our clients htaccess files who have hosting plans with us in order to stop direct automated attempts to gain access. However not even this will mean total protection so we have taken a number of other actions to strengthen security on all websites. We have also increased backups to our Amazon S3 service in order to have a quick restore to any potentially hacked website.

What all WordPress site owners need to do right now on all sites:

1. Immediately change your passwords to the WordPress admin area, FTP, any control panels
2. Your password should be very strong over 15 characters and MUST have all of: uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters.
3. Scan your computer for viruses, keyloggers, rootkits, and botnet software
4. Update WordPress and all plugins to the latest versions (JamJo takes care of this for you)

We are currently monitoring all websites and blocking out any IP range that is trying to automate a login to any website. Please contact us if you find anything strange on your website. All sites right now seem to be clean of any malware as we do regular checks each day for this. Typically keeping your website up to date and keeping all plugins up to date and also maintaining strong password and username controls can prevent against all these types of attacks. This is why we have created this managed website hosting solution solely for WordPress.

Typically your website backups are done a few ways and we have seen them all here at JamJo.

Our backup option here at JamJo is perhaps the least well advertised out there and its because its extremely thorough and a very involved process because we pay attention to our clients needs and we think its critical that our client websites are backed up just the same as our own website. We use Amazon S3 as our partner to backup our client websites every day to store at a remote location and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web. It gives our clients access to the same highly scalable, reliable, secure, and fast infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its own global network of web sites. Now that is robust

A core feature for our clients. Here’s why:

• A lot of people back up via FTP without even realizing that they do not have true separation between the site itself and the backup location. 9 times out of 10 your backup is sitting on the same server as your website so if you get a hardware failure to your server your backup and your website is gone! Not really a backup!
• You can of course pay for extra backups with your cheap hosting provider but these costs extra and rarely use Amazon Web Services for your backup.
• Email backups are impractical for anything but the smallest of backups
• Dropbox, whilst a great service, can occasionally throw up teething issues and is not really robust enough for larger websites.

So we use Amazon. Not only is Amazon S3 both reliable and secure, it offers a true separation between the website itself and where the backups are kept. If your website server hardware melts down, we have your backup securely located in another location where we can deploy it to a new server. For eCommerce website (storing your website information and your customer information) this is particularly important as each and every day you should be able to call on a backup if needed.

For JamJo clients, we deploy this service for every client on every plan because quality Internet-based storage should be taken for granted, allowing you to worry about other things.

There is more….

• Secure: Built to provide infrastructure that allows the customer to maintain full control over who has access to their data. Customers must also be able to recover from any failure. A hacked website, a corrupted database, a hardware failure and even a disaster at a data centre.
• Reliable: Store data with up to 99.999999999% durability, with 99.99% availability. There can be no single points of failure. All failures must be tolerated or repaired by the system without any downtime.
• Scalable: Amazon S3 can scale in terms of storage, request rate, and users to support an unlimited number of web-scale applications. It uses scale as an advantage: Adding nodes to the system increases, not decreases, its availability, speed, throughput, capacity, and robustness.
• Fast: Amazon S3 must be fast enough to support high-performance applications. Server-side latency must be insignificant relative to Internet latency. Any performance bottlenecks can be fixed by simply adding nodes to the system.
• Simple: Building highly scalable, reliable, fast, and inexpensive storage is difficult. Doing so in a way that makes it easy to use for any application anywhere is more difficult. Amazon S3 does both.

We are delighted to offer this service as part of our managed WordPress hosting. A site failure of any kind should not mean the end of your online presence because of a large loss of data. Your WordPress data is really valuable – you’re only a moment away from complete disaster. So make sure you do it right! Use our service and enjoy premium-quality backup services for all of your WordPress sites.

Responsive web design (RWD) is a web design approach aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning —across a wide range of devices (from desktop computer monitors to mobile phones). This is the Wiki definition and its a good starting point to explain this post. More than ever we have been asked about mobile versions of websites and luckily JamJo is uniquely positioned to help because all our designs try to incorporate the best of responsive design techniques.

