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As the end of the Summer approaches, some have taken longer vacations while others are working even harder. This is especially true for the developers of web applications.  In this post we’ll take a sneak peak at what’s cooking behind the scenes of some of the most popular applications.

Joomla!

This summer Joomla! mostly patched security and bugs issues in the current 1.5 version. Support for the old 1.0 Joomla! has finally been officially discontinued.

Work on its next long-awaited version 1.6 seems to be quite busy. We hear the new features are extensive and promising. Google’s Summer of code has also contributed greatly to it, so our expectations are growing even greater.

The only bad news so far is that the next Joomla official stable release is not scheduled yet. But we’ll keep our eyes open!

Drupal

Lately, the folks at Drupal have been releasing security patches mainly and there seems to be little activity for the last 2 months as a whole.

Plans for new releases and features are not proclaimed, so probably most of the work is done behind the scenes. We sure do hope so!

WordPress

WordPress has definitely proven to be the fastest growing and feature-rich open source web application. This summer they released a few mainly security – bug fixes.

Obviously,  they have focused mainly on the next 2.9 release and there has been an interesting feature request vote on their webpage. Plans for its official release are also unclear. Hopefully it will be available before Joomla 1.6.

Menalto Gallery

Earlier this year Gallery developers decided to rewrite its code from scratch. Therefore, work on the old 2.* branch was abandoned in favor of the new version 3. Currently there is a second beta version and things look quite promising. Keeping our fingers crossed!

In other news, here is Menalto’s latest usability survey.

vBulletin

vBulletin have been quite active lately too. They’re on the way of releasing a new branch entering version 4. Holding up to the promises for lots of new features and enhancements, the alpha version has been released already and is under heavy testing.

PhpBB

About a month ago PhpBB posted an interesting article about its significant development changes. That’s how we knew about their plans to work on 2 branches simultaneously – 3 and 4. Version 4 will appear as a complete rewrite, so we hope this will not slow down its release too much.

Magento

Things at Magento are going fast as usual. Even when it looks as it couldn’t be further improved , a new alpha- version 1.4 comes along. Upon taking a deeper look, it seems to be rather a bug fix release, though.

They are putting a lot of efforts on the Enterprise edition which is favorable to the business. We see new popular stores built with it every single day.

That’s it for our brief recap of all things new with the most popular web applications. We will make sure to do a new post, if there are any more surprises not to be mised. And our Tutorials section will be updated accordingly, as soon as anything new comes up the horizon.  So, stay tuned.

What are the releases you’re most looking forward to? Also, do spill the beans if you’re keeping an eye on any other web app we’ve missed to follow, but deserves our attention.

By SiteGround Web
Hosting

Needless to say, website security is a major concern for all people in the IT industry.  Indeed, web applications are constantly being improved and security is something all web developers pay special attention to. Alas, hackers are not slacking off either. When known security vulnerability is fixed, they either find another way to exploit it or discover a new one very quickly (or in the worst case, both).

And yet, despite the precautions and improvements, a lot of websites are still getting hacked. Why? The main reason is that many, not to say most, users seriously underestimate security as a whole – not only the security of their websites, but the security of their hosting accounts and even the security of their own computers.

And this is an ideal opportunity for hackers to “show off their skills”. The hackers keep their “software” up to date – new viruses are developed all the time. And while they keep their applications up to date, many users don’t. Once they install an application and start using it, users forget about upgrades and security fixes.

Keeping the above in mind, the next logical question is “What can I do to secure my website?”… Well, I’m glad you asked

Here are a few things you should always do to keep your website secure:
•    Make sure your local computer is safe. For this purpose use reliable updated antivirus software;
•    Update regularly your computer’s software including its base operating system and any third party software installed.
•    Make sure all of your web applications are up-to-date. This includes any modules, components and addons you have added and / or integrated;
•    Pick up strong passwords for the different services you use (email, FTP, etc). Never use one and the same passwords for your different online services.
•    Avoid having directories with permissions above 755. If your applications require such directories, try to put them outside your webroot (public_html) or place a .htaccess file in them containing “deny from all” to restrict public access to these files.
•    Always, and I mean always, back up your website. You should always have a proper backup so that even if someone hacks your site, you can restore its functionality immediately.

You can also check our basic security guidelines for more information on how to keep your website secure. Here are some other useful sites with lots of security tips: bestsecuritytips.com and stopbadware.org.

What do you do to protect your website and applications? We will be happy to hear your experience!

By SiteGround Web
Hosting

This is just a quick update to let you all know that SiteGround is heading to HostingCon 2009! The conference is the worlds’ largest gathering of web hosting professionals and each year brings all important players from the hosting industry together.

This year the event takes place in Washington, D.C. from 10th to 12th August. SiteGround is excited to be attending for the third time now, especially since with a projected attendance of over 2,000 Internet professionals from over 30 countries, the 2009 event promises to be the best yet.

We’re looking forward to meeting all of you! So if you happen to be there, drop us a line or simply come and say hello. It will be a pleasure to talk to you in person.

To those of you who will unfortunately miss the event – don’t worry! You can be sure that we will surprise you with a detailed post on all things new in the hosting industry as soon as we get back.

So stay tuned and enjoy the Summer in the meantime!

By SiteGround Web
Hosting