How to Secure Joomla 3 and Protect it Against Hacker Attack

Joomla is an open source application which is subjected to all sort of hacking attacks. It is important to take all possible measures to protect your Joomla site and to improve its security too.
Securing a Joomla website is a challenging task. That is why companies are doing lot of work to make it safe, such as – Layers of Server-side Security Filters, Automatic Joomla Updates Available, jHackGuard Added to New Installation Automatically, Immediate Response to Zero-day Mass Attacks and many more.

1. Keep Joomla and its extensions up-to-date

The most important part of securing your Joomla website is to keep it updated to the latest version. Mostly in all version releases, there is a facility of fixing security issues. To keep your Joomla extensions up-to-date it is equally important to make your website secure. However, there are many more attacks that utilize security issues in extensions rather than in the actual Joomla 3 core files. When you host with SiteGround, you can simply enable the Joomla Auto-Update feature. This helps you to make sure that your Joomla application is always up-to-date!

2. Use Strong Login Details

Firstly, you need to avoid the use of default user-name, such as – admin or administrator. Secondly, it is important that you should have a strong password for your website, as many attackers try to brute-force your login details. Means they use a list of commonly used passwords to guess yours. To become secure from these kinds of attacks, there are few tips they are: Don’t use common words for passwords like – God, love, pass, admin, etc. Avoid personal information in passwords such as – your personal or your family name. Avoid password generators as password generators use algorithms to generate the passwords. Moreover, this can be compromised by an attacker. Use special characters ( *!@#)$ ), capital letters and numbers in your password.

3. Use Proper File Permissions & Ownership

Another important part of secured Joomla 3 website is to set the right permissions for your Joomla files and folders. For this it is recommended to follow the following suggestions: Set the permissions on your Joomla files to 644, Set the permissions for your Joomla folders to 755, Set the permissions for your configuration.php file to 444, Never use 777(full access) permissions!

4. Use Joomla Security Extensions

The use of security extensions is also an easy way to improve your Joomla website security. There are few security extensions which are available at a free for download by anyone, such as – jHackGuard. Some of the most popular Joomla security extensions are: jHackGuard, Akeeba Admin Tools, jomDefender, jSecure and many more.

5. Often Backup your Joomla Site

It is very important to keep backup on your Joomla 3 site as often as possible. Moreover, you should always keep a backup copy of your Joomla files and database on your local computer. It protects & secures you in case something happens.

6. Protect Your Administrative Page

You can improve the security of your Joomla website by restricting the access to your admin area. Firstly, you can protect the administrator folder by your password of your site. For this purpose, you need to follow the instructions of the tutorial. Once you protect your/administrator folder after that, you need an additional password in order to see the standard administrator login form.

Cloud Storage and Cloud Computing Defined

Cloud storage is a model of data storage. Here the digital data is stored in logical pools. It has physical storage spans which have multiple servers with locations and the physical environment. It is basically owned and managed by a hosting company. Cloud computing is a service of delivering computing as a service rather than a product. In Cloud computing software, shared resources and information are provided not only to computers but also to other devices as a utility, such as – the electricity grid over a network. Clouds are classified as private, public and hybrid.

Web Host

Web Hosting is a service of providing space on the Internet for websites. When you make a website and want it to show to other people, then you will need to publish or upload it with a web hosting service.

Cloud Server and Joomla

Cloud computing is an internet-based computing system. Cloud server has a large group of remote servers and it is networked to offer you sharing of data-processing tasks. It has centralized data storage with online access to computer services or resources. Joomla! is a free open-source content management system. It helps to publish content for the World Wide Web. Joomla! uses programming language to create PHP, and it uses object-oriented programming.

Use of Joomla

Joomla is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) for publishing web content. It is built on a model–view–controller web application framework that can be used independently on the CMS. It uses object-oriented programming.

About Joomla CMS

CMS stands for Content Management System. Joomla! is the CMS development environment which is geared to non-programmers. By using a browser, Joomla can be used for developing and deploying the initial site and then it will be utilized by the site authors for content management. Its framework is designed in a manner which allows the developers for customization and enhancement of the basic capabilities. It has offered around 9,000 free and commercial extensions of Joomla to its Developers.

Joomla! Cloud Hosting and it’s features

Joomla! Cloud Hosting deploys your own Joomla! server in the cloud. Joomla! Cloud Hosting extend stack appliances to run it in a cloud computing environment. You can run its applications on a pay-as-you-go further basis. Joomla! Cloud Hosting offers various features, like – User Management, Media Manager, Language Manager, Content Management, Menu Manager, Template Management, System Features, Extensions and many more.

