Joomla! Discussion Forums

I've attached my file as index.txt there.

Thanks.

Hi all

I'm working on a site locally using JSAS, and came across another Read More... problem. When entering content since the 1.12 update the Read More... link now displays further down, 2-3 vertical spaces underneath the intro text, apposed to when entering content before the Read More link would display directly underneath, vertical top if you like, the intro text...

This is not the frontpage issue, but maybe linked to it... I haven't placed any new content on the frontpage since the upgrade...

I noticed after viewing the page source of the offending items and comparing them to the older ones there appears to be a lot of extra table information...anyone know what this is for and how to fix it so the Read More... displays correctly, or rather as it did before? This only happens when I enter new content items.

The old way:



...and now the new way...where are the extra table data and rows coming from?



Any advice?

Thanks in advance

Let me add my voice to these complaints.

I can't be bothered reading through all these bug fixes but I'm pretty sure I'm having the same trouble.

I have a fairly complex site:

http://www.workingcarers.org.au

I want a separate menu - Past Articles - to appear from our E-Newsletter menus - both Top Menu and Main Menu.

Not only will the Past Articles menu not appear but I can't publish ANY MODULES on the E-Newsletter pages!! So now the E-Newsletter pages have NO MENU!!

Can someone please explain and/or fix

Sorry to break it to you Amy -and a little late, too- but your solution has some major limitations and it does not "cover" the whole "frontpage component" idea (at least the way it was first conceived in my opinion).

Take this for example: What if I have 2 templates (=2 variations of the same template, to have more layout flexibility) and want when I click on a "frontpage" article, to be redirected to the "second" template? On 1.0.12 this cannot happen if the fix RobS suggested is not applied.

You see, under templates, I might have assigned
- the second template (=inner pages template) as DEFAULT
- the first one as the template to be shown ONLY for the frontpage component,

...but if I click an article that is on the frontpage, it stays there! The template does not change.

So, this "itemid" fix in 1.0.12 might -in some sense- put more strict rules on how content is built with Joomla! and perhaps even help template designers, but for everyone else that designs websites from scratch and implements Joomla! as the backbone for them, it really is a big change. So I'll have to agree with Brian, that this change could have talked about a bit more and perhaps other smarter solution would have been implemented. Regarding J!1.5, I'm gueesing we have a lot of time until it reaches final stable release to come up with a more viable solution that makes everyone happy.

good heavens why man?

why obfuscate the truth with a politically correct nondescript non-description?

It IS a major bug, and one that seems to have at its genesis a quest for aesthetic 'purity' rather than true functionality and cohesiveness. What the developers overlooked, is that code does not exist for its own sake, it exists for the users that use it!

Once you have built up a body of code and a corresponding body of work that depends on that codes behaviour, THEN YOU HAVE TO MAINTAIN THAT PAST (however "invalid") behaviour

Frankly, this change should NEVER have been released into the core, breaking as it does every site that depended on it.
Now for many MANY sites, this should not matter. The majority of sites are seen by two or three people at most, running a copy of RHUK SOLARFLARE and having the apple and cup of coffee images on their front page.

For people new to Joomla I'm not even sure if it makes that much of a difference ( I may be wrong,and it wouldnt be the first time*)

Amy, please dont be offended, but you discard credibility when you talk about people 'loving' the change. Its an aesthetic internal thing that ideally you shouldnt even notice, much more care about

It seems the best thing to do is to revert to 1.011 and reverse incorporate the few security changes as they were implemented for 1.012?

(People have to realize though, there are still the same perhaps shrinking pool of developers and they are now doing TWO systems. I am sure this minor fiasco would not have occurred back in the early days when everybody was focused on "Legacy Joomla" - unfortunately though I'm not sure how things are going to change in the short term. Nobody wants to stop moving forward to J1.5/2 but still Legacy Joomla calls like a plaintive child demanding their attention.

