After quite some time of development Joomla 1.6 Beta 8 was finally released. To say the least I was surprised that there was no sign of a release candidate being put in the public spotlight… Well atleast not for the next short while. In some 2 weeks time Beta 9 is scheduled to be released and after asking around for some guidance as to the RC dates or even a final beta there was a sincere response of “It will be done when it is done and unfortunately we cannot give you a timeframe.”
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Well it looks like Joomla are wanting to make a good go of their next release of the Joomla! Content Management Ssytem which is known as Joomla! 1.6. This is going to be a significant milestone in the Joomla! development cycle as it is going to include the most heavily requested feature of ACL. ACL will enable webmasters to build a website that can cater for multiple user levels. What makes it even more impressive is the fact you can create your own access levels and permissions.
Joomla! have announced that they will be releasing yet again another Beta just days after the latest beta was made publicly available on the 12th of July. While this post has taken a few days to make it to the website, the news of a beta 6 being developed was a shock to say the least. It showed that for the first time in the development of Joomla they really wanted to make it stand out from the crowd and be possibly the most secure, stable and reliable build to date from this brilliant community. In Joomla 1.6 there has been alot of changes and for the most part they are much needed improvements. It will be interesting to see what comes of the next beta.
Stay tuned for more updates!
When combining virtuemart, joomla and SH404sef you tend to get a pretty good combination. The problem lies however with the flatterned urls in virtuemart. Joomla 1.5 has native support as most of you reading this would know however it does not handle many third party components to well. Virtuemart being a great example of this. In turn you are left with a large list of options. One of these being SH404sef and like any third party application it has its issues. This includes the way it handles some of the Virtuemart urls like the “Add Shipping Address” link in the account maintenance or even in the checkout sections of the Joomla / Virtuemart combination.
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Recently I worked on a project for a client and they wanted to customise their “Best Sellers” or Top Ten Modules appearance. The design came back with a product image, product price and a link to the product details. To achieve this in Virtuemart is not overly hard however it does have its inherit draw backs. Some include the fact you cannot have multiple module positions on your site for the top ten module. Instead you have to do the design for the one width / position then work your to the final product from there. This of course is for Joomla 1.5.x and Virtuemart 1.1.x. If you need a similar solution for older versions I will not be able to help as you should be upgrading your virtuemart store to the latest version along with your Joomla Install.
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A little while back I said that I would be reviewing the release of Joomla 1.6 Beta once it was released. Well before I could say here it is and this is what it does there was the immediate release of Joomla 1.6 Beta 2. This of course ment that the small amount of time I spent installing Joomla 1.6 Beta 1 was a complete waste of time therefore I thought it best that I review Beta 2. What I found about Beta 2 is not only exciting but well worth the read.
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Check the Joomla 1.5.18 Post-Release FAQs to see if there are important items and helpful hints discovered after the release.
If you have modified core template overrides, please be sure to back them up before upgrading.
Security
- High Priority – Core – XSS Vulnerabilities in back end.
Components
- No component issues were fixed for this release
Modules
- No module issues were fixed for this release.
Plugins
- Revert issue 19859 (Graceful handling of Apache plugin failures) (20424)
Legacy
- No legacy issues were fixed for this release.
Templates
- No Templates issues were fixed for this release.
Language
- No Language issues were fixed for this release.
Administrator
- No Administrator issues were fixed for this release.
System
- No System issues were fixed for this release.
Statistics for the 1.5.18 release period:
- Joomla 1.5.18 contains:
- 1 issues fixed in SVN
- 3 commits
- Tracker activity resulted in a net increase of 21 active issues:
- 29 new reports
- 7 closed
- 1 fixed in SVN
- At the time the 1.5.18 release was packaged, the tracker had 337 active issues:
- 195 open
- 105 confirmed
- 37 pending
It looks like the life of Joomla 1.5.16 was the successor to Joomla 1.5.15 for about 3 days and unfortunately it appears there was critical bugs with the Joomla 1.5.16 release. This has made the dev team speed up the old development process for the next roll out. Instead of hypothosizing the whole scenario all I can say is that atleast all the 1.5.16 updates are included in this update and there is even a string of upgrade packs available. I am willing to accept comments on this article with guesses as to the longevitiy of this release.
Here are the updates in the joomla 1.5.17 release: (Please note this list is massive!)
Security
No security issues were fixed in this release. For additional information, visit the Joomla Security Center.
Components
- No component issues were fixed for this release
Modules
- No moduleissues were fixed for this release.
Plugins
- No plugin issues were fixed for this release.
Legacy
- No legacy issues were fixed for this release.
Templates
- No Templates issues were fixed for this release.
Language
- Updated ru-RU installation language (20239)
- Added en-AU installation language (20220)
- Updated help sites list (20238)
Administrator
- No administrator issues were fixed for this release.
