Below are my top picks from those featured on The Design Gene. Enjoy!

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	We Choose the Moon (Flash) – Simply amazing recreation of the first Apollo 11 mission, in 1969. The mix of actual transmissions, graphic interpretation, educational content, videos and interactivity make this one of my all-time favorite websites.
	Tori’s Eye (CSS) – At first I thought this was a nice, cute portfolio site, but after opening the link I discovered it is actually a really cool Twitter Visualization Tool. The heavy use of illustration and graphic art make it unique, as does the experimental nature of the Twitter little origami birds. It’s fun and useful!
	XPERIMENT (Flash) – This is a fun and sort of disturbing website where you get to feed different illegal drugs to a floating eyeball. Flawless animations and effects.
	Designspasm (CSS) – Web design portfolio of Sean Geng, using JQuery to slide across a large panel of "sections". Creative, illustrated design with cool sliding effect.
	Eric Johansson (CSS) – Another CSS and JQuery gem. This creative site uses a little slider at the bottom of the page to navigate a large panel, with a fun little dude on a moped that follows the motion of the scroller. Great illustration and creative use of interactivity.
	Egyptian Mummies (Flash) – Educational and fun website about Egyptian Mummies. Lots of animation and educational games.
	Labuat (Flash) – Minimal, yet stunning and artistic website of the Spanish band, Labuat. The site features something of a brush stroke traveling across the screen, controlled by your mouse, with sporatic animations.
	Rule the Stars (Flash) – Promotional website that allows you to create your own designs "in the stars" and send them to your friends.
	Your Playground (Flash) – US Olypmpics promotional website by Allstate where you create your own playground, then add your creation to a gallery where it can be voted on.

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Here are a few of my favorite entries:

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Slab Serif’s gained momentum as a web design trend in 2008, offering at “press-like” feel to blogs and standard websites. This group of fonts is characterized by thick serifs that are typically boxy ot square, although I’ve seen some font sites included fonts where the connection of the serif to the letter is rounded. The Design Gene logos are examples of the “giant slab serif” trend. My personal favorites are Serifa® and Rockwell. The following are some good resources for slab serif’s, ranging from reasonable to exorbitant.

Slab Serif Reviews at Typographica
Slab Serif’s at Veer
Slab Serif’s at Linotype.com
Slab Serif’s at MyFonts.com

Here are some great websites that utilize Slab Serif fonts for accent or logo, all with beautiful results

http://esorganizers.com/
http://www.pallian.com/
http://www.design-this.co.uk/
http://ideafoundry.info/
http://www.humveeschoolprogram.com/
http://www.jackherbert.com/
http://partypoker.gamingvolt.com/app/
http://www.twistedstudio.com/

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Use a Strong Password

You should use a strong, randomized password with uppercase, lowercase, numbers and special characters. It may be inconvenient to memorize, but it’s an important aspect to securing your blog. If you must have the password on file somewhere, it should be a hardcopy (ie on paper), and not stored on your computer somewhere. You should never use any part of your domain name in your password, or the word “blog”, or common names like your pets, kids, or birthdate. All of these things are quite easy to figure out.

Set Security Keys in config.php 

In wp-config.php (or config-sample.php if this is a new install), find the following lines:

define(’AUTH_KEY’, ‘put your unique phrase here’);
define(’SECURE_AUTH_KEY’, ‘put your unique phrase here’);
define(’LOGGED_IN_KEY’, ‘put your unique phrase here’);
define(’NONCE_KEY’, ‘put your unique phrase here’);

These should all be replaced with secure information, preferably long strings of random uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and special characters. You can go to https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/ to generate random strings.

You can also add SECRET_KEY. Right under the code snippet above, add the following:

define(’SECRET_KEY’, ‘0000000000000000000000000′);

Replace the zeros with a long set of uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and special characters. You can go to http://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.0/ to have random strings generated.

For more information about what Security Keys do, see http://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-config.php

Change mySQL table prefixes 

By default, wordpress uses the table prefix wp_. Since it’s the default, it’s pretty easy for malicious persons to figure out. When setting up wp-config.php, you can change the table prefix to pretty much anything you want (letters, number, underscores only). In wp-config.php, around line 57 you’ll find the code:

$table_prefix = ‘wp_’;

Simply change wp to something more complex. Be sure to keep the underscore at the end.

Plugins

askApache Password Protect - This plugin doesn’t control WordPress or mess with your database, instead it utilizes fast, tried-and-true built-in Security features to add multiple layers of security to your blog. This plugin is specifically designed and regularly updated specifically to stop automated and unskilled attackers attempts to exploit vulnerabilities on your blog resulting in a hacked site. This is the probably the most effective security plugin available, however, I’ve found that it does not work properly on a lot of servers. Hostmonster and GoDaddy, for instance, do not support Basic or Digets Authentication and therefore do not support this plugin. If your server allows all of the functionality required, this is your best bet to protect your blog.

BTEV - Bluetrait Event Viewer (BTEV) monitors events that occur in your wordpress install. BTEV tracks the following events, password_reset, delete_user, wp_login, lostpassword_post, profile_update, add_attachement, wp_logout, user_register, switch_theme.

Login Lockdown - Login LockDown records the IP address and timestamp of every failed login attempt. If more than a certain number of attempts are detected within a short period of time from the same IP range, then the login function is disabled for all requests from that range. This helps to prevent brute force password discovery. Currently the plugin defaults to a 1 hour lock out of an IP block after 3 failed login attempts within 5 minutes. This can be modified via the Options panel. Admisitrators can release locked out IP ranges manually from the panel.

