Check this out - Videos on how to protect your website against hackers

[Arne1983]

Hi!

Thank you for checking out this thread.

I'm working on some killer videos right now that will explain in detail how you can protect your website against hackers. The first part of the video series is live right now and it covers Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF). Go ahead and check them out right now: www.aachen-method.com

This knowledge is essential in making your websites secure and once you have a deep understanding of PHP security you can confidently charge higher rates when you are programming for other people.

I have worked hard on making my videos easy to understand and if you watch them in sequence you will have no problem keeping up, even if you are just starting out with PHP programming. You can just copy and paste everything right into your code, it's that simple! The only thing that you might have to change is variable names so that it works with your code and that shouldn't be a problem.
And I have inserted my e-mail address at the end of every video if you happen to have a question, so please don't hesitate to contact me and I'll try to get back to you as soon as I can.

There is no sales pitch anywhere on that website, not even ads! This is because I've been programming PHP since 2001 and since the PHP community has given me so much over the years I now want to give back by providing some killer content. I realize that some people might regard this message as spam, especially because I'm new to this forum. However please understand that I'm just trying to show these videos to as many people as possible so that we as a community can start to eliminate these vulnerabilities from people's PHP code.


Arne


P.S.: Here's the link again: www.aachen-method.com

[jamiemac2005]

Cheers Arne, i'll take a look over them and recommend them to a few people if they are any good =]

Jamey.

p.s. The first thing that struck me is you have no advertising on your site, and no obvious "catch", is there a catch? And if not then why no advertising if things are completely free? Nice job still.

[Arne1983]

I'm excited to say that part 2 of my video series is available at www.aachen-method.com. I'm covering Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) and how you can protect your website against it. Over the past couple of weeks I was super busy with my other projects so I couldn't focus on this course, but that's all behind me now and I can work more on this. :)

Being able to secure your code against CSRF and XSS attacks is a critical skill in being able to charge higher rates as a freelancer, so don't skip these videos.

I also recorded a new introductory video for you where I talk about how people (read: employers) can't help the perception that expensive equals best. This is supposed to serve as a sneak peek of part 3 of my video series and it's a somewhat simplified version of the reality. I'm not suggesting that you should just start charging $500/hour like a lawyer and half a dozen hot chicks will immediately surround you because they will think you are the s***.

I'm also giving a 100% honest explanation on why I'm giving away all this content. Hint: It's not what you think. Definitely watch this video first.

Make sure you sign up for my newsletter so I can notify you right away when I release more killer videos. I promise I won't give your address to anyone and I will never spam you. You can remove your address from the list at any time simply by clicking on the unsubscribe link that is included in every e-mail.

P.S.: Yeah, I'm posting this on a Tuesday afternoon when I'm supposed to be working. I guess I procrastinate way too much. ;)

P.P.S.: Here's the link again: www.aachen-method.com

[Redcore]

I admit - I thought this was spam at first but decided to check it out anyways. You have great video content there! I'm one of the few PHP developer volunteers here and even I found some good nuggets to take away with me. Your intro video is very interesting. A lot of that stuff I had to learn the hard way as well. I always gave away my expertise at a bargain price and couldn't figure out why I wasn't being taken seriously like the guys who charged a heck of a lot more and didn't do near the quality of work I had done and instead I have to compete against a bunch of guys from India charging the equivalent of a cheeseburger here in the States! :P Then I, like you, inherited the attitude of "pay up or suck it" and I started making 10 fold of what I did before - thousands more per project. All of it was hard-earned experience, for sure. It's great to see you making some videos about it. I'm sure both of us could have benefited from them when we were starting off.

So now - CRITIQUE! You do get better at your delivery as the videos go on - but maybe you should adopt that "salesman" confidence you talked about in one of the videos to your presentation style? You say "I'm really not a good presenter" and "oh, let me do that again" too much. If you say it that much in your videos, I can imagine that kind of negative thinking is rotting around your brain while you're trying to make your presentation. I say you adopt an attitude of "listen up or suck it" because you have the goods people want - you're the expert they want to listen to. You have a lot of great ideas, concepts, and code to share - so have confidence in that and the fact that you have a good sense of humor and a great non-techie delivery (making it easy for the beginners). I know it's a lot of work, but I would go back through and re-record your presentations with more confidence. One thing you can do is instead of recording one long run through a presentation, chunk it up and splice recorded sections together. That way if you mess up halfway through, you just redo that section rather than the entire presentation.

As far as your course in general...I'd love to see some higher-level concepts for getting people started on the right foot - like database design. You could make the database concepts an entire series because there's such a wide array of things to cover - like SQL injection.

Anyways, that's all I have for now. I could probably throw a lot more at you - but I don't want to make you think that you have a lot of improving to do, because realistically I think you're doing an awesome job with these :) Great job!

[jamiemac2005]

Listen to Redcore, of all the PHP developers here (from what i've seen) he shows the greatest knowledge of the general subject. And he's right about the confidence, know what you have to say and demonstrate in a video before hand and it will boost your confidence a lot =].

As for the DB design and SQL Injection, (from the prospective of the hacker) it's one of those skiddy tricks that people learn early on and then master to completely comprimise a DB, so that subject is a definate must with PHP security. I like the XSS addition aswell, it's a very necessary addition i think. You may also benefit from a concepts video, something that teaches not to leave holes in your code, or think that just because it works/protects against some attacks that it's solid code.

Other than that all i have to say is keep up the good work, i find myself always learning from stuff like this, even if it's small tips/tricks it's one of those things that's worth a watch.

Cheers,
Jamey