Category: Uncategorized

BEST PRACTICES TO PREVENT A WORDPRESS HACK

WordPress is the most widely preferred Content Management System (CMS) out there. More than 1/3rd of websites run on WordPress worldwide, and this number will keep on increasing even further each year due to WordPress’s ease. However, along with its advantages, WordPress comes along with its faults. The major flaw is – A WordPress Hack, i.e., when your website consisting of millions of users gets into unwanted hands.

What happens when your WordPress site gets hacked?

• Files can get uploaded to the server containing malicious code or PHP backdoors.
• Files already on the server, such as your theme files, can get modified.
• Harmful code can get injected into your WordPress database.
• Numerous posts and pages can get published containing spam code.
• Your site can get redirected to malware sites.

In simpler terms, having your site hacked will make you end up in huge trouble. It can take hours for you to recover your site, and by that time, Google might decide to blacklist your website, which will be a big hit for your SEO. It is always easier to prevent a WordPress hack rather than recovering from one.

It is inevitable for you to stress about the possibility of your website getting hacked. But, there is one thing to remember. Your WordPress site will remain safe if you take the necessary steps diligently. Now, you must be wondering what practices I can regularly implement to prevent my website from being hacked as a developer.

Let’s understand some of the best practices that can help you safeguard your WordPress website in the long run:

Keep your WordPress Version, Themes & Plugins up to date:

The most obvious security measure to be taken is regularly updating the WordPress version and the themes and plugins running on your site.

Each update of WordPress not only brings a wide variety of new features but significantly brings with it bug fixes and security fixes.

Although this practice is pretty apparent, many developers forget to update these functionalities and leave their websites vulnerable to a hack. One of the significant steps you can take towards protecting your website is regularly doing these updates without fail.

Never Overload your website with Themes & Plugins:

WordPress provides you the feature to customize and enhance your website’s look through thousands of plugins and themes of your choice. Although it is necessary to customize and extend your site’s capabilities, it should not come at the price of your site’s security. Security should be your No.1 priority.

Even if your WordPress, Themes, and Plugins are updated, there is still a chance that your site might be at risk.

Why? Because WordPress does Plugin Enumeration, allowing hackers to figure out what plugins your site is using.

Therefore, avoid installing unnecessary plugins and always read about the plugin you are about to install from the developer’s site. Trust the plugins or themes which are being widely used and being actively updated by its developers.

Disable File Editing

Whenever you install a theme or plugin, WordPress permits “Admin” to edit the PHP files associated with those themes and plugins by default. The editing can get quickly done from the Admin interface.

However, when your website gets hacked, and the hackers gain access to your Admin Account, the first thing they look out for is whether File Editing is enabled.

If it is left enabled, hackers can easily inject and execute malicious code on the server, thus destroy your website within minutes.

To prevent this, add the following piece of code in the wp-config.php file: –

define(‘DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT’, true)

Always use SFTP-SSH instead of Plain FTP:

Both FTP and SFTP-SSH are used to connect to the webserver and upload files on them.

Using SFTP is the same as FTP. However, there is a key difference between them. When you connect to your WordPress site using Plain FTP, your password gets sent to the server unencrypted, i.e., it is visible and can get easily stolen. On the other hand, when you connect using SFTP, your password and other data are sent to the server in an encrypted format, i.e., your password is never sent in the clear and cannot get intercepted by a hacker.

Therefore, always change the protocol from FTP to SFTP-SSH when connecting to your website.

Strong Passwords for all your WordPress Accounts

Many potential threats can get avoided if you implement good security habits from the beginning. A strong password is a crucial facet of this.

Passwords are the keys to your WordPress site. Therefore, never make the following mistakes while creating a password: –

• Use of any permutation of your real name, company name, or the name of the website.
• A word from a dictionary, in any language.
• A short password.
• Use of numeric-only or alphabetic-only password (Mixture of both is best).

While creating a password, the primary purpose is to eliminate a brute force attack’s possible success.

Apart from a strong password, you can even opt for HTTP authentication or two-factor authentication.

In Conclusion, if you plan to set up a WordPress website for your use, or your online business, always follow these practices. By no means will these practices make your site perfect in terms of security, but they will ensure a sizeable authentication layer to make your site nearly impenetrable.

If you want recommendations on which plugins and themes will best suit your WordPress website, look no further than 6DegreesIT. Our professional WordPress developers will guide you in ensuring the highest security level for your website while improving your website’s overall look.

