WordPress, if you don’t already know, is a software program used to build some of the most eye catching websites on the net. It is simple to use, even for the newbie, but has all the bells, whistles and features which make it attractive to experienced webmasters as well.

If this mumbo-jumbo above doesn’t count for much to you, WordPress has been predicted to out-compete all other software of its kind to date. So much so, that some experts believe other software blogging platforms will disappear.  If the die hard skeptic in you *sighs* in exasperation about when the next ‘big’ thing will come along and where will WordPress be then, keep reading.

What about the fact that WordPress is open source?  This means the codes are available to all, not proprietary. It also means that as bugs and glitches in the programming surfaces, you have hundreds of web savvy programmers on the job eradicating malfunctioning, disharmonious coding.  I still don’t have your attention?

Well, what would you say if I told you WordPress was free and one of the most effective SEO tools to boot?  Now I have your attention.

Of course, you do need to know a few tricks of the trade to make your WordPress created blog or website perform at its absolute best for you once it is up and running.  Websurfers are notoriously short on attention spans. They spend an average of 3-10 seconds per sight they visit.

Using WordPress to create an engaging, eye catching site will certainly increase the time spent on your domain as well as increasing click-through traffic and sales.

But what if your site, so beautifully crafted, is a slow poke downloading? If a cybernetic shopper spends a measly three seconds on a page once it’s open to their eyes, imagine how quick they are going to dismiss a page that takes too long to open!

WordPress has introduced tools, coding, and plugins to help your sight decrease its down load times significantly.  The graphic to the right illustrates several of these methods, but to summarize it is all about cache. To really optimize your wordpress pages, utilize caching options to their fullest.

There are server-side caches, database caches, consumer-side caches, and all sorts of caches in between.  A cache is a bundle of coding information stored in more convenient places than in the Farthest reaches of your server’s hard drive.  This makes calling this information from the cyber coding void into a viewable format on your computer screen a faster process, because you don’t have to dig through the entire hard drive and redownload every article, image, or graphic each and every time you click on it.

You can likewise decrease loading times by a more judicious use of plugins.  WordPress literally has hundreds of plugin capabilities to make your website pop, but using too many can cause its download speed to bust.

By building a great website using WordPress and being certain to optimize it to the fullest, your end result will be a fabulous looking Internet presence that is also fabulously fast.

We’ll help you keep all of the definitions straight – trojans, viruses… spyware?!? And we reveal  shocking statistics about recent invasions – around the world and maybe even on your PC – and we’ll let you know what to watch for.

[CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VIEW]

The Internet Went Phishing for Spam and Caught a Virus

Adware

Adware refers to programs designed to launch advertisements, often pop-up banners, on host machines and/or to re-direct search engine results to promotional websites. Adware programs are often built into freeware or shareware programs where the adware becomes an indirect price for the free program.

Riskware

The generic term used by Kaspersky Lab to describe programs that are legitimate in themselves, but that have the potential for misuse by cyber criminals, for example, remote administration utilities. Such programs have always had the potential to be misused, but they now have a higher profile.

Spam

Spam is the name commonly given to unsolicited email. It is effectively unrequested advertising, the e-mail equivalent of physical junk mail delivered through the post or from unsolicited telemarketing calls.

Worm

Worms are generally considered to be a subset of viruses, but with key differences. A worm is a computer program that replicates, but does not infect other files. Instead, it installs itself on a victim computer and then looks for a way to spread to other computers.

Hacker

This term was once used to describe a clever programmer. In recent years, this term has been applied to those who exploit security vulnerabilities to try and break into a computer system. Originally, those who broke into computer systems (for malicious purposes or as a challenge) were known as crackers.

Phishing

The name “phishing” is a conscious misspelling of the word “fishing” and involves a type of Internet fraud that seeks to acquire a user’s credentials by deception. It includes theft of passwords, credit card numbers, bank account details and other confidential information.

Trojans

A Trojan is a non-replicating program that appears to be legitimate but is designed to carry out some harmful action on the victim’s computer.

Spyware

“Spyware” is often loosely defined as software that is designed to gather data from a computer and forward it to a third party without the user’s consent.

Vulnerabilities

In the first quarter of 2010, Kaspersky Lab alone detected 12,111,862 unpatched vulnerabilities on users’ computers, which is 6.9 percent more than in the previous quarter.

Threats on Users’ Computers

If a threat is able to evade several layers of Web and mail protection, then it will end up on a user’s computer, where an antivirus program should be ready and waiting. Let us see what was detected by the latter and examine the breakdown of the behaviors of detected threats in Q1 2010.