Replace WP-Version - Security your WordPress-Installation and eliminate or replace your wp-version and database-version on easy way with a small plugin. If you’re running an older version of WordPress, anyone can view source to see what attacks might work against your blog. This plugin replaces the WP-version with a random string < WP 2.4 and eliminate WP-version > WP 2.4.

WP Security Scan - Scans your WordPress installation for security vulnerabilities and suggests corrective actions. It will also tell you which directories and files require a chmod for security purposes.

Stealth Login (or any similar plugin) – Allows you to define a different path to your login pages so that they are hidden from viewers. I discovered the importance of this function the hardway when someone successfully and continually was able to change the admin email address by running sql commands through the login form. They would run some command that changed the email address in mySQL, and once that was done they reset the password, which was then emailed to their address.
The good thing was that the BTEV event viewer plugin logged their ip address, and their failed login attempts. It basically provided me with a timeline of the hackers events, so I could pinpoint exactly when and from what page they were able to change the email address. Since they were apparently running sql commands through the login form, I installed stealth login (and banned their ip range). If they manage to gain access to the site again somehow, they won’t be able to find the login form to run the commands again.

*Note* I’m not sure if the comment forms are vulnerable as well, but I don’t think so because of where they write to the sql database. Again, I’m not 100% sure of that.

*Note* You should note also that Stealth Login (and probably other similar plugins) write commands to your .htaccess file, so you need to also make sure that chmod of the .htaccess file is set to 644. Otherwise, a more clever hacker could write to your .htaccess file and undo the redirects that Stealth Login creates.

.htaccess – restrict access to admin files

It’s a good idea to protect certain directories with .htaccess, particularly wp-admin folder. If you have a .htaccess file in your wp-admin folder already, download it first and append it with the information below. If you do not have a .htaccess file in wp-admin, create a new one in notepad and add the following:

# allows access to images, CSS, javascript to everyone
<Files ~ “.(css|jpe?g|png|gif|js)$”>
Allow from all
</Files>

# restrict access to your ip address only
Order deny,allow
Allow from 00.000.00.000 #replace this with your static ip address
Deny from all

This will restrict access to the admin folder to only the ip addresses specified. If you have  multiple admins, add each of their ip addresses to a new line. Save the file, and upload it to your wp-admin folder. Be sure to chmod your .htaccess files to 644 so they are not writeable by the public.

.htaccess – ban ip address or ip range

There are many ways to find the ip address of those who try or succeed in breaking into your wordpress blog. You can view the server logs, but I like to use the BTEV Event Viewer plugin. It lists all activity by ip address in a user-friendly manner. You can sort the events by "warnings", "errors", "notices" "debug", or "display all". This makes it really easy to monitor exactly who is doing what on your blog, and when. Regardless of how you determine if a ip address should be blocked, it is an easy task with .htaccess. The following code will block a single address. If you have a .htaccess file in your root directory already, download it first and append it with the information below.

order allow,deny
deny from 00.00.00.00 #replace with ip address. repeat this line if blocking more than one
allow from all

If you find that you’re always blocking ip addresses from the same range (they will have similar beginning digits), you can block and entire range using the CIDR number or the ip range if you know it. Use the code below to block by CIDR number or ip range.

<Files *>
order allow,deny
allow from all
deny from 00.0.0.0/0 # CIDR number or ip range
</Files>

Disable Annonymous FTP

Unless you need this function for some reason, you should have annonymous FTP disabled for your website. This is usually done in your hosting account admin panel. The procedure and allowances differ greatly across the many hosting platforms, and if you need assistance doing so you can always contact the support team of your hosting company. Some hosting companies do not allow you to delete the anonymous user, but you can restrict or deny its priveledges. Other companies may not have an annonymous user setup as a default… it all depends on the hosting company.

A really bad scenario would be having annonymous FTP enabled, coupled with a writeable .htaccess…. you could very easily have your entire website deleted.

That’s it for now…. I will be updating this post when additional information is available. Happy blogging!

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http://www.freevectordownload.com/
http://www.freevectordownload.com/

They’ve both got some pretty good illustrations and imagery.

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The Design Gene (main showcase)

The Design Gene’s main showcase is a compilation of outstanding website designs, and includes CSS sites, flash sites, and blogs. Anyone can submit a design, but please note there are some criteria for acceptance, albeit, rather loose criteria. Basically we’re looking for awesome websites of any type. The look of the website is of course the first thing considered. Minimal, grunge, vintage, cartoon, corporate…. any and and all styles are considered. Although we will not validate your code, we encourage you to only submit websites created using w3 standards and that have been cross-browser tested. We use Firefox and generally will check each site in IE as well.

What’s Not Accepted
Plaigerized websites, obscene material, and adult content sites will not be considered. Incomplete websites, those with poorly written CSS or XHTML, and those that have significant cross-browser issues will not be accepted.

All websites accepted to the Designer Showcase will also appear in The Design Gene’s main showcase, and vice versa.

Designer Showcase

The Designer Showcase is an extension of The Design Gene’s main showcase. The Designer Showcase is only for design studios, freelancers, graphic artists, etc. We noticed that the majority of submissions we receive to The Design Gene were web studios and freelance portfolios. Posts in The Designer Showcase include more information than those listed only in The Design Gene’s main showcase. Designer listings include location, phone, email address (optional), telephone, and a pretty big blurb about each designer or company. The Designer Showcase was created as a tool for both clients and designers. Potential clients have a place to easily browse the best web designers from around the world, and designers gain a bit of advertising space and social networking.

Anyone can submit a site to the Designer Showcase as well, but please only submit design studios, graphic design companies, and freelance portfolios. All websites accepted to the Designer Showcase will also appear in The Design Gene’s main showcase, and vice versa.

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