 1. Responsive Design

A responsive website is basically a website which can adapt itself on different screens regardless of the device you are playing it on. You build one single responsive website and it resizes itself accordingly. This has a number of benefits because you are using the original design, it tends to be a little faster and a little easier to scale your website. A responsive design is a good place to start on most websites before diving into an exclusive mobile web app or a native mobile app design. This is a good example of a responsive design; H2 Compliance

Responsive Web design is the approach that suggests that design and development should respond to the user’s behavior and environment based on screen size, platform and orientation. The practice consists of a mix of flexible grids and layouts, images and an intelligent use of CSS media queries. As the user switches from their laptop to iPad, the website should automatically switch to accommodate for resolution, image size and scripting abilities. In other words, the website should have the technology to automatically respond to the user’s preferences. This does of course mean that certain design decisions have to be taken on the overall design of the original website, image size and layout is critical, advertising space that exists on full screen websites sometimes cannot be allowed for in the smaller designs on mobile devices (something even the mighty Facebook struggles with).

2. Mobile Web App

A mobile website is similar to a regular website and can be accessed with the help of different browsers, the only difference being it is created for small-screen devices exclusively. In the WordPress world of website design it ultimately is a new Mobile theme design for your website. Mobile sites are optimized for on-the-go users, contain limited (or rather, necessary) content and are lighter and faster than responsive websites. The advantage is you can download a Web App icon to your iphone, blackberry desktop and give a more native application feel to your site. Web-App mode delivers a native application-like experience on iOS devices. When visitors bookmark your site it is available in standalone mode without Safari wrapped around it. You can brand this experience also, choose your home screen icon, loading image, and more, and create a great Web App for your iOS visitors. A good example of this type of site is located here at the Garda Siochana Retired Members’ Association and also

3. Native Mobile Apps

Native apps are apps designed for mobile users using mobile devices, usually downloaded from a marketplace such as Apple App Store. There is a different native app standard for different platforms, requiring a new set of coding for each platform. Typically iOS and Android devices. This can be an expensive exercise to truely get right. You need to custom build the apps for the different devices and also make sure you are constantly updating them as new versions of Android and iOS operating systems get released. People typically tend to get their apps built but without any plans to update and iterate them over time, maintenance is critical!

The three methods outlined give you an idea for the techniques involved in creating a mobile web presence but each of them has its own advantages and disadvantages. Getting to know each of them deeply is a good idea for making an informed choice. This choice will ultimately come about from the type of website you have in the first instance.

Responsive Design versus the Mobile Web-App Design

When comparing these two, you absolutely need to focus on the main website purpose. If it is a website aimed at providing its users a mobile experience which involves quick decisions and buying and selling, then a responsive design can be a good choice. Mobile commerce or mCommerce is getting more popular, you cannot really do the vast array of displays needed in a native web-app mode in WordPress to achieve this so a responsive design is a great option. However, if you need to constantly add and update it with new posts, then a single mobile Web-App design site is a better option. This is because, when it comes to easy updating, mobile sites for WordPress are easy to maintain. If you have a simple blog type website (magazine, blog, news) and the blog is the main focus then a web-app mobile version of your site can certainly be a good choice as explained.

Also, it depends on what your budget is when you are planning to create a site. Realistically people tend to view a few pages of your site in the mobile view, forums and engagement elements are not really required on most mobile versions of sites. People tend to think a simple plugin will do the trick, not necessarily so, this plugin will need to be configured, optimized and branded to suit your website outlay. When it comes to optimization and SEO, and adding conversion and redirect codes, responsive design websites rule the roost.

Happy Crimbo from JamJo

The end of the year is nigh. And your trusty JamJo are signing off for a few days to sip mulled wine and down mince pies (not too many tho, we don’t want to be adopting the shape of that poor fella in the header above!). We had a great year and tis time to hang our pixel tool belt on the wall for a wee bit.

2012 saw us launch our Managed WordPress Solution. And it’s been taken too like the proverbial duck to water (We launched quite a few new projects around it with more to come in the new year). The feedback has been good and we’re going to continue to develop on and refine that solution in the new year.

