How to Secure Custom Design Website After Launching? Users and online visitors will be navigating through your website, even performing online transactions with you over the Internet. Originally published at https://www.proweaver.com/8-ways-secure-custom-design-website-launching.

1. Custom Design Website
After Launching?
How to Secure

2. Introduction
One of the things that you have to ensure after
the launching of your website is its security.
Remember, users and online visitors will be
navigating through your website, even performing
online transactions with you over the Internet.
They definitely want to feel safe and secure when
doing such transactions and your website should
play a big part in ensuring that.

3. Invest in an SSL Certificate
An SSL certificate helps secure the transfer of various important
details between the server and your website. Such important
details include contact information, personal data, and credit
cards, among others. These are all sensitive information that your
clients or customers are wary of parting with online.
If your online business requires sensitive information from
your consumer, an SSL certificate is definitely necessary.
Apart from protecting your/their data, search engines are
also ranking secure websites higher than those that do not.

4. Install security plug-ins
After launching the website with the custom web
design you take pride in, you can improve a page’s
security through plug-ins. There are a lot of
security plug-ins available, free or at a certain
charge. These security plug-ins have certain
features that help protect the website from
various vulnerabilities. Such plug-ins can help
detect malware, identify potential security
vulnerability, and perform virus scans, among
others.

5. Use secure passwords
When setting up an admin password for your website, make sure to use a
secure and difficult password that is hard to guess. As much as possible,
it should be a combination of letters and numbers as well as special
characters if applicable. Make it long, too. Additionally, if your website
stores data from your customers, advise them to set up a strong
password, too.
Invest in algorithms that help improve the encryption of passwords being
used in your website, may it be your admin password or those of your
customers. Two of the best algorithms to choose from are those that
use hashing algorithms as well as salting techniques. Decrypting
passwords that are protected by these algorithms take a lot of time, if
not impossible to guess in an instant.

6. Keep the website and
its software up-to-date
As a website owner, you know that keeping your custom web
design up-to-date is essential in attracting your target market
and providing them with timely and relevant information about
your company. The design is not the only thing that should be
updated. Even the software should be updated. Keeping them
updated helps secure the website.
Keeping everything up-to-date helps prevent a situation where
hackers can abuse security holes found in the older versions of
such software. Newer releases often have workarounds on
these security holes which hackers most likely cannot decipher.

7. Make admin folders hard to locate
Developing a website involves a series of folders and files
that contain the different codes and data that are
responsible for the functionality of such website. These
folders and files each have certain sets of permissions
that regulate who can read or edit the codes or data
stored in the web hosting account. Since this is the case,
it is important to set the right permissions for the kind of
data that are stored in the account. For instance, fewer
permissions can be required for those that are shared
with multiple individuals. Those folders and files with
more important data and information should be locked
down as much as possible to prevent a data breach.

8. Protect the website from
XSS attacks and SQL injections
There are many threats that website owners have to be on the
lookout for. These include XSS attacks and SQL injections. Both can
steal login information not only on your website but also on your
customers’ or online visitors’ pages.
To help protect your website from XSS attacks, you have to make
sure that your server is set in a way that will not allow anything
unauthorized to slip in. it is important to set specific parameters on
what scripts can run on your website such as those that are only run
on your domain and not from other places. You can also opt to
disallow inline JavaScript for further protection.

9. Use simple error messages
The use of simple error messages can actually help your
website a lot. As a best practice, you should limit the amount of
information that you are providing or displaying the error message.
As much as possible, keep the error messages simple.
Too much information can be used and exploited by
hackers to gain unauthorized access to your website’s
directory or do some damage on your website. A detailed
error message can leak secrets to the attackers about your
website and the server with which it is on. If possible, you
might want to offer a short apology and redirect the users
or online visitors back to the previous page.

10. Avoid letting users upload files to
your website
When you allow users to upload files to your
website, you also encourage a big security risk to
happen. Even simple uploads such as changing
profile pictures or avatars can already become a
big security risk. Any file that is uploaded to your
website may contain a script that, upon execution,
can compromise the security of your website.
Think twice about allowing file uploads to your
website. As much as possible, avoid this feature to
ensure the security of your website as well as the
information of your clients stored in your database.

11. Conclusion
There surely are different ways that can help
boost the security of your website. Not only will it
boost such security but also boost your business’
or brand’s credibility. Having a knowledgeable and
experienced web design and development team
will help ensure that your website gets the kind of
security that is required of it.