Articles

Building a Secure Mobile App in the Cloud

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This is an article from DZone’s 2022 Enterprise Application Security Trend Report.

For more:

Read the Report

Building secure mobile applications is a difficult process, especially in the cloud. We must consider that mobile platforms, like iOS and Android, have completely different architectures and quality guidelines. Also, we need to take care of our cloud architecture on the back end. In this article, we will have a look at the top six security vulnerabilities, OWASP’s best practices for building/testing iOS and Android applications, and guidelines for iOS and Android. Last but not least, we will explore an example of DevSecOps for mobile applications. 

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Using Short-Lived Tokens To Authenticate Python Applications to CockroachDB

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Motivation

In my previous article, I demonstrated how JWT tokens can replace passwords for a safer and more secure cloud-native future.

Check out my previous articles covering SSO for DB Console using Google OAuth, Microsoft Identity Platform, and Okta.

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Why Do WordPress Theme Backends Have to Suck? (Hint: They Don’t!)

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Whether you’ve worked with a few WordPress themes to design websites or worked with many of them, you’ll no doubt agree that plenty of WordPress themes that are visually gorgeous on the front end can be terribly unattractive and extremely awkward to use on the backend. 

Working with a WordPress theme can sometimes be difficult, but it can be different.

Want proof? Look no further than with BeTheme. 

BeTheme, with 260,000+ sales and counting and a 4.83-star user rating, is one of the top 5 best-selling WordPress themes of all time.

In this article, we’ll show you one of the many reasons why this is the case by focusing on how BeTheme’s backend is designed to make web design tasks more manageable.

Enhance your workflow experience with a WordPress theme backend that won’t stress you out 

Once you install BeTheme, you’ll almost immediately notice it’s different. Instead of a drab and often unintuitive WordPress backend, you’ll suddenly be confronted with a clean, well-organized dashboard and toolset.

You haven’t actually lost anything. WordPress, with its impressive assortment of content management tools, is still there. Be’s backend is a visually appealing space in which you will take pleasure to work.

If only the rest of WordPress could follow suit.

If you haven’t worked with BeTheme recently (or at all), why not let us walk you through several of its most helpful backend features.

Starting with:

1. Dashboard Design

BeTheme’s dashboard is conveniently located directly beneath the main WordPress Dashboard link. So you won’t waste time sifting through the sidebar trying to find your theme’s settings, and everything displayed in the dashboard is designed to help you get the most out of your WordPress theme. 

Clicking on the BeTheme or the Dashboard link gives you immediate access to the following: 

  • Theme registration information
  • BeTheme’s step-by-step website creator
  • A Navigation bar that directs you to BeTheme’s frequently used tools
  • Plugin status and updates and new features announcements
  • The latest additions to BeTheme’s ever-growing library of pre-built websites
  • Beloved BeTheme integrations

It takes a minute to fully appreciate how helpful this dashboard will be. 

BeTheme

2. Dark/Light Mode

Research on dark mode benefits is inconclusive. But since so many people seem to like it, it is offered as an option in many popular apps and devices.

Dark mode users will tell you that they experience less eye strain, they sleep better, and their device’s batteries last longer than is the case with light mode.

BeTheme’s backend offers a dark mode option, and you are encouraged to try it.

If you feel it beneficial, so much the better, and you needn’t concern yourself with what the research indicated, or didn’t indicate.

BeTheme

3. Step-by-Step Website Creator

When you first install a WordPress theme, it’s not uncommon to spend some time trying to figure out what to do next. The theme’s advertisements may highlight a selection of impressive demos, but where are they more exactly?

Of course, you’ll eventually find them, but is whatever difficulty you may have encountered necessary?

BeTheme removes that impediment. 

You will notice the Setup Wizard under BeTheme (and in the dashboard as well.) Click on the wizard, and with its step-by-step website, you can: 

  • Give your website a name.
  • Select the page builder you want to work with and choose your preferred editing mode.
  • Pick an ideal pre-built website based on your new website’s industry or niche.
  • Easily replace existing content with your own.

The entire process of loading your brand-new site and page builder into WordPress takes a minute (or more like 30 seconds once you are used to it).

BeTheme

4. Pre-Built Site Previews

With BeTheme, you can choose from more than 650 pre-built websites. New ones are being added as we speak, and they’re delightfully easy to find. Just look under the dashboard’s Websites link or Pre-built Websites in BeTheme’s sidebar menu, and there they are!

You’ll be familiarized with the available design aids and options in no time, and you’ll find it easy to incorporate the latest design trends into your websites. BeTheme has even placed previews of its newest pre-built websites in your dashboard to help you along.