What I fear will happen is that the devs will grow to hate the legacy code, hate that they are still 'trapped' in it, hate the demands made by it (and by its users) and get disaffected and burnt out.




* It would actually be the THIRD TIME
1st.  Was wrong in 2003 - As it turns out, we were NOT "greeted as liberators"
2nd. Feb 7 2007 - We WERE greeted as liberators! (unfortunately, "liberator" in Iraqi means "One who we must blow up and kill" )

* I say it's minor as, the way it stands right now, the security issues in J0.11 appear to be minor so we can always go back to that code base w/o too much probs.

WHAT? That is BLASPHEMY!!!!



Fotis -

There are THREE possible solutions to this Frontpage issue. The Template changes you are quoting me on are suitable for one type of problem. For the template issue you are raising, you would have to use the "last resort" suggestion of building the "mock-up" articles. This is a quote from the previous page where I outlined the three choices we have as I see it.





I certainly do not believe the Template Designers would characterize this change as an enhancement for them. In fact, there has been sharp criticism from one template provider for this change.

This is from Wilco Jansen's Beta 2 announcement blog < http://dev.joomla.org/component/option, ... ,33/p,271/ >.



OK, so, that's two of our most senior developers, Johan and Andrew, and Enno, one of our very best newer developers all focused on ItemID improvements for v 1.5. So, I think they are considering these comments. There were MANY ItemID changes made for v 1.0.12 that no one is talking about. Those were excellent fixes. This one probably overreached a bit and built in stability, yes, but now the Frontpage isn't working as it should.

Joomla! is simple to configure because the complicated "stuff" is hidden away in the code. V 1.0.12 is a solid release and fixed a number of ItemID bugs but it has, indeed, added complication for this issue.

The notion that this could have been "discussed" suggests that the developers tried to change the design. That is not what happened to my knowledge. They only tried to fix problems. There was an entire team of people who tested this, as well. It is too bad these issues did not come up during testing.

I think building in a period of end user testing, outside of the working group teams, will be important in the future. I say this not only because we can better uncover these problems but also because we will have to share "blame" when everything doesn't work out perfectly.

I do appreciate how everyone tried to find a solution to work around this and maintained some calm and respect. That speaks well of our community.

Thanks, Fotis,
Amy


Edit: Fotis, DARLING! I just looked at your badge! Did you help test this release? And, if so, why did you not catch this problem? And, if you did not help test, why not? That is merely a gentle rebuke, dear, and a reminder that we are ALL responsible for Joomla! and these types of issues are difficult to fully comprehend.

Well, actually, since the Q&T team expanded very fast (and perhaps a bit late for the final release of series 1.0.x), we focused on existing issues that needed to be checked and solved. There were like a hundred open artifacts at the forge!!

The itemid issue was something that -I guess- the DEV team had planned to handle alone, so it was never discussed in the Q&T Team. Perhaps I missed something, but that's what I think.

Anyway, no harm done. As I said previously, this change might put things in some "order" (good for newbies especially), but the more "experienced" can live just fine with RobS's patch... 

I posted my previous message cause I had just witnessed the itemid issue while working on a project and developing a new extension at the same time.

I think as we continue to advance as a community our testing will become more sophisticated. Unit testing should cover an artifact. I know some third party devs got hit by changes, too. A nice integration test plan and a testing time frame for them would be helpful. And, some acceptance testing from the end users will be good. In the end, we want everyone to have a chance to participate so no one can blame anyone else.

You know, my own personal understanding of what this specific change means has obviously been sharpened by trying to help people accommodate the change. There are two of these threads and I have tried to diligently assist community members. I've tried to offer what I see as solutions -- in the end, that's what people need.

We've only had a couple of people get truly ridiculous on their observations. But, they tend to not understand how open source means community and if you are going to complain, you have to help. (You should help, anyway!)

I appreciate your insights, always, Fotis. Thank you for sharing them and most especially thanks for all you do for our community.