Contact us today!

HEADLESS CMS: What is it? It’s Working & Benefits

With the growth of the Internet, businesses and individuals worldwide have started investing in developing a website for their brand. For development, they either hire a web development agency or if, they are capable enough, do it themselves. But, what if you lack the technical knowledge to develop a website? The solution is using a CMS.

What is a CMS?

A Content Management System (CMS) is a software to develop a website with a pre-defined design or template. In this way, you can build and manage your website without coding from scratch and can channel all your focus on the content of your website. Some widely used examples of CMS are WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. All these traditional CMSes allow users to create, modify, manage, and publish quality content in a user-friendly interface. But, these CMSes lack the functionality of developing a mobile or television app with the same content as the web app. What’s the alternative? A Headless CMS.

What is a Headless CMS?

A Headless CMS only deals with the content. Once the content gets created and edited, it gets published via an Application Programming Interface (API). In this way, Headless CMS does not have any effect on the front-end, and content is ready to get delivered on any device. Therefore, a Headless CMS is also known as a Back-End Only CMS.

For a CMS, the “head” refers to where the content will end up, i.e., the output, and the “body” is where the content will get stored, i.e., the database. In the case of a Headless CMS, you don’t require a “head” because you get to decide or choose which heads your content gets sent to.

How does a Headless CMS differ from a Traditional CMS?

In the case of Traditional CMS, the process starts with content creation by the writers, editors, and graphic designers. This content gets stored in the database (body). Developers design a template, and the content gets delivered to the audience through web pages (head).

In the case of Headless CMS, once the content gets stored in the database, an API is used to deliver the content through a raw data format (most commonly in JSON) to any application. This process means that your content gets decoupled from the presentation layer (front-end), i.e., your app or website is no longer tied to the CMS any more.

Working of a Headless CMS

The working of a Headless CMS contains two major components:

• Giving writers, editors, graphic designers an interface to manage and update content
• Providing this content to the developers through APIs to build applications

Some Headless CMSes allow users to host the entire solution on their server and database. But, users will have to perform their scaling and operations.

The majority of Headless CMSes get offered as Software as a Service (SaaS), i.e., users will have to log into a web app, and all APIs will get hosted in a cloud-based back end.

Benefits of a Headless CMS

Cost-Efficient for Clients

Clients won’t get restricted to a website. It’s easy to use the same database for mobile apps as well, which saves a lot of time and money for the project. Also, Headless CMSes are already highly secure. Therefore, you don’t have to pay for extra security, as in the case of a Traditional CMS.

Blazing Fast Websites

The user experience should always be the number one priority. If the loading time takes ages, no visitor would be interested in your website. Headless CMSes allow the use of frameworks like Gatsby and Next.js, which help in creating super-fast websites for your business.

Omni-channel: Expand Your Business

In today’s digital landscape, you don’t want to fall behind your competition. A Headless CMS, being Headless, allows the facility for clients to venture into websites, apps, voice assistants, and even augmented reality & IoT, seamlessly.

High-Level of Security

Due to the design of a Headless CMS, a hacker can never access the content publishing platform from the database, which reduces the chances of a DDoS attack massively.

No Compromise in Website Performance

In a Headless CMS, the front-end gets separated from your back-end. Therefore, if you face any issues or errors in the back-end, it won’t result in any downtime to your website. In this way, the performance doesn’t get compromised, and your business isn’t affected at all.

No Collection of Unnecessary Clutter

In the case of a Traditional CMS, developers tend to end up with lots of unnecessary code. On the other hand, a Headless CMS allows you to choose the functionalities you require.

Seamless Integration & Innovation

As the content gets delivered through an API, you can seamlessly deliver the content to any medium your business requires.

Moreover, innovation can get done quickly. In the case of a Traditional CMS, you would have to re-implement the entire CMS, which can get time-consuming. A Headless CMS enables you to make innovative changes by tweaking the front-end.

Increased Flexibility for Development Team

As mentioned above, a Headless CMS doesn’t deal with the front-end. Therefore, developers have the flexibility to use any language for front-end development. You can even move one framework to another, and the CMS will not get affected at all.

In Conclusion, modern businesses demand a more flexible and customizable CMS that delivers your expectations and the best product for your audience. And Headless CMSes provide the desired level of security, scalability, and time-efficiency required from the client’s perspective.