2013 will see us launch an additional solution to JamJo’s arsenal. It’s going to be called JamJo Commerce. And it’s going to be the easy way to launch and manage your web store online. (We’re excited about this one!)

We’ll also be unveiling a brand new JamJo website. (More on that later)

And that about wraps it up. We’ll be closing up shop today. Not to worry, we’ll be back in action on the 4th January.

Here’s wishing one and all a wonderful Christmas and great new year!

Maintenance update

In the last few weeks we have seen the release of WordPress 3.5, the most recent and much-anticipated major version of WordPress. Literally hundreds of hours of development has gone into this release and a number of areas of WordPress have been tackled …Read full update

This is a question we get asked repeatedly by clients before joining up with the JamJo team, after people join up it all becomes very clear of course, so lets try and explain why the web is moving to this space of managed website updates on a month to month basis. The following is a typical question we get… info@jamjo.ie

“My understanding is unless I want to change data or something structural on the website, there is no support or maintenance or security required, beyond what a normal hosting service would provide anyway. Is my assumption correct? “ quick answer is no and here is why.

JamJo provides Managed WordPress Hosting, which means you (the customer) give up control over things like direct system access, hosting configuration, and the ability to run certain themes and plugins (things you would rarely if ever use anyway with a typical host, unless you are running a unique specific application).  In exchange, we provide a level of service which is possible exactly because we get to control the environment.

Specifically, we make sites faster, more scalable, and more secure, while also providing tech support specifically for WordPress.  We also add features around WordPress, such as automated backups and applying patches to core and/or plugins as they become available. All of which a “normal” cheap host does not provide. They support your hosting environment, JamJo supports it all including your WordPress website

We also get the answer sometimes, “but I don’t need all that because I do not update the static content on my website much!”. Managed WordPress websites has nothing to with your content on your website – even though we help you get that right too Let me throw a few statistics at you here…

There are 75,078,790 WordPress website on the internet as of today!. There are currently 30 known WordPress 3.x  core security vulnerabilities and WordPress.org has reported recently that only 15% of users have upgraded to the latest version.Which makes 85% of all websites susceptible to the following…. See the infographic her by clicking here.

Hackers can:

1. Execute arbitrary code
2. Redirect your traffic to the hackers site
3. Inject arbitrary HTML and edit your posts
4. Cause a DOS
5. SQL injection and execute commands
6. Gain access to your passwords
7. Turn your website into a link network
8. Embed a backdoor
9. Embed code in your PHP files

So to avoid this horror you absolutely need to update your website regular and here is what JamJo do that a normal website hosting company cannot do. We manage all your upgrades.

1. Backup your website regularly
2. Keep WordPress updated
3. Keep all plugins updated
4. Avoid using theme framework from untrusted sources
5. Ensure your system is Malware and Virus free
6. Monitor your server and user stats
7. Remore your WordPress version from your meta description
8. Protect your directories

If your not currently doing any of this, well its a matter of time before something goes wrong. In time all websites will absolutely need this kind of hosting environment because the speed of updates is just rapidly increasing each month so there is no real way to keep on top of this on your own steam. Just do it the right way.

As all of our clients know, we take security pretty serious and we are always aiming to do better on the security stakes. We have learned from the past ourselves with our own personal web projects how important security can be. It’s the reason we are so passionate about trying to keep every website we come into contact with up to date with our Managed WordPress Hosting plans.

We work very closely with Sucuri Security, a company that monitors our client websites and keeps them free of Malware each month. We pro-actively run a Sucuri Scan each and every month on all our customers websites and if we find anything we jump in and clean it up like it was one of our own. If you want us to run a scan at any other time just let us know Just recently the framework we work with on a regular basis has become Sucuri safe and every single line of the theme framework is now Sucuri audited. We love this.

What does that even mean?