Amy

hmm mmm grrr " fotisevangelou" ...the gathering crowd murmurs and shuffles its collective feet as they approach, pitchforks in hand......

Rob, thank you for this explanation.  I tried to take it all in from your first post, but wasn't able to grasp it.  This one was much more concise and had good examples to look at.  It helped me solve my troubles with menus sticking in places I didn't want them (when they should have been replaced by modules).  I'm not happy about having to change some automatic stuff over to handwritten content, but I am happy that the data architecture is moving closer toward something smart. 

I really appreciate everything you (and the other developers) do!



Amy, thank you for being such a bright force in this thread of obviously troubled users.  Your cool, informed approach (to say nothing of your friendly demeanor) helped keep everyone smart and on task.  Will you marry me? 

Edited to correct a typo. 

WOW! a proposal!

A Joomla wedding!!

I'd LOVE to give away AMY!




(if there be any man (or beast) who with just cause, can say why these two should not be joined, let them speak now, or forever hold their piece!*



(Yeah, some would say "peace" but they probably havent been waiting as long as these two love birds! )

Cute niemothk.

Thanks for the laugh.

hmmm Joomla! wedding.. .I think primary colors would be the theme... bride in white carrying a bouquet of mices (mouses, mice.. whichever you please) and the groom with a buttoner that is a flash drive.  Vows GPL of course ( or Creative Commons some rights reserved). 

Please stay on topic everyone.

emm....quite.

(what would a wedding be without a "Wedding Crasher"?)


Back umm..to the topic..

would anybody agree then, that perhaps for older established sites with their content already (heavily) in place and dependent on the "incorrect" internal behaviour, that perhaps a roll-back to J.011 and maybe the addition of a overlay package that applies the SECURITY updates of J.012 WITHOUT the other stuff?

I'm not sure if thats even possible,advisable or if doing so constitutes a defacto FORK of the code?.....this is stuff for greater minds than mine, or at least minds fueled by more than an all night consisting of C#, Taco Bell and Red Bull!

( Note: Open House to my cube has been cancelled 'till I can get the fans to work again ! )

Niemothk -

I am not certain how to answer your question. Are you having a problem? And, if so, have you applied RobS's hack? To my knowledge, other than a handful of issues that Q&T are tracking in the v 1.0.x bugs thread, the Frontpage component is the one causing problems.

If you apply RobS's hack, you will be back to v 1.0.11 logic.

If you are having other problems, though, please posts those and we might be able to assist.

Thanks,
Amy

I have a content heavy website with several adds including iJoomla Magazine.  I JUST rolled up to 1.0.12 from 1.0.11, and I have more than just the "front page component" issue.

I guess my complaint is that I really don't like the FrontPage module intended for "news".  I found the Display News module that is extremely flexible and extremely ... well ... awesome.  My problem is that I have a large module for it placed on my "Press Box" page, which in 1.0.11 was perfect.  I simply used the FrontPage module as an empty shell for that module to reside.  Now with 1.0.12, that module in User 4 follows ALL the news pages. 

Ive applied the hacks noted in the early part of this thread and do not see a difference.  Without hacking up template, what should I do?  Am I better off rolling back to 1.0.11?  How exactly would I go about doing this?  I am not really a Noob for J!, but I am a little list with the .css and template design still. 

My site has been live on Joomla! for about 5 weeks, and I will probably have close to 4000 news items posted in '07.  I would like to think that with each upgrade in Joomla!, I wont have to redesign my entire layout.  Thoughts?

The website would have probably helped ... http://www.racespace.net

Chris -

Since you are not using the standard Frontpage component, RobS's hack to replace the Frontpage component's properties will not work for you.

You *can* resolve this by updating your template using the examples, here: < http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic ... #msg629195 > (In fact, if memory serves me correctly, there was someone else posting with an iJoomla template).