System
- Fixed problem logging in when Session Handler is set to None (20221)
- Fixed error message when running Joomla! in a PHP version prior to version 5.2 (20219)
- Reverted change to JFolder::makesafe method that introduced a bug (16506)
Statistics for the 1.5.17 release period:
- Joomla 1.5.17 contains:
- 6 issues fixed in SVN
- 6 commits
- Tracker activity resulted in a net increase of 4 active issues:
- 10 new reports
- 0 closed
- 6 fixed in SVN
- At the time the 1.5.17 release was packaged, the tracker had 307 active issues:
- 171 open
- 105 confirmed
- 31 pending
Finally some 6 months after Joomla 1.5.15 was released Joomla have put together a security release of Joomla 1.5.16. There has been alot of bug fixes and alot of improvements to the core system. Some users have reported issues upgrading from 1.5.15 to 1.5.16 so it is a good idea to backup your joomla site before commencing the upgrade. Attached below is the list of fixes as documented on the Joomla website as well as direct links to download Joomla 1.5.16 full package.
Security
Four security issues were fixed in this release:
- Moderate Priority – Core – Negative Values for Limit and Offset. More information »
- Low Priority – Core – Installer Migration Script. More information »
- Moderate Priority – Core – Sessation Fixation. More information »
- Low Priority – Core – Password Reset Tokens. More information »
For additional information, visit the Joomla Security Center.
Components
- Fixed error in contacts with SEF enabled (17235)
- Fixed SQL error when sorting news feeds by section. (18648)
- Fixed problem showing URL for image files in Atom news feeds. (18936)
- Fixed problem where author alias was not escaped correctly. (19009)
- Fixed bug in pagination of category blog menu item. (19245)
- Fixed display of image captions in some situations. (19405)
- Fixed caching problem with com_contact. (19435)
- Added framework validation to com_media file. (19763)
- Fixed PHP notice when enabling or disabling a user. (19798)
Modules
- Fixed caching for related articles module (17000)
- Fixed notification error in login module (17762)
- Fixed problems with upgrade method in module installation (17878)
- Fixed typo in mod_latestnews. (18403)
- Fixed HTML validation problem with mod_search. (18619)
- Fixed problem with some news feeds not showing. (18672)
- Fixed problem in mod_login where trashed menu items show in redirect list. (19831)
Plugins
- Fixed problem saving content in TinyMCE when editor is toggled (17936)
- Fixed bug in email cloaking that added an extra space (17986)
- Fixed problem saving valid attributes for some HTML tags. (19055)
Legacy
- No legacy issues were fixed for this release
Templates
- Fixed problem loading template files for RTL languages. (18614)
- Fixed beez template to show correct Itemid after a search. (18683)
Language
- Added missing translation strings in installation. (19604)
- Added sr-YU language for installation. (19627)
- Added Phnom-Penh to timezone files. (19715)
- Added missing language strings in installation files. (19816)
- Added Arabic Unitag installation language ar_AA (19836)
- Added missing language strings for is-IS language in installation. (19864)
- Added missing strings in installation ini files. (19871)
- Added new hi-IN install language (19966)
- Added updates on installation ini files (20024)
- Fixed language bug in Menus (20055)
- Added language credits update (20195)
Administrator
- Fixed display problem in back end with RTL languages. (18570)
- Fixed problem where Menu Item types for disabled components still showed when adding menu items. (18617)
- Fixed problem with display of module position in Module Manager. (18848)
System
- Fixed JFolder::makeSafe method to not remove dots in path (16506)
- Fixed problem that prevented using a cache in some cases (16974)
- Remove PHP warning message on some versions (18612)
- Fixed problem installing modules in update mode. (18987)
- Fixed problem with Yagoon and Norfolk timezones. (19555)
- Fixed problem with return value when saving polling components. (19655)
- Fixed problem in JToolbarHelper class media_manager method. (19680)
- Fixed incorrect URI for IIS platforms (18046)
- Improved handling of failing Apache plugins (19859)
- Added Reykjavik in timezone (20025)
- Fixed JApplication::redirect() to not use 301 code (20043)
- Fixed SEF search URL’s for cross-platform compatibility (20184)
Statistics for the 1.5.16 release period:
- Joomla 1.5.16 contains:
- 48 issues fixed in SVN
- 52 commits
- Tracker activity resulted in a net increase of 83 active issues:
- 224 new reports
- 94 closed
- 48 fixed in SVN
- At the time the 1.5.16 release was packaged, the tracker had 303 active issues:
- 169 open
- 103 confirmed
- 31 pending
To Download Joomla 1.5.16 click here.
Over the last couple of weeks I have been getting asked for a good Joomla tutorial guide. While I have had to sadly turn people away with no real definitive solution or place to go to I have done some research and found a great product which as the title suggests “Joomla Made Easy” does make Joomla easy. This complete guide comes with not only a great step by step guide on how to install, configure and use Joomla but it also comes with Joomla templates, addon modules and guides on how to create membership sites.
There are over 18 Joomla videos, a joomla template maker, joomla template ebook and a massive 400 Joomla Templates to choose from. The great thing about “Joomla Made Easy” is the way the videos are created they are all user friendly and show in laymens terms how to create the joomla website you have always wanted. The cost for this product is $47 but for the money it is well worth purchasing.
You can get your copy of Joomla Made Easy by clicking here.
An article I wrote the other day sharing my concerns about the development of the new Joomla platform made me revisit the issue after much thought. I did a little more asking around and found a chat log that was posted on the Joomla Community website. This chat log talks about the upcoming changes and advancements in Joomla 1.6. While this chat was a scheduled one a few good points and questions were covered. Amongst the biggest of points was the fact that ACL has been a bug bear but it seems to be getting there.
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