If you plan to develop a website for your business but are not technically sound, look no further than 6DegreesIT . Our professional developers have the experience of using all types of CMSes, be it traditional or headless, and will create the most secure and reliable product for you.

Contact us today!

TAKE YOUR BUSINESS ONLINE- BEST ECOMMERCE WEBSITE BUILDERS IN 2020

In the modern business world, e-commerce is the need of customers, time, businesses, and nations.
Since its inception, e-commerce has changed the face of retail all across the world. And as the pandemic has pushed on, consumer’s need for an online store has risen to an unprecedented height.
There are many reasons why we are watching the growth of a new e-commerce website on the internet almost daily. A wider global reach and decreased business costs are just a few reasons why most retailers gravitate towards an online store.
So, how can we start our very own Online Business?
The first thing you require is a Website. To develop a website, you will need an e-commerce platform, a software that will provide you all the tools to start and operate an online business.
Now, there are countless e-commerce platforms & website builders available to get used for an e-commerce website development. But what will be best for you?

Let’s glance over the Pros and Cons of FIVE e-commerce platforms & website builders and to which business they are best suited-

1. Shopify

Shopify is a fully hosted platform through which you can quickly develop your store using pre-built templates and a step-by-step process for adding products and other key e-commerce features.

Pros:

• Beginner-friendly, super-easy setup
• Clean and Simple GUI
• Fast load time
• Sell products on multiple channels (like Facebook, Amazon, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.)
• Abandoned cart recovery for visitors who didn’t complete the checkout process
• 1-click upsell, i.e., once your customer completes checkout- an offer window will appear with a better, more expensive product. All customer has to do is click one button to add it to their order- that’s it!

Cons:

• Tough to customize Shopify Themes if you are not familiar with “Liquid”- Shopify’s self-developed PHP language
• The checkout process can’t be customized.
• Weak in terms of SEO/ranking capabilities
• A lot of Shopify add-on apps come at a hefty price.

Best Suited For:

• Beginners/Owners of Small Businesses.

2. BigCommerce

BigCommerce gets widely appraised as one of the most flexible and scalable options among all e-commerce website development platforms. It offers the same features and functionalities of other platforms but allows far more scalability as your online business grows.

Pros:

• Highly scalable, i.e., as your online store grows, BigCommerce grows with you
• Sell products on multiple channels (like Facebook, Amazon, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.)
• Strong SEO features/capabilities
• Wide range of in-built features

Cons:

• Not best for beginners due to its reasonably technical nature
• Inconsistent loading speed
• No 1-click upsells
• No built-in feature available to make your website Multi-lingual (can only do via code)

Best Suited For:

• Small businesses that are looking to scale up.

3. WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a FREE plug-in for WordPress websites that provides e-commerce features and functionalities.
The open-source nature of WooCommerce makes it highly customizable and overshadows the money you would have to shell out for web hosting, security certificates (SSL), payment options, etc.

Pros:

• Free
• Highly-customizable
• Best platform for SEO
• Optimal Security

Cons:

• Your site has to use WordPress
• Too many plug-ins hamper performance (take up a lot of memory)
• Hosting can be expensive.
• No customer service support

Best Suited For:

• Users who own a WordPress website and want a free, easy-to-install plug-in that lets their site have shopping cart functionalities.

4. Magento

As the best platform for large-scale businesses, Magento helps develop a feature-rich, highly customizable e-commerce website. However, it should be avoided by small businesses and those with little knowledge about web development.

Pros:

• Robust and Feature-rich
• Strong SEO and marketing features
• 1-click upsells
• Highly customizable and scalable

Cons:

• Highly Expensive Plans & Themes
• Not for beginners, i.e., you need to have professional web development experience to build and manage a site using Magento

Best Suited For:

• Medium to Large scale retail businesses having the budget to create a highly customizable and robust e-commerce website.

5. Squarespace

The primary attraction of Squarespace is its simplicity. Even a beginner in web development can quickly figure out how to create a great looking website using the Squarespace interface.
However, this “too-simple” approach might not suit some businesses and their owners.
Pros:

• Super easy to set up and use
• An excellent choice for basic stores
• Wide range of stunning templates and themes

Cons:

• Limited e-commerce integrations
• Limited payment gateways/options as compared to other platforms

Best Suited For:

• Businesses, looking for a dummy-friendly website builder that offers plenty of stylish themes and robust content-building features.

