Getting Started with Joomla

Stop asking me :-) We have tested and are happy that all our components currently work with no issues on the recently released Joomla 1.0.13

We are please to say that the first wave and  launch of the secure myJoomla.com portal has been achieved (silently) today. No Fanfare at the moment, until we unveil the new features, products, services and solutions in the coming weeks… more on those as they are ready.

The secure.myJoomla.com portal has now replaced the old Customer Download Center (/cc) and is the only place existing Customers can download our products from.

We hope you like the new site, the new features coming are going to blow your mind

Ever since the conception of Mambo/Joomla the passwords for admins and users have been converted into a md5 hash string and stored to the database.

In Joomla 1.0.13 (About time too!) this has changed.  The password is now “salted” and then md5 hashed with the salt, the salt and the password are both stored in the database.

This means that Joomla 1.0.13 breaks backwards compatibility with itself (you can’t downgrade to anything before joomla 1.0.13), and with some extensions like Community Builder and Forum bridges!!

Basically any 3rd Party Component that reads/writes/validates the password of an admin or user will now FAIL in Joomla 1.0.13 unless it is updated to know about the new changes.

The salting of passwords is a good security step - we praise the core team for doing it - HOWEVER no announcement has been made about this, no blog post has been made and users are now in the dark - remember, this means you can NEVER DOWNGRADE your site if you have problems so make sure you MAKE A BACKUP before upgrading to Joomla 1.0.13 - you have now been warned!

This weekend a silent release has been made of Joomla 1.0.13 by the core Joomla team. This release has several security fixes, a regression of the Itemid handling and a MAJOR change in the way passwords are stored in the database (more about this below)

On the same day the core team announced Joomla 1.5 RC1 in a blaze of publicity, Joomla 1.0.13 received no announcement of its own, no fanfare and no blog post.

The Joomla Team have come under quite a lot of critisim from within its own Q&T Testing Team regarding the timing of the release of Joomla 1.0.13, one Quality and Testing team member is quoted as saying that vulnerabilities may still exist in Joomla 1.0.13!!!

Well thanks for the emails of encouragement!

The situation in Tewkesbury is now far worse.  We now have NO WATER in the taps as the local filtration pumping station is under water (flood water that is!) and we have a threat of loosing all power as a electric substation in Gloucester is getting flooded too!

Trevena and baby Lela are now safe in Jersey (Darn it, I miss them already)

I am sat int he office (on a hill) looking out over fields and fields of flooded …er… fields! the water has risen again today and there has been more rain.  For those internationally you might want to read http://news.bbc.co.uk to learn more about the floods

• All our servers are in the USA and not under threat
• Our office has no water in the taps, no flushable loos, and therefore cannot be used for health and safety reasons. (For legal reasons our staff have been told to stay at home)
• The flood water is only about 500m from our office, however in those 500m there is a considerable climb so the office is not in threat.
• We have intermittent internet access both at home and in the office,
• We have a huge threat of long term power cuts, we have already had spikes and small downtimes
• You can still purchase from our website and will still receive automatic access to the products
• Support will be limited until the office is functional again.

Just a short blog post to let our friends, family, customers and visitors know that our family and business are safe from the reported floods in Tewkesbury and surrounding areas.

The above photo (Source: BBC) is less than a mile down the same road that the office is on. Our office is high on a hill over looking a valley which is flooded, and the other side of the hill is the river severn and river avon (If you watch the Sky/BBC News thats the area you will see).

Trevena and baby Lela are leaving for Jersey tomorrow, as we have heard that there will be no clean tap water in Tewkesbury as of tonight. Having a baby puts that in perspective. The cable that carries internet and phone services to our office is pictured above, look hard, its under that car in the middle, yes, under that 4ft of water!! At the moment we have both phone and internet although that may or may not continue.