You may choose one of the latest pre-built websites to work with, or you might find one or more others you particularly like. Pre-built sites you do not plan to work with can still be sources of inspiration.

Whatever your choices, you’ll find it easy to incorporate the latest trends into website designs.

BeTheme

5. Plugin Manager

BeTheme’s Plugins area differs from what you see in the WordPress plugins area. You’ll find several of these differences to be particularly helpful in that BeTheme’s plugins manager enables you to: 

  • View the active plugins you’ve installed.
  • Update plugins when necessary.
  • Install and activate plugins only when it’s required.

The last item is essential in that plugins do not appear in the WordPress plugin manager until you have installed them. Not having to install plugins you will not need will help keep your website operating at a high level of performance.

BeTheme

6. BeTheme Support

WordPress is a powerful content management system and an extremely popular one. It may, in fact, be the most powerful and popular system of its type.

WordPress is also community-driven to a considerable extent, which can sometimes create user inconvenience. As a user, you might sometimes have to dig to find answers to your questions or get help when needed.

You don’t have to experience that inconvenience to get support from BeTheme.

To gain access to BeTheme’s support center, you need go no further than BeTheme’s sidebar or dashboard to access self-support options or open a ticket for direct assistance.

BeTheme

7. Theme Options

Plenty of well-known WordPress themes have theme settings customization capabilities. With BeTheme, it’s easy to set brand colors, choose custom fonts, and establish global layouts. The same holds for configuring responsiveness, performance, and accessibility, all of which are essential for optimizing UX and search engine functionalities.

The problem with most theme options is that they can only be modified from the main WordPress dashboard. So if, while designing on a page, you suddenly realize a portion of its design hasn’t been configured correctly, or you’re dissatisfied with any design segment, you’ll have to save your changes and go to your theme’s backend to make the necessary fixes.

From the BeTheme dashboard inside the BeBuilder BeTheme, you can modify your Theme Options without having to interrupt your workflow.

BeTheme

8. White-Label Mode

A final feature of the BeTheme WordPress theme’s backend you should become familiar with is BeCustom. This critical feature is located under BeTheme in the sidebar.

BeCustom enables you to access some white-label regions in BeTheme. 

  You can use BeCustom to:

  • Substitute Be’s branding with your business’s branding to reinforce your name with your clients.
  • Disable any features your clients have no use for and deny access to any features you do not want them to modify while at the same time making the WordPress theme’s backend easier to work with.
  • Create an extra user-friendly and secure WordPress login.
  • Customize the dashboard’s “Welcome” message.

BeTheme

Make Your WordPress Design Projects Simple to Handle With BeTheme

Is there anything BeTheme doesn’t do?

Most likely, but nothing that would adversely impact your design effort.

This multipurpose WordPress theme’s hundreds of pre-built websites will help you get virtually any website project off to a rapid start and headed in the right direction.

BeTheme features the fastest and most powerful page builder for WordPress.

You will have total control over every feature and facet of your website’s UI.

In short, BeTheme offers the finest way to manage any web design project within WordPress.

 

[- This is a sponsored post on behalf of BeTheme -]

Source

The post Why Do WordPress Theme Backends Have to Suck? (Hint: They Don’t!) first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

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How To Build A Design Portfolio With Zero Clients

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A design portfolio is an excellent way to demonstrate your skills as a freelancer. As a web designer, you compete with millions of other web designers. Therefore, you must have a strong portfolio to land a high-paying web designing job in such a competitive space. A strong portfolio sets you apart from others. Having no clients, however, can make it challenging to get your portfolio noticed and build up any momentum.

People typically build portfolios from projects they do for clients. Hence, it seems unlikely for a new web designer without clients to have a strong portfolio. However, it’s attainable. You can build a design portfolio with no clients, and you’ll find out how in this post.

What Makes A Good Design Portfolio?

A good portfolio should display your best work, as most clients want to see your best. However, your best work may not be client work. In addition, what’s more, important than displaying your best work is showing your versatility.

Being a versatile web designer will land you more jobs than being an expert in just one type of web design. Notably, you don’t need to have many clients to be versatile in web design. Instead, you become versatile by taking on different projects.

A good design portfolio should include professional recommendations. Testimonials from previous clients are valuable here, but anyone can recommend you. It could be a web designer friend, collaborator, or even your tutor.

Furthermore, a good portfolio should feature non-client work; even if you have thousands of past clients, featuring personal projects is still ideal. It shows your growth as a web designer isn’t limited to what clients ask you to do.

Many other factors constitute a good portfolio, but these points are the most important regarding showing your skill. You can build a portfolio that includes them even if you have no clients.

How To Build A Design Portfolio With Zero Clients

You can try all or some of these methods to build a design portfolio if you have no clients.