Trojans: 20.88%

Adware: 14.89%

Worm: 10.58%

Virus: 10.01%

Net-Worm: 8.19%

Trojan-Game Thief: 7.63%

Trojan-Downloader: 5.85%

Backdoor: 3.38%

Remote Admin: 3.10%

Tojan-Dropper: 2.56%

Email-Worm: 1.84%

Other: 12.91%

The Internet in 2020- Predictions We Can Count On

More People Will Use the Internet

In 2010, there are 1.8 billion Internet users and a world population of 6.7 billion. In 2020, it is estimated that there will be five billion Internet users.

The Internet Will be More Geographically Dispersed

The estimated world population in 2009 was 6,767,805,208. The estimated number of Internet users on December 2000 was 360,985,492. The latest data shows the current number of Internet users at 1,802,330,457. The penetration of the Internet into the population is 26.6 percent. The growth of Internet users from 2000 to 2009 was 399.3 percent.

The Internet Will be a Network of Things, Not Computers

Today, the Internet has 575 million host computers. Expect billions of sensors on buildings and bridges to be connected to the Internet by 2020.

The Internet Will Carry Exabytes, Perhaps Zettabytes, of Content

Internet traffic will grow to 44 exabytes per month by 2012, more than double what it is today. The exaflood refers to the rapidly increasing amount of data that is being transferred over the Internet.

The Internet Will be Wireless

The number of mobile broadband subscribers is exploding. The number of mobile subscribers will increase by 85 percent each year for 3G, WiMAX and other higher-speed data networking technologies. There were 257 million subscribers in the second quarter of 2009. There will be 2.5 billion by 2014.

More Services Will Be in the Cloud

Cloud computing is leveraging third-party computing capability over the network to cut costs, increase scale, improve agility and access best practices. Cloud computing will generate more than $45.4 billion in revenue by 2015.

The Internet Will Be Greener

Annual electricity use in the U.S. for the Internet is 235 billion kWH for PCs and monitors, 45 billion kWH for data centers, 67 billion kWH for modems and routers and 0.4 billion kWH for phone networks. In the U.S., it accounts for 9.4 percent of total U.S. electricity consumption. Annual electricity in the world for Internet use is 588 billion kWH for PCs and monitors, 167 billion kWH for modems and routers, 112.5 kWH for data centers and 1 billion kWH for phone networks.

Network Management Will Be More Automated

Lack of built-in network management techniques is one of the biggest weaknesses in today’s Internet. There will be automated ways to self diagnose, track events and reboot systems as well as finer-grained data collection in 2010.

The Internet Won’t Rely on Always-On Connectivity

Researchers are looking into communications techniques that can tolerate delays or can forward communications from one user to another in an opportunistic fashion, particularly for mobile applications. There’s even research going on related to an inter-planetary Internet protocol which would bring a whole new meaning to the idea of delay-tolerant networking.

The Internet Will Attract More Hackers

In 2010, more hackers will be attacking the Internet because more critical infrastructure like the electric grid will be online. Among hacking incidents in 2009, 57 percent were in North America, 23 percent were in Europe, 6 percent were in Asia, 4 percent were in the Middle East, 2 percent were in South America, 2 percent were in Australia and 6 percent were in New Zealand.

In 2007, there were 0.6 million new malicious code threats. In 2008, there were 1.6 million malicious new code threats.

What’s YOUR Programming Language?

New programming languages have been introduced regularly over the past 50 years. In 1954, it was Fortran, and in 1958 it was ALGOL and LISP, in 1959 COBOL and in 1964, PL/I was introduced. BASIC began in 1965, BCPL and Simula in 1967 and LOGO in 1968. B was introduced in 1969, Pascal and Prolog in 1970, C in 1971, Smalltalk in 1972 and Scheme in 1975.

The 80s saw Common LISP (1980), ADA  (1983), C++ (1985), Objective-C, Objective Pascal and Eiffel (1986), Haskel (1987) and CLOS (1988). Java was introduced in 1994 and C# in 2002.

What Does a Programming Language Do?

A programming language is used to write computer programs such as applications, utilities, servers and systems programs. A program is a written as a series of human-understandable computer instructions that can be read by a compiler and linker and translated into machine code so that a computer can understand and run it.

Most Popular?

Debate over the most popular programming language can become an emotional, almost religious, battle.

