Oh... those hackers are everywhere & they just love getting into CMS's and messing around with 'your' content or changing your administration username/password.

So what do we do?

There are 2 easy/quick steps to secure your website.
(then head over to Brian Teemans 'Hidden Secrets' - link at the bottom of this page)

Step 1 - Install a new Joomla plugin

Go to the Joomla extensions website and download the jSecure Authentication plugin.
http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/access-a-security/site-security/5809

• Go to your Joomla admin and install it
• Then go to your Plugin Manager and click on the 'System - jSecure Authentication' link (click image below to expand)
  
  
  
  
• Enable the plugin
• Create a new Key for your login
  ...This will make your login URL different - i.e. http://www.yourdomain.com/administrator/?yourKey
• Choose a Redirect Option (index/homepage is preferrable)
  ...This will direct anyone going to http://www.yourdomain.com/administrator back to your index/homepage
• Save your plugin

Why is this plugin useful?
Easy answer... Joomla 'out of the box' always sets your admin URL to http://www.yourdomain.com/administrator. This is a dead give away to hackers and they are one step closer to getting into your admin backend.

Step 2 - Move your configuration.php file

• Via FTP, grab a copy of your configuration.php file
• Via FTP, place this configuration.php file below your 'public_html' folder on your server.
• Rename it to something different - i.e. ha-ha-config.php

Then do this...

• Edit your configuration.php file in the root of your Joomla website
• Delete everything in that file and replace with the following code:
  
  require( dirname( __FILE__ ) . '/../../ha-ha-config.php' );

• Where ha-ha-config.php is the name of configuration.php the file that we renamed & place below our public_html folder on the server.
• NOTE: don't forget to wrap your php start/end tags around the above code

Sorted ;-)

But hang on - there are more great 'hidden secrets' available for you at Brian Teemans website:
http://brian.teeman.net/tips-and-tricks/joomla-hidden-secrets-the-movie.html