With the growing customer base at JamJo all using WordPress, it is of vital importance that the code base that we use is lean, secure, and extendable and that we are proactive with security measures fighting web based malware. We learned from our own mistakes in the past from not updating websites previous to 2011  – and well lets just say we learned the hard way! Only 15% of all WordPress websites running on the Internet today are actually up to date and relatively secure right now so JamJo has a lot of work to do!

So test after test after test was carried out, and not every line has passed the check with Sucuri Security and is good to go.

Every revision of code has been taken into consideration at this point and should continue to be evaluated. Whilst there is not much to be seen visually to understand the amount of work that went into this audit, rest assured that your website is powered by one of the most powerful and stable WordPress theme frameworks available.

Our monthly newsletter will keep everyone up to date on security updates as we try and make sure we cover all basis. If you suspect anything strange on your website that could be Malware or Spam related just let us know and we will do our best to resolve the issue promptly.

Have you heard of Google Business Photos? It’s basically Google Maps with Street View except now you get to walk in off the street and view the interiors of buildings. (Don’t worry not residential properties!)

Pretty sweet if you’re a restaurant or pub for example.

Your customers can walk around, explore, and interact with your business with a 360-degree, interactive tour. See it in action here for the Market Lane Restaurant off Oliver Plunkett Street. (It’s making me hungry!)

We recently teamed up with a photographer who’s offering this Google Business Photo service. He’s name is John Roche and he specialises in these Google Business Photos panoramic photography to capture the inside of your business. He was featured in the Irish Examiner last Friday and JamJo got a wee mention…

“…web design specialist JamJo ensure online viewers enjoy a rich visual experience.”

We’ll be integrating Google Business Photos into our websites from here on out. If you’re interested in having the inside of your business captured through Google Business Photos head on over to John’s website. (He explains it in a bit more detail)

Read the full scoop about John Roche and Google’s new Business Photos program over here at the Irish Examiner.

Your ever trusty JamJo have been busy in the web mill of late. We’ve launched 3 new websites that you can feast your eyes on at the links below.

First up is Supernova, Corks premiere location for Children’s Birthday Parties and Adventurous Play. Visit the website here.

Next up is Working4Talent. It’s an EU project under the INTERREG IVC Programme, funded by the European Regional Development Fund. Visit the website here.

And finally we have Victoria Mills. Spacious student apartments near UCC. Visit the website here.

This month in the JamJo client spotlight is University College Cork. UCC Accommodation & Student Activities to be precise. JamJo took on website design duties for the Student Accommodation website last year. Give the site a wee visit over here: www.uccaccommodation.ie

We also got our web design mittens into the UCC Societies website but that’s for another day!

The website is built using WordPress software. Great for dynamic content. It needed to be user friendly (updated regularly with new properties) and search engine friendly (big brother Google is watching!).

The design and identity? Well, we were required to diligently follow the visual identity guidelines on this one. The U.C.C. crest reproduces nicely in black and white so we went there first and introduced a dash of red for navigation and buttons (and the fact that we’re from Cork naturally!). Good, solid typographic work (Arial and Georgia, who loves you!?) and an emphasis on property imagery to give visitors to the site what they are really craving; pics of their potential new pad!

Check out last months JamJo client spotlight: Cork Week

Managed Website Updates

1. WordPress core updates become available regularly. Almost every popular CMS releases security updates and major version updates regularly at least once a quarter. We keep your site secure without you having to think about it. Whenever WordPress issues a security update, we test it, then proactively apply it to your site.

2. A website will typically have some plugins installed on it, sometimes even up to 10 to 20 plunging installed. Just like WordPress itself regular updates will become available, you will need to test each one, then upgrade each one and then test some more. Just leave JamJo look after this for you and each month we will search for new releases of all your plugins and proactively apply them to your site.

3. WordPress allows posts to be saved in two different ways. Firstly, it autosaves every 30 seconds (but overwrites the same copy every time). Secondly, it allows you to manually save a post revision by hitting the “Save Draft” button. Each manual save creates a new post revision file – which can take up a lot of space and create quite a mess and ultimately slow your site down when this takes place month after month after month.

No need to worry though – JamJo has a feature that allows us to control the number of post revisions that are saved per post on your site. Therefore we will keep your site tidy and speedy behind the scenes.

