Tricia Ballad spent several years as a Web applications developer on the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl) platform before becoming a full-time writer and technical editor. She writes online courseware on various consumer electronics and computing subjects.

William Ballad has worked in every aspect and at every level of information technology, from his days as a hardware technician at a small mom-and-pop ISP to architecting and maintaining Windows-based servers and heterogeneous networks for some of the world’s largest corporations. He has been an active member of the online information security community for many years and recently led an effort to counter an international hacker group exploiting OptionCart, a widely used e-commerce solution.

William and Tricia have collaborated on and co-authored several books on Web application programming, including PHP & MySQL Web Development All-in-One Desk Reference for Dummies (Wiley Publishing, 2008). They have seen firsthand the damage that can be done to shared hosting through a single insecure application.