Roxy

Securing your Website!
On this page you will find a guide on how to keep your website secure. Everyone knows how important secruity can be to a website, so checking out these key features in Cpanel can *help* keep your website safe and trusted amongst the World Wide Web. Just a reminder though, these methods won't secure your site 100%, but they can help with that process.

Password Protecting Directories

One you are logged into your Cpanel, click on the 'Password Protect Directories' icon located under the Security category.



On that page, you'll notice a list of all the folders (directories) located under your public_html folder. If at anytime, you would like to password protect these folders, you are able to with this very useful feature.



Once you click on a specific folder/directory the next page is where you are able to create user's for the directory to view this secure directory.



Denying IP Addresses
On the home page of Cpanel, click on the 'Deny IP Manager' icon located under the Security category.



On this page, you are able to deny as many IP addresses as you like. They even show examples of the range of IPs that you may deny and how to. A useful feature to stop spam sites from seeing your website.



Hotlink Protection
On the main page of the Cpanel, locate the 'Hotlink Protection' icon located under the security category.



This feature is extremely useful for protecting your website's files from people hot-linking or "direct-linking" them. This can cause your bandwidth being eaten up very quickly if users online were to do this, so in order to save your bandwidth, enabling this feature is key. You are also able to put in websites that you do not mind hotlinking your files.

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Roxanne


Urban Roxy -Personal Blog
SH63 - the best darn shared server!

Geoff

Mmm, its appreciated that you wrote this up, however i dont really see this as "securing" anything lol. even with all these methods in place, it would be trivial to compromise an insecure site. just think it might give someone new a false sense of security.

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Geoff Ellis - Surpass Dedicated Server Customer
www.adepttechs.net

Dan

I don't see how it doesn't help secure your site.

If you password protect a directory that has a script running in it. The only way someone would be able to find insecurities in the script is if they had the username/password for the directory. If not then there isn't a way for them to find out what script is even running on there much less ways to exploit it.

I see that as secure. Unless you know a way to get past the password protection that I'm missing?

Sure it should be mentioned the importance of keeping your scripts up to date and making any coding you did yourself is secure but i don't think that's necessarily in the scope of this tutorial.

From what i've read in most of these tutorials they are really just explaining the features cpanel has to offer.

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D4nz Net - Surpass Help Desk - NES Forever
Use the thanks button. It works!
AIM: dansorl

Roxy

Like P. Dan said, most of these tutorials are not only aimed for people who are still unsure of some the features in Cpanel, but also aimed for those starting out, who don't know all the other big time ways to secure your website. Hence the title and tagline: "Tutorial: Securing your Website Through Cpanel! An easier way to do it!"

Also, this tutorial is still in "editing" mode, since I need to add about SSH/Shell Access and the GnuPG Keys. =)

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Roxanne


Urban Roxy -Personal Blog
SH63 - the best darn shared server!

Dan

Yeah, I think after we get all the features of cpanel done we can start writing up some betters ways to secure websites like Geoff suggested. If you have any ideas or tips add them here!

That's what the comments are for anyone who reads this can read your comments too and learn even more ways. Who knows maybe they'll turn it into a completely separate tutorial

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D4nz Net - Surpass Help Desk - NES Forever
Use the thanks button. It works!
AIM: dansorl

Kayla

Maybe this tutorial should be renamed to... Ways to Help Protect Your Site?

caseylee

Roxyyyyyy.. the hotlink protection and IP deny manager screenshots need to be swapped around

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Roxy

Oh man, how embarrassing. Thanks for the heads up Caseylee!

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Roxanne


Urban Roxy -Personal Blog
SH63 - the best darn shared server!