Ford or Chevy, Stihl or Husky, Coke or Pepsi- let’s face it. We all get passionate about our tools. There are a number of ways to measure the popularity of a programming language. They may be based on the number of new applications written in the language, the existing applications written in the language, the developers that primarily use the language, developers that ever use the language, the number of Web searches, the available jobs that require skills in the language or the developers’ favorites.

Top 10 Shares

Java is used 17.96 percent of the time, C 18.19 percent, C++ 10.38 percent, PHP 9.07 percent, Visual BASIC 5.66 percent, C# 4.78 percent, Python 4.10 percent, Objective-C 2.36 percent, Delphi 2.57 percent, Perl 3.29 percent and all others 21.66 percent.

Tiobe.com

Tiobe is a popular site for ranking programming languages based on world-wide availability of skilled engineers, courses and third-party vendors. Tiobe uses Google, MSN and Yahoo! Search engines to measure the Web “Chatter” in order to decide the popularity of each programming language.

Tiobe.com Top 10

According to Tiobe.com, In May 2010, C was the number one programming language, followed by Java (2), C++ (3), PHP (4), Visual BASIC (5), C# (6), Python (7), Perl (8), Delphi (9) and Objective-C (10).

In May 2009, the most popular programming languages were somewhat different. C ranked number 2, Java (1), C++ (3), PHP (4), Visual BASIC (5), C# (7), Python (6), Perl (9), Delphi (11) and Objective-C (39).

In 2006, the most popular languages were similar. C ranked number 2, Java (1), C++ (3), PHP (4), Visual BASIC (5), C# (7), Python (8), Perl (6), Delphi (10) and Objective-C (45).

In 2000, the programming language landscape was far different. C ranked number 1, Java (5), C++ (2), PHP (31), Visual BASIC (3), C# (21), Python (20), Perl (6), Delphi (11) and Objective-C didn’t rank.

In 1985, only three of the top 10 programming languages of 2010 showed up on the list. C was number 1, C++ was number 10 and Visual BASIC was number 4.

The Hall of Fame

The Hall of Fame awards one language with the title of Programming Language of the Year. Go was the winner in 2009, C in 2008, Python in 2007, Ruby in 2006, Java in 2005, PHP in 2004 and C++ in 2003.

Objective-C

A relatively new programming language, Objective-C entered the TIOBE top 10 for the first time in May 2010 with a rating of 2.3 percent. This is quite an achievement, especially if one bears in mind that only 13 different programming languages had a top 10 score since the start of the TIOBE index. The main (and probably only) reason for Objective-C’s popularity is that it is the only language in which you can write applications for the iPhone and iPad.

Top 10 Web Hosting Companies in the World

Web Hosting Domination

The top Web host is Wildwestdomains.com, with a market share of 35.8187 percent. Wild West Domains is part of the Go Daddy Group, providing an easy platform for turnkey domain registrars to become an operation and use the Go Daddy system for registration and support. Wildwestdomains.com hosts 25,373,796 domains.

The number two Web host is enom.com, with a market share of 4.8069 percent. It hosts 3,405,217 domains. Number three is networksolutions.com which has a market share of 4.0572 percent. It hosts 2,874,123. Number four is oneandone.com, with a market share of 3.6870 percent. The number five Web hosting company is Yahoo.com, with a market share of 2.9401 percent. Yahoo hosts 2,082,750 domains.

The sixth-largest Web hosting company in the world is dsdirection.com. It has a market share of 2.4442 percent. It hosts 1,731,437 domains. The number seven Web hosting company is registrar.com. It hosts 1,483,786 domains and has a 2.0946 percent market share. The eighth-largest Web hosting company is cashparking.com. It hosts 1,102,886 domains and has a 1.5569 percent market share. Number nine is hostgator.com. It hosts 1,055,463 domains and has a 1.4899 percent market share. Bluehost.com is the 10^th largest Web hosting company. It has a market share of 1.4454 percent and hosts 1.023,882 domains.

Country-Wise Web Hosting Companies Data

As of May 3, 2010, the United States is the top country for Web hosting companies. There are 23,619 Web hosting companies in the United States as of May 3, 2010. This represents a gain of 105 companies, a loss of 115 companies and a net change of -10 Web hosting companies.

Canada is the number two country for Web hosting companies. There are 2,725 Web hosting companies in Canada. This includes a gain of 12 Web hosting companies, a loss of 17 companies and a net change of -5 companies.

The United Kingdom is the third-biggest country for Web hosting companies. There are 2,656 Web hosting companies in the United Kingdom. This represents a gain of 16 companies, a loss of 16 companies and no net change.