In conclusion,there are many options for e-commerce website development, making the right one extremely crucial.
The right choice will grow your business at lightning speed, while a wrong choice would lead to a dead end.
Still, confused? Then no need to fret, as 6DegreesIT helps businesses like yours in creating an e-commerce store.
Our professional developers can guide you through the journey and make your work far more straightforward.
Contact our team today!

6DegreesIT- Helping Startups Grow to the Next Level

A rise in the growth of start-ups or small businessesis the most fascinating thing to witness in the global economy today. A start-up is a seed that requires a foundation and proper branding to develop into a tree. This is where 6DegreesIT comes into the frame.

6DegreesIT, with a history of helping 20+ start-ups to turn their inventive ideas into reality, and 2000+ small and medium businesses to scale, aims at rendering all possible technical support to turn even the Idea of a Start-Up into reality.

The objective of 6DegreesIT is to support your start-up at every step of the way- right from the Ideation, Expansion, and Peak to the Recovery stage.

How do We Remain with You At Each Step?

Here is how we will be with you at Every step towards achieving your goal of establishing your start-up:

1. Supporting you from the Roots –

• If you have a scattered, unplanned idea but no direction – We can come on board to understand the whole idea & help you pull ideas together.
• We’ll also understand and prioritize organizational goals and existing challenges, breaking everything into multiple milestones.
• NDA Signing – we know your idea is valuable to you.
• We’ll speak to you, ask questions, and provide paper writing help suggestions.

By the end of this stage, the walkway will be ready!

2. Technology / CTO as a Service-

• Keeping multiple parameters within radar, like your Budget, Timeline, No. of approx users, Long-term & short-term goals, we’ll finalize the tech stack.
• Depending upon how soon you would want to strike to market plus the no. of features you would want to launch, we’ll strategize to select between building an MVP and a full-fledged solution. (For startups, we always prefer building MVP)

3. Dedicated Team-

• Right from Business Analyst who does the competitive analysis to designers, developers, QA, Support team, PM, and digital marketing managers – We have passionate professionals, with unbeatable talent working for our firm.
• With the idea evolving to a higher level, as users come onboard & provide their feedbacks, we change gears & develop systems accordingly.

This phase may range from those few months to years where we work closely!

4. Full-fledged Development-

• If you are looking for funding, we help you build a pitch deck, bolstering you by providing all the crucial information from the Tech end.
• If you are already bootstrapped, we’ll begin with strategizing a procedural approach.

5. Acquiring a good Customer Base-

• Our Digital Marketing team is armed with their expertise in increasing consumer traffic for online businesses.
• Marketing activities will be rigorously followed to ensure the high-ranking and impact factor of your businesson various search platforms.
• We guide you in determining your marketing objectives like developing the branding strategy for your business.
• Through numerous strategies, we expand your reach and build your brand by generating organic traffic towards your website.
• The traffic attracted to your website will be converted into leads, who eventually turn into customers.
• The conversion rates of all the parameters of your marketing campaign will be regularly monitored and tracked.
• Our team will regularly optimize the growth of your site through various optimization techniques.

6DegreesIT offers multiple services and solutions from a single place to save your precious time, overall cost, and guarantee easy management on your side.

We ensure that if you have any idea for a start-up or small business, we will provide you full support to turn it into a reality.

6DegreesIT launches the phase 2 of AI Chatbot : Stress Releasing App

Stress is the current constant that is prevailing worldwide, and today, it has become the second reason after Corona that is responsible for deaths.With the developing technology, there needs to be a cure for the increasing stress, depression, tension, which employees at corporate offices and the whole world right now: during COVID-19 pandemic, is experiencing.

The most useful solution to this is a Mobile Application like 6DegreesIT’s recent development for a Client – an AI Chatbot based Stress releasing App. This application provides emotional assistance to its users, and has amazing helpful features like audio journals, stress busting tips, interactive chat rooms, and various relaxing activities for calming the anxious mind state. The app is created with an intention to spread happiness and release stress.

While the current scenario poses a challenge for corporate offices worldwide, employees at 6DegreesIT are rigorously working from home to exceed the demands of our client This is due to the diligence and persistence of the developers at 6Degrees that even during this Pandemic situation, we were able to successfully launch the Phase 2 of this application recently.

