2011 was the year of the Panda; Google penalizing sites with thin content and ultimately encouraging all website owners to publish high-quality content. 2012 was the year of the Penguin; Google penalized sites who were violating their Quality Guidelines with link schemes and other fishy link building activities. Will Google unleash a major update named after another one of my favorite animals in 2013? Stay tuned! What I have done is read through a number of predictions from SEO experts to compile a list of 10 of the most popular SEO predictions (and few of my own) for 2013.

The release of PHP 5.5 has been announced, and it will be deprecating the old standard MySQL functions (such as mysql_query). It’s been known that this was coming for a while, and developers have been encouraged to migrate to MySQLi or PDO, but many haven’t. If you’ve been putting it off, it’s probably time to make the jump before moving to PHP 5.5. Of course the MySQL functions will still work in 5.5 but you’ll have to suppress the deprecated warnings.

When it comes to installing popular software, we almost always recommend that our Web Hosting customers use Softaculous. Not only does Softaculous make it fast and easy to install these solutions, but you can update your software when one is available with just 1-click.

Hacks are an unfortunate reality when you run your own website. The malicious nature of hackers can turn a successful website into a nightmare in a matter of seconds. While no website is immune against hacking, there are many things you can do protect yourself, your clients, and your revenue. Here’s a quick overview of some common practices that can help you keep your website safe and secure: