Security questions before going live.

The client has purchased a new business hosting with 1&1 and we are getting ready to upload to the site using the 1&1 supplied subdomain for testing on a live server before going live with the clients domain name. Any problems with this approach?

So now looking at security issues, which raised a few questions.

1. Any advice on using .htaccess and robots.txt files

2. Which is the most secure way of limiting access to the backend. For convenience, the backend has been accessed by a menu selection while on the local testing server. Is it ok to leave the backend menu selection visible and securely password project it or to delete it from the menu and have some other means of accessing the backend. If so, what is best?

3. Is it worthwhile limiting the backend access to the clients static ip address?

4. Which is the most secure way to control access to the site database through phpmyadmin?

  1. Any advice on using .htaccess and robots.txt files  

regarding the .htacess file, that is a very broad question, the .htaccess file is used to configure various aspects of your apache server configuration,
see this page for details on the htaccess file:

see this site for details on the rebots.txt file
www.robotstxt.org/

  2. Which is the most secure way of limiting access to the backend. For convenience, the backend has been accessed by a menu selection while on the local testing server. Is it ok to leave the backend menu selection visible and securely password project it or to delete it from the menu and have some other means of accessing the backend. If so, what is best?  

the most secure of limiting access to the backend is to not have any links pointing to the backend in your site, instead, have your client bookmark the address of the login page and contain any links in password protected areas of the site.

  3. Is it worthwhile limiting the backend access to the clients static ip address?  

thats up to you, but if you do this, the client will only be able to access the admin using the one computer.

  4. Which is the most secure way to control access to the site database through phpmyadmin?  

the host will handle securing the site database, this is not something you have to worry about, not can it be done through PHPMyAdmin

Thanks Jason, will look into it all now. Is there a link missing for details on the htaccess file?

Also do you have any comments on using the 1&1 supplied subdomain for live testing. 1&1 don't have a testing server facility but suggested uploading the site under the subdomain during testing before transfering the domain name to 1&1.

The clients existing old site is not hosted with 1&1 and their domain name is registered elswhere.

Can you see any problems with this?

the htaccess info link i meant to post was:
htaccess.html


no, I don't see any problems using a sub domain.

Do you have any a prefered or recommended method of password protecting the admin folder? A choice between htaccess and a security assist generated login system?

If SA login system is preferred which pages are required, obviously login & logout but any others?

I presume that only a username and password field are required or possibly two username fields for say first name and last name with a password field.

Not attempted this yet but dont want to overwrite existing user login, registration etc pages for the front end. How do you separate the two sytems ie front end from back end?

htaccess can be used to password protect a directory, I wouldn't use this for admin section though. I would use security assist


you would need to apply security assist access restriction to all pages in the admin foolder.


you would need to use user Level Authentication to only allow access to users with the Administrator user level.

see the User Level Authentication tutorial on the security assist support page in the archived documentation section.

Ok, I'll work through the tutorial.

Does the administrator register and log in using the users (customers) system or is it necessary to create a separate simple login system to apply to the admin folder.

same login, it will just be given a different user level at login time

In the users table there are three columns not in use at present, they are

user email verified
user verification code
user IP

Before I add the new userlevel column can you clarify what these three columns are destined for. Just wondering if I can use one of them but not at the expense of needing them for their intended purpose at some stage

userEmail verified is used when you have a double opt in set up.

it is used to mark whether the suer is verified (1) or not (0)

user verification code is sued to store the verification code used for double opt in.

user IP is used to store the IP of the user when they register.