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”

By the end of this month (August 2007) we will have removed our oldest components from sale.  Support will continue for these components for another year, however only for existing customers.

The components about to be withdrawn are:

• ComboMAX
• mosIPN
• mosLock

ComboMAX - A Commenting Component
ComboMAX was the worlds first ever Mambo component, released for £2 even before Mambo 4.5 stable was released. ComboMAX lead the way in many ways, bringing you a commenting solution to Mambo for the first time.  ComboMAX has since been superceeded by the whole Web 2.0 era and now better, more web 2.0, comment components are leading the way. We have no plans to release another commenting component at this time.

mosIPN - Digital File Delivery After PayPal Payment  
As sales of ComboMAX increased, we made a problem for ourselves.  Customers who purchased at 4am wanted their delivery at 4am!  When we were asleep! So we developed mosIPN to handle our own fulfillment process.  In fact we still use a highly modified version of mosIPN for all our fulfillments right up to this day. We have no plans to release a new component to replace this one.

mosLock - Instant Account Creation after PayPal Payment
mosLock was our smallest ever component - it simply looked for paypal IPN and then created a Joomla User.  Nothing fancy.

Why retire these components?

Two words - BIG PLANS! We have some enormous plans for the future - some we will hint at here - some we are holding close to our chest Also witout the support burden of these older components we can spend more time supporting fewer components better.

• A new Knowledgebase Component will be released soon - its feature complete and already being used on high traffic sites (like our own!) and is even powering myjoomla.com!
• Phil-a-form - over 4 years old and still our number 1 seller every month - look out for a BRAND NEW form management system coming soon - not yet ready but will AMAZE you when you see it!
• myJoomla.com - watch this website like a hawk! This is where amazing things will soon start to appear!
• Joomla Security - We are going to totally change the way you manage you security - watch out!
• And more to come…

We are here to stay - although we may move offices to another island - we are still supporting Joomla and still working very hard on new exciting projects for you to enjoy.

FAQ:

1. Will I still be able to download my purchase of mosIPN?

Yes - for at least the next 12 months

2. Will you continue to update, fix, repair, re-release, support these components?

No, these components are now extinct and will not be resurrected.

Simply register for a FREE account at https://secure.myjoomla.com - Use the email address that you paid with at PayPal, - login, and then click the ?My Purchases? Tab - There you will see a list of purchases, PDF invoices, and download links.

myJoomla.com is being added to daily - it will become THE resource for all things Joomla. We have GREAT plans for this sites services and we are close to revealing them. While you are at myJoomla.com remember to bookmark the frontpage (https://secure.myjoomla.com) as on that page you will find news about everything Joomla Related - If its happening in the Joomla World it will be on that page - all in one place!

Everything at secure.myjoomla.com is conducted over SSL and Secure Channels - to protect YOU! We also DAILY scan our servers, sites and networks with the award winning (and expensive!) ScanAlert Hacker safe service. Furthermore this site and server have been PCI DSS Certified to accept Visa and Mastercard payments directly - no one else takes your security more seriously!

This site is owned and operated by Blue Flame IT Ltd and is not an Official Joomla website.

We are pleased to announce the release of mosListMessenger v2.0.8 to address some niggling bugs. The main issue was the stalling of messages, and the inability to resume the queue. Other improvements have been made to the mass import/export of users and the confirmation of users requests.

Existing customers can download the latest version by logging into myJoomla.com

Upgrade instructions can be found in the FAQ

Well it happens to all of us occasionally, you let your guard down for 1 second and a hacker gets you!

Last night Joomla.org was hacked!  Today the hack message has been removed and replaced with an office message.

The hacked message was:

Template File Not Found! Looking for template:
Hacked M3rhametsiz & Zorbey

Using our experience and knowledge of Joomla, we have determined that this means that the database was  modified, and the default template tables modified.  This could mean that other database tables were modified as well!

The funny thing is - I was the person that put that line of debug code in to Mambo (In my days as core Mambo developer, The bit that says that it could not find a template file) hehe - Glad my work is finally on the frontpage of Joomla.org

Until we hear different - we assume that Joomla 1.0.13 is still secure and that this hack has been made possible by a third party component (Or that Joomla.org was not running v1.0.13 !! Gosh!)

Do not be alarmed by this - until the full details are revealed - if they are revealed.

Thanks to all those that have emailed, skype’d or called. To squash the rumors instantly - I am alive, I am alive I am alive

Just so you know… I had a suspected heart attack on tuesday and been in hospital since, I am not meant to be working (although I have to as I am self employed!) I am not working as much as I used to or should need to.

Firstly thanks for all the emails of support after my recent health scare.

On the 1st October we will be relocating to Jersey, Channel Islands!!  Iit is for many reasons, health included, but also so my wife can be near her family and the little one can grow up in a safe environment and have a great education.

In terms of what this means for Blue Flame IT Ltd and our relationship with customers - nothing should change! We still intend to trade (albeit under a new company to be formed under Jersey law to get the 0% Corporation Tax rate ) and to continue our services and products that we currently provide you and other customers.  You are free to pop in to our Jersey office any time you like the beach is a short walk away. We are aiming for no downtime at all - we are working hard with all the service providers to ensure that everything is up and running the other end so we can close here on Friday and open there on Monday.

On the same note….. Chris Hawkins will be leaving Blue Flame IT Ltd on the 30 September to further his career at a different company.  Greg Wright will continue to be employed and will work from his Malvern office. Trevena Taylor (My beautiful wife) will be re-joining the working staff at Blue Flame IT (Jersey) Ltd.  and will be responsible for first line support and accounts from the 1st October. More details on our future business plans will be published soon….  very excited!

From 1st October the new trading address for Blue Flame IT Ltd will be:

The Old Chapel
La Chevre Rue
Gorey Village
Grouville
JERSEY, Channel Islands.
JE3 9GG
If you have any questions please feel free to ask by email to phil@phil-taylor.com

test

My Wife and I will be taking a trip to Venice to celebrate my 30th Birthday in March next year.  We are landing at Treviso airport and will travel to Venice by bus Having never been there and hearing that its very easy to get lost we are very excited!

Anyone reading this from Venice? Want to give us a hand? Any pointers?  Contact me at phil@phil-taylor.com

Just a small note to let you know that following a server maintenance upgrade we have disabled the server side (our side) of the automatic notification for Joomla Tags updates.

When you load the admin page of Joomla Tags, a quick check is made of the versions XML to check if you are running the latest version, if not a warning used to be displayed. Now you will not receive a warning (for the time being). You may however see a small warning like this:

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /path_to_www/mambots/system/blueflame/bfChecks.php on line 126

If you see this notice then simply edit the file at /mambots/system/blueflame/bfChecks.php and change the following line at the top of that file FROM:

define(’_SKIP_UPDATE_CHECK’, false);

To make it read:

define(’_SKIP_UPDATE_CHECK’, true);

We apologize for any inconvenience caused by this outage, but be assured that we will re-add update notification in a later version.

thanks!