Users

When running Grav, with or without an Administration Panel installed, there are some best practices to keep in mind. These relate to who can access what on your website, and the potential risks of not limiting risk factors in this regard.

Grav Users and the Administration Panel

When creating users who will have access to the Admin Panel, you should first consider what they will have access to. The Admin-plugin offers solid permissions that should be set to restrict what new users can do with the site. If you have many users, and some of them will only write content for the site, these should typically only need the admin.pages-permission -- as well as normal permissions like admin.login.

Further, it is always a best practice that your users do not have only one password that they use everywhere. If someone stole their password, they could then log in everywhere. A good password is a strong password, but even a long sentence using words in the dictionary is easier to crack than a password made up of random symbols, letters and numbers. Any human will have trouble remembering a long, random password though -- much less several -- so the best practice is to use a password manager and never the same password twice. Many people also like to have their browser remember the passwords for each site, and only remember one strong password to unlock these. To generate a random password, you need only open Notepad and furiously hit random keys on your keyboard.

Tell your users to use random passwords and create one strong, long password that they'll remember. On occasion this long password should also be changed. And because the Admin-plugin features it, they should always use 2-Factor Authentication. To prevent brute force attacks against the Admin Panel, the administrator should also enable Flood Protection.

Server users and the Webmaster

The Webmaster is the person responsible for maintaining the website, and typically has access to it on a server-level. This person should of course secure the server, but also ensure that he or she -- and anyone else with server-access -- only accesses the server in a secure manner. This means that under no circumstance should the FTP-protocol be used, only SFTP with phrase-secured key-pairs. The server host typically has information about disabling regular FTP and accessing the server through SFTP, creating key-pairs is well documented.

More broadly, consider whether any other user needs server-access. Every additional user with access is a potential risk, not just by their own behavior, but by the danger that if their keys or passwords are stolen others can access the server directly. In the same vein, no users should have root access to the server, and the system-user that runs PHP for Grav should be a separate user that only the system has access to.

Given how essential the server is for your website or service, taking care to protect it and its contents should be paramount.

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