There are numerous ways in which the app proves to be the Best Stress Reliever. Find some of them below:

• Application for Emotional Assistance
  Our developers’ consistent hard work resulted in the release of the app which not only had over 5.6K users within one month of its release, but also bagged 11000+ no. of downloads.The app has proven to be a great emotional assistance for the users so far. Developed for a client based at Singapore, the app was built with Hybrid Agile approach.
• Calming Audio Suggestions
  With its Phase 2 having released recently, the app has been upgraded with various useful inbuilt apps such as “stress busters” that is mapped with audio suggestions tagged as – Calm in 30 sec , Calmer in 1 Min , Conquer Your Fears , Detox Your Mind , Sleep Well,etc. These helpful audio suggestions can be utilized when you experience certain difficulties like sleeplessness, or anxiety attacks. You can follow the audio suggestions step-by-step provided by the bot/assistant, which will continue from other places in the app too.
• Application Detects Mood
  The app is intended to reduce stress and invoke happiness in people coping up with dooming times, whether in corporate world or today, in the overall pandemic scenario. The app is basically a chat system that contains mood detection along with stress busters. Being intuitive, the app is built with Natural Language Processing for conversation and mood detection of the user.
• Relaxing Activities and Audio Journals to Vent out
  This app is induced with activities like happiness rating graph,nature sounds, coloring, and games to help reduce the user’s stress. Not only does it promote a sharing platform to encourage the users for venting their thoughts and images, it also comes along with an AI chatbot, where you can freely record audio journals, goals and reminders.
• Progress Tracker
  Another helpful feature of the app is Progress Tracking, where the users can track the growth so far on their journey towards joy/stress-reduction. This feature also enables them to scroll through the history of activities done on the app.

Conclusively, the App is designed to spread happiness and provide emotional assistance for people trying to cope up with depressing or stressful phase. Read more about the Application here: https://www.6degreesit.com/case_study/ai-chatbot/

Influencer Marketing: 2020’s Popular Digital Marketing Approach

One of the most popular and effective ways of Digital Marketing in today’s era is through Social Media Marketing. As social media marketing is rising, so are the various ways to carry it out. Influencer marketing is a type of social media marketing wherein individuals who are present on particular platforms have garnered a social following making them experts in their niche. For example, a beauty influencer will have a following of other individuals who are interested in makeup or beauty products. The same would be applicable on other categories such as sports, fashion, travel, food, and so many more.

Earlier, being an influencer on social media was a hobby that many individuals took up because it was something they enjoyed. Although today, for many people globally, it has become their career. This is a big plus point for brands because endorsements, product mentions, shout-outs, etc. is what these influencers are best at, it is what they do!

In the year 2020, the influencer marketing industry is set out to be worth $10 billion! That’s a massive number but then again it is continuing its growth and some of the biggest brands on a global scale rely on this approach. One of the other benefits of this type of marketing is that nowadays you can hire influencers based on which platform you want to target customers from, and as you may all know, the number of platforms existing as of now are tremendous. They include:

1. Instagram
2. Snapchat
3. Facebook
4. Twitter
5. Twitch
6. TikTok
7. Pinterest
8. LinkedIn
9. YouTube
10. Whatsapp

On these platforms, there are different types of influencers that a brand can target:

1. Nano Influencers – these are the individuals who have a following up to 10,000 people on their social media accounts.
2. Micro Influencers – these are the individuals who have a following between 10,000 to 100,000 on their social media accounts.
3. Macro Influencers – these are the individuals who have a following between 100,000 to 1,000,000 on their social media accounts.
4. Mega Influencers – these are the individuals who have at least 1,000,000 plus following on their social media accounts. Typically, this could also include the celebrity category.

There are still many brands that choose to opt for the traditional methods of marketing and branding, but what they tend to forget is how personal influencer marketing is. The factor of trust is also included in this. People, no matter what age, would trust a product far more when someone they like, love and follow shows them to use it rather than seeing it in a commercial or in a magazine.
Apart from this, influencers have come up with creative ways to endorse and provide information about a brands’ products. This could be unboxing of a new Apple iPhone or doing a makeover with Maybelline’s new line of makeup. Due to this, people who view their favourite influencers using products, they then feel the desire to buy it and use it as well.

Influencers tend to put in a lot of time and effort into their social media postings. Many times, a 10 second story on Instagram takes 10 hours of planning. This is how precise influencers are because at the end of the day, this is their work. And so, the trust factor works both ways, a brand can trust an influencer and so can the people following them.

Trends in marketing are constantly changing but influencer marketing is here to stay and is only heading towards growth. Now is the time for brands, big or small, to minimize their expenses and maximize their reach with this approach to marketing!