Enhancing Website Security for Your Peace of Mind

Hosting, Security, Website Tips

At Northwoods Web Designs, we are committed to ensuring the security and reliability of our client’s websites. As part of our ongoing efforts to provide our clients with the best possible website services, we are sharing some crucial items included in our Website Care Services to enhance your website’s security.

SSL Certificates: At Northwoods Web Designs, we prioritize the security of our clients’ websites. That’s why we implement Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates to establish a secure connection between our clients’ websites and their visitors. By having an SSL certificate, we ensure that any sensitive data transmitted through our clients’ websites, such as personal information or credit card details, remains encrypted and protected from potential hackers.

Regular Updates: We understand the importance of keeping our clients’ websites secure. That’s why we proactively monitor and apply regular updates to our client’s website software. By keeping plugins, themes, and CMS versions up to date, we minimize the risk of potential vulnerabilities that can be exploited by attackers. You can rest assured knowing that we prioritize the security of our client’s websites by promptly checking for updates and applying them to protect against potential security breaches.

Website Backups: Our client’s peace of mind is our priority. That’s why we regularly back up our clients’ websites to ensure their security and reliability. In the event of a security breach or website malfunction, our recent backups allow us to quickly restore our clients’ websites to their previous state with minimal data loss or downtime. With our reliable backup system in place, our clients can focus on their business while we handle the security of their websites.

Spam and Malware Prevention: We take proactive measures to protect our clients’ websites from spam and malware. Our team deploys effective spam filtering and malware scanning techniques at both the server and website levels. By regularly scanning and cleaning our clients’ websites, we minimize the risk of potential security vulnerabilities and keep their websites running smoothly and securely.

Regular Security Audits: At Northwoods Web Designs, we are committed to providing our clients with the highest level of security. That’s why we conduct regular security audits and vulnerability assessments for our clients’ websites. By proactively identifying potential loopholes or weaknesses in our clients’ website security infrastructure, we can swiftly patch any vulnerabilities and keep their websites secure. Additionally, our penetration testing allows us to simulate real-world attacks to ensure that our client’s websites are protected against potential threats.

Requiring Strong Passwords: One of the simplest yet most effective ways to protect your website is by using strong passwords. We require strong passwords when accessing our technologies such as our Client Billing Area, or the Website Portal Dashboard where website edits are completed by our clients. We require using a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters.

With Northwoods Web Designs, you can trust that we prioritize our client’s website’s security and take the necessary measures to benefit their online presence.

Interested in our Web Care Services Plans? We currently have availability and would love to welcome you to join our family at Northwoods Web Designs. With our top-notch website maintenance and hosting services, you can rest assured that your website will be secure, optimized, and running smoothly. Join our community of satisfied clients and experience the peace of mind that comes with knowing your online presence is in capable hands. Don’t miss this opportunity to elevate your website’s performance and security. Contact us today and become a valued member of the Northwoods Web Designs family.

Managing your Email Quota for Best Performance

Email, Hosting
email overflow

Although this is geared for our email clients, these tips and information apply to anyone that uses email programs.

We offer email services as a valued added service to our clients who choose to use our Website Care Plan services (Hosting, Maintenance, Security & Support). Our new email services include an abundance of storage to start with, but without routine email maintenance or proper setup of 3rd party clients (Outlook, windows live, apple mail, etc..) it may reach the disk quota rather quickly as all emails and email attachments are stored on the mail server. In addition, the mail accounts’ performance will degrade over time without general cleanup of the mail accounts.


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Rate & Review Deal – Get $25

Hosting, Web Designs

This applies to current or new customers of Northwoods Web Designs who have not left a review yet.

 A positive review is the best compliment 

Simply leave an online review for us on either Google Business ReviewAngie’s List, Facebook Page, or Yelp and for taking the time out of your day you will receive a $25 account credit applied to your next renewal invoice.


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Receive a Mail Delivery Failed Error When Sending Message to Hotmail or Outlook Mail Accounts

Hosting, Web Wise

Stop SpamThe other day I received a Mail Delivery Failed message from clients that were using Hotmail and Outlook.com email accounts.

Those that were using Google, Yahoo or others received the message just fine.

The error details included:

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its recipients.
This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

SMTP error from remote mail server after MAIL FROM:xxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxx.com SIZE=2169:
host mx2.hotmail.com [65.55.33.135]: 550 SC-001 (COL0-MC6-F24) Unfortunately, messages from XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX weren’t sent. Please contact your Internet service provider since part of their network is on our block list. You can also refer your provider to http://mail.live.com /mail /troubleshooting.aspx#errors.

After researching this a bit I found out that Microsoft has implemented a rather autonomous spam filtering system that as you see in the message, my server/IP address was not blocked due to spam activities , it was simply part of a an IP network.




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WordPress Plugins Found Hiding a Backdoor – Is Your Site Secure?

Hosting, Security, Web Wise

This is an unfortunate example of why you need a good maintenance plan for your website, such as our Maintenance +Security plans we offer.

Security issues that could degrade your site like this pop up for all types of websites powered by content management systems.  Not to scare anyone into spending money, but need to be aware and be informed of how your website may be at risk, regardless of what web company you happen to work with.

The backdoor code in all three plugins works in a very similar way by calling to a remote server and inserting content and links on the affected sites. Experts believe the backdoor code is used to inject hidden SEO spam (cloaked links) on affected sites that help improve the search engine ranking of other sites.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/three-more-wordpress-plugins-found-hiding-a-backdoor/