In emergencies only you can contact Phil on +44 774 0188284

There is a lot of news coverage on the floods in our area - see the following sites:

Video of flooding
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/6909754.stm

The support forums are now running from the new -more powerful- server we have invested in - please report any issues you have

Thanks - we had ZERO downtime in the move

Well we have been out of the office a lot in June/July but all for good cause.  With investment from a local company we are pleased to give you a little sneak preview into a new Joomla Component that will soon be released by Blue Flame IT Ltd. Well ok we cant at this moment in time as I cant get the screenshot uploaded But watch this space as we have a BRAND NEW COMPONENT to be released some time SOON!

Server Upgrade:

In the world of servers there are two types of people, those that have the same server for 10 years (running linux, probably more memory in my watch than their server!) and people like me, who replace the server hardware and software every 2 years to stay current. Well this time is upon me again - having just purchased our new server we will be soon migrating all our sites (known and unknown!) to our new platform.  At the same time we will take the opportunity to slim down - bear with us if we have ome downtime but we are aiming for 100% uptime during the move (No reason not to!)

New Site - Amazing Tools:

This  one has been under wraps for some time, with only one other person outside our company having a preview of it.  We will be launching this new site before the end of August - the site will totally blow your mind in terms of maintaining your Joomla Based sites! - No more details yet, just introducing it - building expectations

FREE Installs of our components:

We are also working on a system where you can get IMMEDIATE assistance, or Professional Installation of our components on your site,  (Once you have purchased them!).  We are aware that some of the bfFramework components can be tricky to install if you have many other conflicting components - or a naff server - and therefore we want to do our best to help you!  This will come in the form of a Web form that you fill in to request assistance/installation - we will then do the rest within a guaranteed 24 hours! - again more details soon…

This is a very quick note to let you know that Joomla Tags v0.1.1096 Released has been released and can be downloaded by exisitng customers from http://www.phil-taylor.com/cc right away.

This is a bug fix release,  which also contains the foundational database changes and framework work for the ability to tag on non com_content data (For example, tagging of Knowledge base articles or DocMan files) - Note: this is foundational work, these are not features YET!

Once you have removed and installed this new version you will see a database upgrade notice - just refresh the page twice and the tables will be upgraded.

Have fun and please report any issues in the support forum.

Today we have released Joomla Tags v0.1.808 and bfFramework v0.20.

Existing customers can download from http://www.phil-taylor.com/cc

This is a major release with some major underlying code changes and WILL BREAK YOUR SITE if you do not read this carefully.

If you have an older version of Joomla Tags installed you MUST remove the content mambot, and all Joomla Tags Modules for Joomla Tags BEFORE UPGRADING as the new version requires the new code in the new modules/mambots.  You can do this simply by using the toggles in the Addons Page of Joomla Tags admin.

If you fail to do this your site’s front end will result in errors or a blank page!!! If this happens the quick fix is to delete the mambot and modules using the Joomla Admin interface.

Have fun with it and report any issues in the forum please.

It was lost in time... but a unforeseen search of the yahoo! mail sent box, caused it to emerge back, some call it the lost ark of joomla and smf video tutorials...

I just call it the video i did for JoeJoomla a year back, hope it is useful to beginners, and people like me simply forget how this stuff is done. I have this condition that if i don"t do something for a long time i forget how it is done

• Joomla! SMF video integration.

Wilco Jansen, Joomla! Development Coordinator, blogged about The making of Joomla! v 1.5 RC 1 and used phrases like RC 2 and one I never heard before ... Joomla! v 1.6.

There are a new full set of forums available for Joomla! v 1.5 issues and questions.

Good stuff!

We plan to continue our business around Joomla! and have no plans to move our development to other CMS.

Many of you may have noticed that Skype is not working. According to the Skype Blog:

UPDATED 14:02 GMT: Some of you may be having problems logging into Skype. Our engineering team has determined that it?s a software issue. We expect this to be resolved within 12 to 24 hours. Meanwhile, you can simply leave your Skype client running and as soon as the issue is resolved, you will be logged in. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Additionally, downloads of Skype have been temporarily disabled. We will make downloads available again as quickly as possible.

If you need to contact us urgently please use the contact form on our site and we will call you back.

Alternatively, we have logged into our very hardly used GTalk account.  If you have a GTalk account you can contact us using our username of “prazgod”