Germany is the number four country for Web hosting companies. There are 2,378 Web hosting companies in Germany. This represents a gain of 7 companies, a loss of 3 companies and a net change of +4 Web hosting companies.

The Netherlands is the number five country for Web hosting companies. There are 1,728 Web hosting companies in the Netherlands. This represents a gain of 6 companies, a loss of 5 companies and a net change of +1 Web hosting companies.

Spain is the number six country for Web hosting companies. There are 1,629 Web hosting companies in Spain. This represents a gain of 15 companies, a loss of 9 companies and a net change of +6 Web hosting companies.

Turkey is the number seven country for Web hosting companies. There are 1,461 Web hosting companies in Turkey. This represents a gain of 18 companies, a loss of 22 companies and a net change of -4 Web hosting companies.

France is the number eight country for Web hosting companies. There are 1,148 Web hosting companies in France. This represents a gain of 2 companies, a loss of 1 companies and a net change of +1 Web hosting companies.

India ties for the number eight Web hosting country. There are 1,148 Web hosting companies in India. This represents a gain of 13 companies, a loss of 14 companies and a net change of -1 Web hosting companies.

Spain is the number 10 Web hosting country. There are 1,072 Web hosting companies in Spain. This represents a gain of 4 companies, a loss of 1 companies and a net change of +3 Web hosting companies.

Total Domain Names Worldwide

The week of March 29, 2010, there were 111,739,335 total domains. This includes a gain of 826,070 and a loss of 629,325 domain names. The net was 196,745 domain names.

The week of April 5, 2010 there were 111,943,641 total domains. This includes a 811,816 gain and a 607,510 loss for a net of 196,745 total domains.

The week of April 12, 2010 there were 112,150,623 total domains. This includes a gain of 803,962 and a loss of 596,980 domain names. The net was 206,982 domains.

The week of April 19, 2010 there were 112,349,564 total domains. This includes a 810,101 gain and a 611,160 loss for a net of 198,941 domains.

The week of April 26, 2010 there were 112,893,071 total domains. This includes a gain of 815,654 and a loss of 605,654 domain names. The net was 572,147 domains.

The week of May 3, 2010 there were 112,818,808 total domains. This includes a gain of 831,391 and a loss of 605,654 domain names. The net was 225,737 domains.

Internet Usage in America by Household

Who’s Using the Internet?

In the U.S. during 2009, 68.7 percent of households had Internet use at home. This was 119,296,000 households. In 2007, 61.7 percent of households had Internet use at home. In 2003, 54.7 percent of households had Internet use at home. In 2001, 50.4 percent of households had Internet use at home. In 2000, 41.5 percent of households had Internet use at home. In 1997, just 18 percent of households had Internet use at home.

Households with Internet: Broadband Vs. Dial-Up

Broadband Internet encompasses 92.5 percent of household Internet services. Dial-up Internet encompasses the remaining 7.5 percent.

Households with Internet by Educational Attainment

Households with adults who have less than a high school education make up about 15 percent of households that have Internet access. Households with a high school graduate make up about 25 percent of households that have Internet access. Households with adults who have a bachelor’s degree or higher make up 30 percent of households with Internet access. Households with adults who have some college or an associate’s degree or higher make up 30 percent of households that have Internet access.

Households with Internet: A Racial Breakdown

About 80 percent of Asian households have Internet access. About 75 percent of white households have Internet access. About 55 percent of black households have Internet access. About 53 percent of Hispanic households have Internet access.

Households with Internet by Age Group

About 68 percent of households that have adults under 25 have Internet access at home. About 74 percent of households with adults aged 25-34 have Internet access. About 78 percent of households 35-44 have home Internet access. About 77 percent of households with adults aged 45-54 have Internet access at home. About 58 percent of households over 55 have home Internet access.

In 1984, only 8.2 percent of households had a computer. By 2009, over 80 percent of households had a computer.

Top Ten Web Hosts From Around the World

Before 1991, Web hosting as we know it today did not exist. Then again, the Internet before 1991 was vastly different to today’s Internet. The Internet may be the greatest media advancement since radio and television; it is currently powered by nearly 50 million websites forming its central nervous system. Without websites, and the companies that host them, where would you go when you go online?

GoDaddy.com

As the largest Web host, the market share of GoDaddy is 22.47 percent. It has 25.2 million domains total. It has about four million customers, more than 1,400 employees and more than 200 in-house developers. It was founded in 1997 by Bob Parsons and was originally called Jomax Technologies. It has call center operations 24 hours a day, seven days a week and 365 days a year. There is no outsourcing or off-shoring of the calls.

