Ty the Web Guy

Everything Web™ Since 1995

Ty Cahill

Content Management Systems – Which to Choose?

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There are many online content management systems in use today. The top three that people talk about are WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla. Each has their own focus and strengths. So which should you choose?

WordPress is by far the most popular CMS around. It’s free and open source. WordPress started as blogging software, not a true CMS. Over time people started using it to manage websites and more CMS features have been added. Today it powers more than 74 million websites and blogs, with a 63.2% market share (April 2020). It has a strong and active community of developers and users.

Joomla is in a distant second place behind WordPress in market share, carrying 4.2%. Joomla is really good for building portal sites and can have a slightly different approach to managing content instead of pages. Most of my clients have a difficult time understanding how Joomla is set up. If you need to build a portal site with a lot of content, Joomla may be your answer.

Drupal is another open source CMS that is extremely flexible and powerful, and comes in third place with a market share of 2.8%. It, too, has a vibrant developer and user community. Drupal tends to carry a steeper learning curve than WordPress. Many government agencies have adopted Drupal because its permissions and workflow are much better than WordPress.

Squarespace and Wix are some very popular website builders that are not open-source, and require monthly subscriptions. They each have about 2.5% market share.

There are many more good and powerful content management systems out there. Sitecore is very popular on the .NET platform (disclosure: I’m a Sitecore Certified Developer), MODX is great for marketing sites.

Online content management systems get most of the attention, but Dreamweaver  is another solid option for building and maintaining websites. Dreamweaver is software from Adobe that gets installed on your computer. You manage the website locally and copy changes to your hosted website.

Have any questions about which CMS is the best pick for your specific needs? Get in touch!

(Market share source: https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/content_management)

How to Create Strong Passwords

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So how do we create strong passwords that are harder to crack? Common sense certainly plays a leading role, but here are some quick guidelines:

  • Don’t use words found in the dictionary.
  • Mix in numbers and symbols, when possible.
  • Use capital and lowercase letters.
  • Length matters! Longer passwords can take significantly longer to crack.
  • Never re-use a password from another website.
  • Use a password manager to generate unique, random, strong passwords. My favorite is 1Password.

 

 

Backdoor Account in Western Digital MyCloud NAS Devices

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If you own or use a Western Digital MyCloud network storage device, listen up! Several security vulnerabilities were found last year by researchers, and Western Digital has recently fixed the problem…but you’ll need to update the firmware on the device. The problems include a backdoor account and other vulnerabilities that together can allow attackers to gain full access to the device. And once they’re on your NAS, they have full access to every other machine on your network.

Check if your MyCloud is vulnerable and update the firmware as soon as possible.

Vulnerable:

  • MyCloud
  • MyCloudMirror
  • My Cloud Gen 2
  • My Cloud PR2100
  • My Cloud PR4100
  • My Cloud EX2 Ultra
  • My Cloud EX2
  • My Cloud EX4
  • My Cloud EX2100
  • My Cloud EX4100
  • My Cloud DL2100
  • My Cloud DL4100

Not Vulnerable:

  • MyCloud 04.X Series
  • MyCloud 2.30.174

More information is available at BleepingComputer.

UI by Ty

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The user interface (UI) is a key ingredient of the user experience (UX) of your website. UI by Ty is a collection of UI elements for use in WordPress and other websites, all based on industry best practices and focusing on simplicity and easy of use.

How to Display Your Copyright Notice

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Do you know how to properly display a copyright message on website? Well first, let me tell you that having a copyright notice on your website is unnecessary. The U.S. Copyright Office clearly states that your website and other creative content has “protection the moment it is created and fixed in a tangible form that it is perceptible either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.”

Although displaying a copyright notice isn’t required, it’s good to post one so it’s clear who is claiming ownership of the work. The Copyright Office even recommends registration (even on websites) if you need to seek protection in a court of law, making it more difficult for the infringing party to claim innocence.

Acceptable Ways to Display Your Copyright Notice

There are four ways to display your copyright on your website. They are:

  1. Copyright 2020 Cahill Interactive LLC
  2. Copyright 1995-2020 Cahill Interactive LLC
  3. © 2020 Cahill Interactive LLC
  4. © 1995-2020 Cahill Interactive LLC

And here are a few of the rules:

  1. You can use “Copyright” or ©, but you don’t need to use both.
  2. There is no period between the date and the organization or person who claims the copyright.
  3. If your website contains material that was created in previous years, you may want to use a date range in the copyright notice.

This goes without saying, but this blog post (or any blog post for that matter), should not substitute for the advice of your attorney. If you’re in doubt or have more detailed questions about your own work, we recommend that you consult a lawyer.

Ember Tips, Tricks, and Training Materials

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I hate Ember.

I love Ember.

Daily I oscillate between those two extremes. But the deeper I get into Ember, the more I can appreciate its design and functionality. It does a lot right out of the box, and whatever it doesn’t do can be added in very easily once your understand Ember’s conventions. Unfortunately, learning those conventions comes with a very steep learning curve. The Ember project has been evolving at a rapid pace and much of the documentation to be found online is outdated or misinformed. So on this page I’m going to list the best documentation I’ve found, and I’ll attempt to keep things up-to-date.

Right now I’m using Ember 2.4 and 2.8, so I’ll avoid linking or commenting on anything in the 1.x version unless it still applies to 2.x. My focus is best practices and patterns for Ember 2.4 and newer.