How are server issues (faults etc) monitored?

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We have automated heart beat monitors which checks the health of the servers and a number of background tasks. In addition to checking the list of known tasks database read & write actions are performed and the available disk space is checked. If the heart beat monitor itself takes more than 5 minutes to run an alert is sent. The heart beat monitor runs every 15 minutes.

Heart beat message

The list of tasks that the system will monitor are defined in the class DBTask.

List of tasks

A task is defined by:-

  • code which uniquely identifies this task

How are SQL Injection attacks prevented?

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SQL injection is a code injection technique, used to attack data driven applications like stSoftware.

stSoftware systems support a number of web accessible protocols including:-

  • ReST
  • SOAP
  • Web Forms
  • GWT RPC 

All protocols access the underlying data through the DAL ( data access layer). There is NO direct access to the underlying data store no matter which protocol is used. Each protocol accepts the request to read or write data and then perform the protocols validations and then passes the request on to the DAL to execute the request which in turn validates the request, checks the user's access and perform any validations before returning the result.

SQL & XSS attacks are automatically tested for each of the supported protocols. Listed below are the standard SQL injection strings attempted.

SQL Injection String
"&amp;%00<!--\'';你好
\'; DROP

What is the recommended upgrade schedule for self hosted systems?

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We recommend at least quarterly maintenance release are installed to your test environment, tested then promoted to your production system as part of the normal software maintenance cycle.

Regular and timely updates reduce the risks of running a live system that is out of sync with stSoftware's current version and enables your users to benefit from our R&D program, which is our investment and commitment to continually improve our systems for our customers (in recent years we have typically invested over

Site Wizard can create a professional site in minutes.

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Our site wizard is a simple way to get a professional website

Simply click on the wizard, enter your company details into the form provided and your information will automatically populate the pre-designed website template of your choice, giving you a quality website in minutes. You can choose to use this website, change the template, or tweak it to your hearts content, our system is accommodating and easy to use. 

There are a number of pre-designed site templates included in the base system.

Page Keywords Meta Tag

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The "keywords" meta tags is no longer used by any of the major search engines. Under some circumstances they can actually be scored negatively against the page rank, when a high count of irrelevant or duplicated key words are added. 

The system will automatically de-duplicate keywords if entered. For example if "SEO, meta, Seo,tags,,," is entered as the list of keywords, the list will be converted to "SEO, meta, tags"

Later releases will deprecate the entry of key words completely. Currently Google completely

Assigning a domain (host) name to your stSoftware hosted website or web system

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After you have registered a new domain name with a domain name (DNS) provider such goDaddy, or you have an exisiting domain name, you need to change the associated IP address so that your domain name points to stSoftware's servers.

Or contact us to add "Assigning your domain name" service to your website or websystem package and we'll manage it for you.

 

Assign your domain (host) name to the IP addresses of our servers

Have your DNS pointed to either of the two groupings of IP addresses below;

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Social features are integrated into the core of the CMS

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When articles are published the built in social integration automatically posts the article to the requested social sites.

When posting to twitter the title and subtitle are automatically shorten to within the 140 character limit.

All published articles are automatically published via the RSS feed.

The CMS automatically generates an XML Sitemap which can be submitted to search engines for faster indexing of new content.

Is workflow customizable?

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Workflow is a series of activities that form a real world process and defines the order in which these activities are processed and their dependencies. In a software sense, ' work flow' refers to the triggering of events and the processing of corresponding actions. This process turns a software application from being simply a data entry and retrieval system into a business application that reflects business processes, thus increasing both quality and productivity and reducing costs.

System security overview

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Overview

stSoftware designs systems to meet or exceed all aspects of the Australian Government Protective Security Policy Framework PSPF. At stSoftware, we take security very seriously. Our ephemeral workload servers are locked down to be accessed only via bastion hosts; the support team can only access the bastion hosts themselves via secure shell from specific IP addresses. 

 

stSoftware follows Infrastructure as Code principles for all AWS services.

Does the CMS include a script manager?

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Every page can define a script and/or include a number of script modules.

Page scripts

Each script module can have many versions of the JavaScript. 

Script Module

Each script version can specify what is the maximum and/or minimum browser version compatible with this script. The page can specify the a maximum version number for inclusion or just the script module. The script manager will include the highest compatible script version.

Script Version

User Access Control Limits

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Every class in the system has ACLs (Access Control Limits ) which prevent CRUD ( Create, Read, Update and Delete) of records that are unauthorized. These ACLs are applied to all requests regardless of where or how the requests is made.

The same ACLs apply to web forms, SOAP requests, ReST or any other protocol.

Access Control Limits

Rotating Banner ads

yes, the site owner can/should be able to change anything.

And technically they can as it's all just JavaScript/HTML/CSS.

An example is SRL when they publish an article the banner image is placed on the carousel and linked to the article. The page reads this information from the RSS feed. 

Article Banner

 

carousel