Joomla! has recently released an update that provides an important security fix.  It's advisable that you update your Joomla powered website as soon as possible.  You can read more about the release and download the update by clicking HERE.

Anytime a new release of popular cms's like Joomla is released, an important question is raised, how are you making sure you're up-to-date?  For security sensitive websites, this even more troublesome to consider if you don't currently have a plan in place.

All of our site maintenance customer's websites have been updated already and sleep well at night not having to worry about every release.  How about you, do you have a plan in place that allows you to sleep comfortably at night knowing your site is up-to-date and safely hosted?  If you're interested in our website maintenance services, drop us an inquiry so we can share the peace of mind we have to offer.  

We often receive questions from customers concerned with keeping their website(s) secure.  They want to know how to keep their website safe from all of those annoying hackers and script kiddies who mean them harm.

The first thing we always suggest is to find a web host that takes security seriously.  Around here security is of the utmost concern.  We don't want to get all technical on you, but here is a small list of just some of what we do to make sure our customers are safe when hosting with us:

• Servers are Reliable, Hardened, and Secure
• Server operating system and control panel installation modified for security
• Firewall Protection
• Brute Force Detection and Evasion
• Apache Dos Prevention/Protection
• Email virus filtering
• File management with secure and correct permissions

A good number of our customers are using Joomla! CMS, so they ask specific questions about what they can do to stay safe.  The main thing you want to be concerned with is keeping your Joomla version updated. You can check the version of your Joomla! 1.5 cms site when logged into your admin area by going to Help > System Info and looking next to "Joomla! Version". You can always find the newest version of Joomla! by going here.

The other main thing you want to be concerned with if you're a Joomla user is your 3rd party extensions. Oftentimes developers of these extensions aren't all too concerned with keeping their extensions secure which can leave your site wide open to hackers. Even if they are keeping things on the up-and-up, it still can be difficult to keep up with all of the updates.

Luckily, Joomla has just made keeping up with 3rd party extension security a bit easier for all of us by releasing an RSS feed to their existing vulnerable extensions list. Make sure to read up on how to make good use of the RSS feed, subscribe to it, and start using it!

Okay, so we're not an international company per se, but we have been getting several hosting customers from overseas as of late. One such new hosting customer from Mexico was happy enough with our services to post a comment on our Joomla! Resources Directory Listing in Spanish:

Simple Source Solutions tiene un excelente servicio y atención a clientes, su tiempo de respuesta es rápido, la información y soporte técnico no te dejarán colgado, lo recomiendo ampliamente. La instalación de Joomla se efectua sin problemas y en menos de 10 minutos, con todo trabajando muy bien.

Tuve problemas con otros proveedores con error de inicio de sesión, error en el Media Manager y error en el Editor TinyMCE y no se comprometen a reparar o arreglar, te engañan y cobran por adelantado sin solucionarte las fallas, en soporte técnico de Site Ground me contestaron que si no publicaba mis articulos sin el editor TinyMCE, o sea directamente en HTML, de plano no los volviera a contactar, así que no te arriesgues y contrata directamente en Simple Source Solutions porque te lo recomiendo.

Here's a loose translation a friend did for us:

Simple Source Solutions has excellent service and attention to client, their time of response is rapid, and the IT and tech support will not leave you hanging. I reccommend them highly. Installing Joomla was effected without problems and in less than 10 minutes, with everything working very well.

I had problems with other providers with session initialization errors, Media Manager errors and errors in the Editor TinyMCE, which they didn't know how to undertake repairing or fixing them. Other providers deceive you and charge ahead without fixing problems. In Site Ground tech support, I replied that if he did not publish my articles without the TinyMCE editor, or directly in HTML, I would flat not contact them again. So play it safe and hire directly from Simple Source Solutions because I recommend it.

I had problems with other providers with session initialization errors, Media Manager errors and errors in the Editor TinyMCE, which they didn't know how to undertake repairing or fixing them. Other providers deceive you and charge ahead without fixing problems. In Site Ground tech support, I replied that if he did not publish my articles without the TinyMCE editor, or directly in HTML, I would flat not contact them again. So play it safe and hire directly from Simple Source Solutions because I recommend it.

They apparently didn't seem to like siteground's supposed "joomla friendly hosting", but they sure seem to like us.  Thanks for the great feedback!

While we won't be moving our headquarters overseas just quite yet, as you can see, we do very happy customers from places like the Philippines, Spain, Canada, and now of course Mexico.

If you're interested in "Getting Simple" with Joomla! hosting, be sure to check out our Simple Hosting Plan. Starting at $5.95/month with great support–you'll soon be glad you did.

Not too very long ago, when it came to getting higher page ranks and better keyword search engine results for pages on your website, one was left with very few tools.  There were very few options–at least not any that were easy or made much sense.

One such arcane tool was known as link exchanges, which left you with the task of searching for quality sites that would place a link to your site on their site in exchange for placing a link to their site on your site.  Finding the rights sites with good page ranks was a big task to say the least.  Then then you had to contact the site owner and get them to agree to the exchange and then keep up with all the links to make sure that they were holding up their end of the deal.

Sure there are plenty of "link submission" tools out there that make this task a bit easier, but they don't really answer the problem that arises from maintaining these linking relationships.

Not anymore.  There's a new and very unique resource that dynamically places backlinks to your website from other sites.  It's called automaticbacklinks.com and really adds a "set it and forget it" kind of functionality to backlinking.

It works by giving you code that's ready to go for PHP, .net, Wordpress, Joomla! 1.0 & 1.5, and Drupal to place on your website which determines each page's rank, gives you credit based on each of your pages' rank, and in turn gives you credit for each page.  You setup backlinking campaigns where you choose pages you want backlinks to, the text you want to appear in the link, and then automatically finds and places your links on sites until your credit is expired.  Additionally, they offer you the ability to purchase more backlinks as you wish.

Since we've started using automaticbacklinks.com, we've seen top 10 results for several different keywords and continue to see our page ranks and alexa ranking skyrocket.  And all without the extraneous effort required when it comes to link exchanges.

If you're in the business of SEO, you really should add it to your arsenal of tools.  You will be very glad you did.