4. Database Optimization. Keeping an optimized database is an important part of running your WordPress website. Over time, your MySQL database will build up overhead that slows down your website and compromises performance. With JamJo, your databases can be kept in tip-top shape as we schedule a database optimization task each month for you. Just leave it up to us.

Security: Virus/Malware scanning

Securing JamJo and the sites we interact with has always been our highest priority. We use state-of-the-art encryption and security standards that go above and beyond what WordPress, itself, offers, to ensure that your site is protected.

Securi.net integration. Our integration with Sucuri.net will ensure that your site is free of malware and other harmful viruses. With these tools, you we easily check the health of your site, and if there are any problems, we can quickly fix them.

Never wake up to your site having been hacked again. We automatically scan for, and fix, many hacking attempts on your site. Our guarantee: We’ll do everything we can to ensure your site won’t get hacked. And if your site still gets hacked, we’ll fix it…for free.

SEO Statistics

Why spend money on expensive SEO packages? We include powerful SEO analysis tools without the extra costs. Use this information to know where you stand, and use it to improve your search engine rankings.

Keyword Rankings. We include powerful keyword research and ranking tools built right in. Know which words your sites rank well for, and identify the other areas where you can improve. Then use this information to optimize your content for maximum impact.

Google Analytics. Checking in on your sites’ performance is a breeze with our Google Analytics integration. All of the vital information that you need to make informed decisions about which directions your site should take is always available to you in weekly reports.

Reliable Website Backups in the cloud

Your website data is really valuable — you’re only a moment away from complete disaster. So make sure you have backups in place! Use our service and enjoy premium-quality backup services for all of your websites. Stop struggling with backup plugins and stop paying for backup services! When you host with JamJo, we automatically back up your site every day—files and database—and you can restore it easily with a few clicks. Included at no charge with your business and professional plans and then rest assured knowing that your data will be safe and retrievable.

Most people hold their backups on a local hard-drive (their computer) or on their actually server which is of course not such a good idea, we hold your backup on a second location in the cloud so it can be retrieved at anytime. With your backups under our control, you have nothing to worry about.

Website Uptime Monitoring and Traffic Spikes

With premium uptime monitoring tools, we’ll ensure that your website will continue to run smoothly so that your business can continue to function at full capacity. But if something does go wrong, we’ll be the first to know and will respond promptly.

Powerful update notifications. We will be the first to know when there is a website update available for your website, plugin, backup, and security feature available for your site. With our notifications, enjoy the peace of mind that comes with knowing your sites are up to date.

Traffic Alerts. Did someone prominent link to you? Has your latest post gone viral? Is your site being attacked by spam bots? With our powerful alerts tool, we’re able to monitor traffic spikes. Now you can be sure to take advantage of great opportunities.

Website Performance scan Tools

1. Google Page Speed: Site load speed is extremely important to the success of a website and we keep tracking this for each of our clients. With that in mind, we thought that integrating the renowned Google Page Speed and Yahoo! YSlow optimization analysis tools with JamJo would be a good idea.

2. Google Malware: Malware is a big issue in this day and age, for more than one reason. Not only is it a potential security threat, it can destroy the content on your site (so be sure to back up regularly!), and it can destroy your rankings in Google. If Google spots malware on your site, it will be ruthless in removing it from their index. We scan your site regularly to make sure it remains free of malware.

3. Broken Links Checker: Broken links are not a nice thing. There are few things more frustrating for a website user reading, than hitting a 404 error page. As is usually the case, prevention is the best cure, which is where the Broken Links Checker tool comes in. As standard, JamJo will check your blog’s homepage and also pages deep within your website.

4. Backlinks: If you’d like to find out who is linking to your site, we can tell you. Our tool utilizes the Blekko search engine (which filters out spam, content farms and malware) and presents a list of all indexed backlinks. It won’t be a comprehensive list (that doesn’t exist), but it is a starting point for you to find out more. This list will include any links that you have created yourself (deliberately or inadvertently), such as with blog comments and forum links.