Secure the database server

The MySQL server has its own security mechanisms in place, via user-based access, as far as table level, with per-operation authorization (you can grant access to a certain table only, to a certain user, only allowing SELECT operations).

Secure the web/FTP server

The web server software configuration is largely managed by your web host. They are the ones responsible for the "general" securing of the web server. However, that does not mean (at all), that your system, whose interface is output by the webserver, is automatically secure. That is why you need to take extra steps to secure your system, using what the web server has to offer. Some of these may seem childishly obvious or simplistic. Regardless, just make sure you have it covered.

Secure PHP

For the purpose of this tutorial, the PHP engine provides the development environment. There are many features of it that present significant security risks and should be disabled. Lately, they are disabled by default in the newer versions on PHP.

Introduction

Website security

Or web application security, or, more generally, system security, is a conglomerate of mechanisms and practices aimed at protecting the integrity and privacy of the system and its users. There are many layers of security, and many ways too look at them. This document looks at security from the position of website/web application developer (i.e. it is less relevant for web/database server administrors).

Nothing new

Ahead of your times

Synchronizing with the present time is not that big a deal. Keeping your eyes open, your ears keen, and your reflexes intact isn't particularly difficult. Following your herd is not something hard (or something to be proud of). Most people are on Facebook and Twitter. I'm not. It's not that I'm not "most people" (which I'm not), it's that I'm not in sync with my times.

philosophy • lifestyle

Stop

In a seaside town, on a sunny week, at work. Always at work, then back "home" at more work, under never-ending stress, playing Atlas all the time. Not today. Against all ods, today will be a day for sea toe-dipping, plenty of sun burns and a few seaside glasses.

lifestyle

A good man for ten wise men

I'll happily trade you ten wise men for a good man. The world doesn't lack brains. Mental brilliance is all over the place,  in unprecedented supply. The world lacks plain old goodness. Good old fashion good nature.

philosophy

Be yourself

Trying to be what you can't possibly be is the root of all your troubles. Trying to appear to be what you can't possibly be is worse. There is usefulness in everything, there is beauty to be found in the most trivial of things. There are people to seek and find these.

philosophy

Letting go

The art of letting go is the hardest thing to muster. Letting go of that money you no longer have, of your high-school sweetheart or former partner, of your dead loved ones, of your misconceptions from last year. You cannot be wrong again in a forward-moving way unless you let go. You can only be wrong in your normal, static, unproductive, unaesthetic fashion.

philosophy