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Is your Joomla! site up to date?

19 Jan

Do you have a Joomla website for yourself or your business? If someone else built it for you, it’s important to be sure that it’s up to date. Any content management system that is not up to date, is at risk of being hacked. They don’t build these updates for nothing, you know…

Checking if your website is up to date is easier than you might think, as the version number is displayed in the administrator side of the website. The position of the version number depends on which version you were using.

Screenshot of Joomla! 1.5

Screenshot of Joomla! 1.5

If your administrator panel looks like in the image above, you are using Joomla! 1.5.  This is an older version of Joomla! for which updates no longer be available soon.

You can find the version number in the top right corner. If the version number says anything other than 1.5.25 it’s really, really outdated. In this example, it says “1.5.15″ – which makes it ancient.

Please note that 1.5.x will no longer receive any updates soon. If possible, have your site upgraded to the latest version.

Joomla! 1.7 in action

Joomla! 1.7 in action

If your administrator panel looks like above, you are using Joomla! 1.6, 1.7 or 2.5.  To find the version number, you need to look at the bottom of the site.

If the version number says 1.6 you’re using a version which will no longer be updated. The same applies to 1.7.  We suggest you to upgrade to 1.7.3 . When Joomla! 2.5 is available, we suggest you to upgrade to that version instead. This should be easy, when you use the built-in feature or Admin Tools.

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Posted by on January 19, 2012 in Various Articles

 

Upgrade to Joomla! 1.5.25 using AdminTools

14 Nov

As we all know, upgrading your Joomla! website is an important thing to do. And with two security releases in a short time, it’s possible some of you forgot to apply all the updates.

If you’re not on version 1.5.24 of Joomla you’ll see that there are no upgrade packages available for your version of Joomla!. The only upgrade package available is the 1.5.24 to 1.5.25 upgrade.

In the worst case scenario you’d now have to upgrade all sites to 1.5.23 first, then upgrade them to 1.5.24 and then to 1.5.25. Which is quite the chore if you’ve got a few sites under your belt.

Not if you use Admintools, though…

Users of Admintools can easily upgrade their sites using the built-in “upgrade” functionality which offers you one-click upgrades. Nice and easy!  But what do you do when the “Upgrade” option isn’t available in Admintools because there’s no upgrade package? Use the “Re-install option!”

Using the re-install option you can upgrade your site to the latest version of Joomla, without breaking your site. What happens, is that (all) the new files are written to your website, so you’ll have the latest version.

As always, we recommend you to create a back-up before upgrading.

Haven’t installed Admintools yet? Get it here for free.

Steps to follow

1. Go to Components > Admin Tools.

updatefound

2. Click the button saying “Joomla! Core UPDATE FOUND

3. In the next screen, click “Reinstall 1.5.25”

4. In the following screen, click “Update Joomla!”

After Admin Tools does its thing, your website will now be upgraded to the latest version.

Note: Admin Tools also works under Joomla 1.7.

 
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Posted by on November 14, 2011 in Joomla

 

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Update your domain name information, please?

11 Nov

Every time I’ve got to order a hosting package for a client, who already owns the domain name I cry a little. Why? Because transferring their domain name usually takes longer than it should, because they haven’t kept their information up to date. Especially the most important part of the information – and to be honest the only part I care about – the e-mail address for the domain holder.

Below is an image of an e-mail conversation I had just last week. Please note that I’ve “recreated it” by exchanging mails with myself for various reasons.

e-mail conversation with myself

Oh, it's been unused for 10 years?

As it turns out our client no longer had access to the mailbox it had used to register the domain name with. For over 10 years, no less!

Why is that a pain in the butt? Because when we request to transfer a domain name, an e-mail will be sent to the client’s registered e-mail address. And if that address no longer exists… well, things become complicated. We’ve got to convince the client to change the information themselves – but in most cases it turns out we have to ask for their username and password and do it for them, and then end up using one of our own e-mail addresses. This entire process can take some time, and while I always warn the clients of this very early – before we submit the transfer request – they still think it’s our fault. Obviously.

So please, people. If you own a domain name or multiple of them, please log in at the website where you registered them, and check what e-mail address you’ve used. If it no longer exists, change it. For your own sake. For future generations of website builders. For me?

 
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Posted by on November 11, 2011 in Internet & more

 

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Free download: “Joomla 1.7 beginner Guide” by Hagen Graf

06 Nov

Joomla! 1.7 has been available for quite a while now. Hagen Graf has written a new book to cover Joomla 1.7 and I realize I haven’t linked to it yet.

The book, which is written in English (with different translations available) covers all the aspects of building and maintaining your own Joomla! website. The PDF version is free for everyone to download. Unfortunately it’s not ad free, but that’s a small price to pay for a free book. Other versions are also available, but the price might vary.

You can download the book as a PDF here.
You can find the page with links to other formats here. 

 

 
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Posted by on November 6, 2011 in Joomla

 

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How I caused and solved “Infinite loop detected in JError”

04 Nov

I should have known better than to try and postpone moving a site from our development server to it’s live environment on a Friday afternoon, merely an hour before I’d stop working. As usual, that’s why things go wrong.

After creating the back-up of the development server, I uploaded it to the server and fired up Akeeba Kickstart. (Read an article here on how to use Akeeba Kickstart with your own distro, an new article will come soon)  Because of a bad experience with the mysql server the day before, I decided to create a new database. I decided to be as “safe as possible”, and generated this cool fellow:

Xk;&7~F>sR9k=5ZVo2]q?>>~ka=a_#s3vDs”

I used Akeeka Kickstart to deploy the site on the live environment and this time I encountered no problems with the database. I was relieved. Until I tried to vied the site, and was greeted with the following message:

Infinite loop detected in JError

Solving this issue

I’m not claiming credit where it’s not due. An article in the Joomla! knowledge base explains perfectly what the cause of this problem is. To summarize, this file indicates that something’s wrong with your configuration file. Read the document for more information, it’ll set you on the right path.

As for me, the “problem” was… the password for the MySQL database. I’ve learned that, generally speaking, it’s not a good idea to end your password with a “.  Or any other setting in the configuration.php file, as it turns out…

 
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Posted by on November 4, 2011 in Joomla

 

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