Free Joomla! Cloud Hosting

Some reputed companies in the market offer their services for free. These free services are very much beneficiary for the beginners. However, they have some limitations too, such as – Limited to subdomains and others.

eApps

eApps is a Joomla cloud hosting service provider company. It has a great technical support staff who are responsive. It offers effective 24/7 customer support through phone, Skype, chat and email support from live human experts. It has up to date versions which are easily accessible to the latest versions of Joomla and also with other applications which you need. It has reliable, high-performance Joomla hosting. It offers dependable service, unparalleled uptime, and very high performance with a reasonable priced 32 or 64 bit Xen Virtual Server.

Joomla, after WordPress, world’s second most popular and majorly used free Content Management System (CMS), assist users in building websites in a simple and easy manner and managing the same effectively. It is a powerful CMS having an intuitive management interface by which all the functions and features are controlled. For Joomla, number of extensions for free are written by users which can extend their functionality and customize to achieve goals. This CMS got the support of a friendly community which is large in size and where freshers or startups get assistance from members who are knowledgeable and experienced ones.

Criteria/ Requirements for Best Joomla Hosting services

For any web host which offers Joomla hosting services, required to meet some specifications to offer high-quality Joomla hosting service.

1. Fully compatible

Using Joomla 1.6.x, 1.7.x, 2.5.x, min requirements for system are MySQL 5.0.4, PHP 5.2.4, Apache 2.x, and If using Joomla 3.x, requirements are MySQL 5.1, PHP5.3.1 and Apache 2.x.

2. Auto Application Installer

Installing Joomla is a technical issue for common people. Web hosting companies which integrate auto application installer with control panel are always recommended.

3. Top-notch performance

Websites having fast speed with prompt loading of web pages results in users/ visitors staying longer on site. It ultimately leads to high performance. Same is for Joomla sites. Good web hosts guaranteed the average web page loading time less than 1 second.

4. 24×7 professional customer support

As technical issues are not easy to resolve by a common man, so it always requires assistance of professionals or technical experts. There is no fixed time at which issue can arise, it can take place at any moment. So, web hosts who offers 24×7 technical support for Joomla related problems are considered as great hosts.

Best Joomla Hosting Service Providers

Joomla Hosting Service providers are large in number, so If you are looking for a best web host who can offer excellent services of Joomla or if user wants to transfer hosting to a new Joomla web host to suit his hosting requirements, then best Joomla Hosting Service Providers are given below:

1. JustHost- It offers highly reliable and quality hosting services. Its plans are cost effective, servers are safe and secure, comes with 24*7 technical support offers a no. of features. It includes Unlimited features like Disk Space, Bandwidth, Domains, E-Mail Accounts, MySQL Databases with Free Site Builder, Instant Setup, Domain & Anytime Money Back Guarantee.
2. Arvixe- Arvixe, a private limited liability corporation, has been operating and offering hosting services to private, small-scale businesses, enterprise-level organizations since 2003. Some of the Unlimited features such as Disk Space, Bandwidth, POP/IMAP/ E-Mail Accounts with features for free like Domain, Site Builder, Online Store with Control Panel is offered.
3. HostGator- HostGator, one of the world’s best reseller, shared and dedicated web hosting provider, offering quality hosting services since 2002 and at present over 2,200,000 domains are hosted. It offers Unlimited Bandwidth and Unlimited Web space with Domain/ File/ Script/ Database Transfer for free, 24/7/365 support, 45 days money back guarantee & 99.9% uptime guarantee.
4. Rochen- Rochen, a professional Joomla web host, having secure and fast servers offers an exceptional customer support for round the clock and high uptime.
5. SiteGround- Provider having more than 5 yrs experience in IT industry, having a good portfolio for hosting solutions, offers Unlimited Web Space & Unlimited Bandwidth, Free Domain Name, Instant Account Activation with high Server Uptime and others.
6. GreenGeeks- GreenGeeks, as its name suggest, is a complete Carbon Neutral Friendly service provider possessing energy efficient servers provides clients with 300% Green Hosting, Unlimited Web Space, Unlimited Email Accounts, Unlimited Data Transfer, Unlimited MySQL Databases.
7. myHosting- It is world’s top notch hosting service provider offering quality and reliable hosting solutions at affordable prices. Having a huge customer base of more than 50,000 clients in more than 170 countries, offering great satisfaction to clients. It offers Unlimited Web Space & Unlimited File Transfer.
8. Site5- Company’s high-end servers are not overloaded offers guaranteed performance. With features like Unlimited Disk Space and Bandwidth, High Uptime, 60-Day Money Back Guarantee, Easy to use Control Panel, it is a good option.
9. 1 and 1- World’s largest & fastest growing hosting company offers good features at best affordable prices is a flexible, profitable and stable provider.
10. FatCow- A great hosting provider offers Unlimited Disk Space, Unlimited Bandwidth, Free Domain Name, etc.
11. Interactive Online- A private organization assist individuals and organizations in building effective online presence in simple and cost effective manner. With Unlimited features like Unlimited Storage, Unlimited Traffic & Unlimited Sites, growing on a constant basis.
12. BlueHost- Since long, Bluehost is offering hosting services to several sites meant for personal and commercial purpose. It’s hosting packages Host Unlimited Domains offers Unlimited Hosting Space and Unlimited bandwidth.
13. HostMonster- A provider comes with a list of features. Some of them are Unlimited Web Space, Unlimited Bandwidth, Unlimited POP/IMAP/ Email Accounts, FTP, SSL, Web stats, PERL, MySQL, PHP, CGI, Free Site Builder & Best Support.
14. Web Hosting Pad- Comprehensive services offered by company are prompt and reliable comes with unlimited features like Hosting Space, Domains, Bandwidth, Databases, Email Accounts, FTP Accounts.