1. Take On Design Challenges

A simple way to build a strong web design portfolio is by competing in challenges. It’s helpful whether you have clients or not.

Winning a design challenge is like finishing at the top of the class. It demonstrates that you’re the best web designer in the room and the type of web designer clients want to hire. Generally, taking on design challenges will help sharpen your skills.

You can partake in competitions arranged by renowned web design communities. You can find such competitions on websites like 99designs and Design Crowd. More often than not, winning a web design challenge will land you a job.

2. Carry Out Personal Projects

Carrying out personal projects is similar to competing in challenges. However, in this case, you’re challenging yourself.

Have you ever had a unique idea for a website? Don’t wait until a client asks you to build such a website. Instead, you can begin the project on your own. Then, if you succeed, you can proudly display the project in your portfolio.

When you get clients, you wouldn’t need to convince them that you can handle such tasks; the personal project is a testament to it.

You can carry out as many personal projects as you envisage, no matter how simple or complex. Furthermore, you don’t always have to complete them. Even failed personal projects can be part of your portfolio.

3. Clone Websites

When most clients contact you, they’ll want you to create a website similar to some existing website. You can give yourself a head start by cloning some popular websites and featuring the projects in a portfolio.

Your ability to build a replica of a professional website from scratch shows expertise. In addition, you most likely won’t get a 100% match with the original version. Your version may have improvements that subsequent clients would appreciate.

Furthermore, some website designers specialize in cloning. Suppose you plan to provide such services to clients. In that case, displaying your previously cloned website projects is all you need to create a strong portfolio.

4. Create Websites for Family and Friends

Your family and friends are potential clients. Hence, you can offer to build websites for them, even if it is for free. Afterward, you should include the work in your portfolio.

If your friend or relative has an offline business, for example, you could offer to build a website to give them an online presence.

Even if they eventually don’t use the website, you can include it as a demo project in your portfolio.

5. Get Inspiration From Others

You’re not the only web designer with no clients who wants to build a strong portfolio. Therefore, you can draw inspiration from others.

Dribbble, the social networking platform for designers, is among the best options you have. Dribbble allows you to find thousands of new and veteran web designers with varying portfolios.

You can scan the portfolios, examine the content, and try to replicate what you can in yours. Furthermore, you can even build a portfolio directly on Dribbble.

Bottom Line

Not having clients shouldn’t discourage you as a new web designer. You can still build a strong design portfolio with the methods discussed in this article.

After creating your portfolio, you can then use it to secure jobs. Subsequently, you can update the portfolio with your best client work.

 

Featured image by storyset on Freepik.

Source

The post How To Build A Design Portfolio With Zero Clients first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

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TURN Time Into Value

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Web2 software engineers have benefitted from design standards, mature programming languages, and vulnerability tools to minimize the risks of an attack. Failure to do so can result in a situation similar to my “Equifax Attack: Only a Matter of Time” publication back in 2017.

Those working in Web3 projects find themselves at an exciting stage. Initiatives like bounties and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) drive new opportunities for these pioneers to explore. Unfortunately, the Web3 landscape is not as mature or defined as earlier phases in the web frontier. Compounding the situation is the risk those challenges impose in a decentralized environment — where exploitation can result in losing a large volume of assets, as well as the time it takes to secure an auditing service for smart contract code and the duration of the audit itself

Source de l’article sur DZONE

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Secure Your Web Apps With an API Gateway

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API management solutions, also known as API gateways, are a must in the day and age of APIs. However, once you’ve set up such a gateway, you can use it for different purposes unrelated to APIs. Today, I want to show you how to improve the security of web apps.

Prevent Sniffing

Browsers are fantastic pieces of technology that try to make the life of users as comfortable as possible. However, the balance between ease of use and security may sometimes tip on the former to the latter’s detriment. For example, if an HTTP response doesn’t set the content type, the browser may try to infer it:

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Accepting Crypto Payments in a Classic Commerce App

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E-commerce storefronts have been slow to offer crypto payment methods to their customers. Crypto payment plug-ins or payment gateway integrations aren’t generally available, or they rely on third-party custodians to collect, exchange, and distribute money. Considering the growing ownership rate and experimentation ratio of cryptocurrencies, a « pay with crypto » button could greatly drive sales.

This article demonstrates how you can integrate a custom, secure crypto payment method into any online store without relying on a third-party service. Coding and maintaining smart contracts needs quite some heavy lifting under the hood, a job that we’re handing over to Truffle suite, a commonly used toolchain for blockchain builders. To provide access to blockchain nodes during development and for the application backend, we rely on Infura nodes that offer access to the Ethereum network at a generous free tier. Using these tools together will make the development process much easier.

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