Other Top Web Hosts

The second-largest Web host is also from the U.S. Enom.com has 3 percent of the market share and 3.5 million total domains. The third-largest Web host is networksolutions.com from the U.S., with 2.5 percent of the market share and 2.9 million total domains. The fourth-largest Web host is oneanddone.com from the U.S., with 2.3 percent of the market share and 2.6 million total domains. The fifth-largest Web host is Yahoo.com from the U.S., with 1.9 percent of the market share and 2.1 million total domains.

The sixth-largest Web host is sedoparking.com from Germany, with 1.6 percent of the market share and 1.8 million total domains. The seventh-largest Web host is dsredirection.com from the U.S., with 1.5 percent of the market share and 1.7 million total domains. The eighth-largest Web host is register.com from the U.S., with 1.3 percent of the market share and 1.5 million total domains. The ninth-largest Web host is xinnet.com from China, with 0.9 percent of the market share and 1.1 million total domains. Number 10 is cashparking.com, with 0.9 percent of the market share and 1.1 million total domains.

Top Five Global Web Hosting Countries

As of April 2010, the top five Web hosting countries in the world were led by the United States with 23,656 hosting companies. Number two was Canada with 2,740 Web hosting companies. Number three was the United Kingdom with 2,660 Web hosting companies. Number four was Germany with 2,371 hosting companies. Number five was the Netherlands with 1,730 hosting companies.

Malware: Infecting the Unexpecting

Malware Facts: Worms are most commonly written for Windows OS. The first worm was the Internet Worm in 1988, which infected SunOS and VAX BSD systems. The number of entries on the malware list has doubled in the last year. About 160,000 websites were infected in the last month.

Malware Types

Computer virus: This is a computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer. It is also commonly but erroneously used to refer to other types of malware, adware and spyware programs that do not have the reproductive ability.

Computer worm: A computer worm uses a computer network to send copies of itself to other computers on the network and may do so without any user intervention.

Trojan Horse: A Trojan horse appears to perform a desirable function for the user but instead facilitates unauthorized access to the user’s computer system.

Adware: Adware automatically plays, displays or downloads advertisements to a computer after the software is installed on it or while the application is being used.

Crimeware: Crimeware accesses a user’s online accounts at financial services for the purpose of stealing funds or making unauthorized transactions.

Rootkit: This is a program designed to gain control over a computer system or network of computing systems without being detected.

Countries Launching the Most Web-Borne Infections in March 2010

China launched 23 percent of the Web-borne infections. The Russian Federation launched 20 percent of the malware infections. The USA launched 10 percent of the Web-borne infections. India launched 4 percent of the infections. Germany launched 4 percent. Ukraine launched 3 percent of the malware infections. Italy infected 3 percent of the Web-borne infections. The United Kingdom launched 3 percent of the infections. France launched 2 percent of the malware infections. Spain launched 2 percent of the Web-borne infections. Other countries launched 26 percent of the Web infections.

Malicious Programs on the Internet and Number of Attempted Downloads

Trojan-Downloader.JS.Gumblar.x had 178,965 attempted downloads. Exploit.JS.CVE-2010-0806.i had 148,721 attempted downloads. Trojan.JS.Redirector.I had 126,277 attempted downloads. Trojan-Clicker.JS.Iframe.ea had 102,226 attempted downloads. Exploit.JS.Aurora.a had 88.196 attempted downloads. Trojan.JS.Agent.aui had 80,654 attempted downloads. Not-a-virus:AdWare.Win32.Boran.z had 75,911 attempted downloads. Trojan.HTML.Fraud.aj had 68,809 attempted downloads. Packed.Win32.Krap.as had 64,329 attempted downloads. Exploit.JS.CVE-2010-0806.b had 50,763 attempted downloads.

Malicious Programs Detected on Users and Number of Infected Computers

Net-Worm.Win32.Kido.ir was detected on 332,833 computers. Virus.Win32.Sality.aa was detected on 211,229 computers. Net-Worm.Win32.Kido.ih was detected on 186,685 computers. Net-Worm.Win32.Kido.iq was detected on 181,825 computers. Worm.Win32.FlyStudio.cu was detected on 121,027 computers. Trojan-Downloader.Win32.VB.equl was detected on 68,580 computers. Trojan.Win32.AutoRun.abk was detected on 66,331 computers. Virus.Win32.Virut.ce was detected on 61,003 computers. Packed.Win32.Krap.I was detected on 55,823 computers. Worm.Win32.AutoIt.tc was detected on 55.065 computers.