Joomla is an award-winning open-source content management system (CMS). It helps to publish web content and is a model–view–controller which is built in web application framework. It can be used independently on the CMS. Joomla is written in PHP and uses object-oriented programming (OOP) techniques. It has software design patterns and stores data in MySQL, MS SQL or PostgreSQL database. It includes various features like – RSS feeds, page caching, news flashes, printable versions of pages, search, blogs, and support for language internationalization.
Till now, Joomla has offered its services to more then 7,700 free and commercial extensions. It is estimated that after WordPress, it is second most used content management system on the Internet. Joomla enables you to build powerful online applications. It has many aspects which includes ease-of-use and extensibility. Joomla is an open source solution, and it is freely available to everyone.

Overview

Joomla! is one of the world’s most popular software packages which is used to build, manage, organize and publish content for blogs, websites, Intranets and mobile applications. It owes a scalable MVC architecture that is why it is also an excellent base to build web applications. Joomla! has more than 3 percent of the Web running and more than 9 percent of CMS market share.

Joomla! Powers the web presence of hundreds of thousands of government organizations, small businesses, non-profits and large organizations worldwide, such as- Harvard University, McDonald’s, Citibank, eBay, Ikea, and Sony. Its CMS led by an international community which has more than a half million active contributors. Joomla helps not only the most inexperienced user but also the seasoned web developer to make their digital visions a reality.

Content Management System (CMS)

A content management system is basically software which keeps tracking on every piece of content on your Web site. It is much like your local public library that keeps track of books and stores them properly. Content can be just a simple text or music, documents, photos, video or just anything you can think of. A major advantage of CMS is that it does not require any technical skill or knowledge to manage it. So you do not need to worry.

Joomla Features

Joomla has various features, some of the major features are – Multilingual, Easy Upgrades, Integrated Help System, Media Manager, Banner Management, Contact Management, Search better, Search Smarter, Content Management, Nested Categorization, Tagging, Frontend Editing, Content Versioning, Syndication and Newsfeed Management, Menu Manager, Powerful Extensibility, Extensive ACL for all your access control needs.

Deployment

Like many other web applications, Joomla can also run on a LAMP stack. Moreover, many web hosts have control panels which have a power of automatic installation of Joomla. On Windows, Joomla can be installed by using Microsoft Web Platform Installer. It automatically detects and installs dependencies, like – PHP or MySQL. There are many web-sites which offer information regarding installing and maintaining Joomla sites.

Advanced ways of using Joomla

Many organizations have requirements that go beyond what is normally available in the Joomla package. In that case, Joomla’s powerful application framework provides sophisticated add-ons which makes it easy for developers to create that extend which they want with virtually unlimited directions. Joomla is based on MySQL and PHP that is why you can build powerful applications on an open platform which anyone can use, share and support.