If you need help with your iJoomla template, especially since it's a commercial product, you could talk to the developers of that extension / template. I am certain this is not a "new" issue to them.

You could, as you are suggesting, roll back to v 1.0.11.

I realize you are asking for a DIFFERENT option. If you find one, please post it here for others, too.

Thanks and good luck!
Amy

I was thinking of a fix to the whole kit n kaboodle.  Is it possible to assign a module to a specific URL only?  For example, if I wanted a module to appear on

here:
http://racespace.net/index.php?option=c ... &Itemid=41

but not here:
http://racespace.net/index.php?option=c ... &Itemid=41

... that would solve 100% of my issues, and probably for a lot of people ... perhaps even a solution for the whole itemid issue.

This could be something that could be set up on the backend as a mambot, or perhaps a module specific hack.  Of course, the option could be ignored or selected as "no" in the module prompt.  The downside is the admin may need to install multiple instances of the same mod, but I would rather have 5 of the same modules than have one module repeated thousands of times.

I'm sure I'm no genius and this has already been mulled over ...

Chris -

The three fixes I listed do exactly that if you want to stay with v 1.0.12. In your case, I recommended you also talk to the iJoomla! template folks, too, and see if they might be able to shed some light on why RobS's hack doesn't work. As you know, another option is to roll back to v 1.0.11.

You might be surprised by how easy the template fix turns out to be - I encourage you to give it a try.

Unfortunately, though, no matter how many times you ask for a different answer, I have to tell you, I am not "holding out" any good ideas. Honestly, that's all I got! lol! Maybe someone else has another idea?

Kindest regards, Chris!
Amy

I just don't like limitations.  I built a website that I now compete against from scratch 6 years ago with shtml, ssi, perl and some installed scripts like vBulletin and gallery - that site was getting 10million hits a month when I sold it - and that was old school.  I feel through a lot of experimentation that Joomla! is the way for me to go with my website, mostly because of the Community Builder project.  However I feel slightly handcuffed by the limitations of Joomla! and the itemid problem specifically.

I will try your hack Amy, and I appreciate your reply.

My suggestions is that in the future releases of J!, that this standard module option I mentioned above be considered.  Most noobs cant make a change like that, and can discourage use.

Hi Chris -

This is such a long and complicated thread, but six or so posts above, there is a discussion on how the developers are already working on ItemID changes for v 1.5 to make Joomla! a bit more flexible this way. Certainly, no one intended this to be a frustration, which you obviously know.

Thank you for your willingness to try the updates to the Template. Post in that other thread if you have questions and I can try to assist.

Best regards, Chris...Amy

Anyone have any ideas re the read more issue above?  Or should I create a new thread?

It probably would be good to post somewhere else. It is not related to this topic.

Good luck!
Amy

Does anyone have any idea why the above may have worked in one instance quite easily, but then on a completely clean install of 1.12 it didn't work until I changed the following line as so:

if ( $task != 'view' && $task != 'category' ) {
    $row->_Itemid = $mainframe->getItemid( $row->id, 0, 0 );
} else {
    // when viewing a content item, it is not necessary to calculate the Itemid
    $row->_Itemid = $Itemid;
}

to:

if ( $task != 'view' && $task != 'category' ) {
    $row->_Itemid = 999;
} else {
    // when viewing a content item, it is not necessary to calculate the Itemid
    $row->_Itemid = $Itemid;
}

Or any other hard coded number. It seems to work fine, but why did the previous line work once, but now is not working on a completely fresh install?!?!?!

Very confusing.

And is my hard coded Itemid going to cause further issues?

well im going to try out the hack in a minute.

Here is what went wrong on my site thanks to v1.0.12

http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,142519.0.html

Kind regards,
Luuk

I know, why should we have a lot of positions if we can't play with them?

I have copy of Popular items and latest news to show inside articles, cause my frontpage is in 4 columns, so it was meant to show only 1 when reading the news or article and mix a lot of positions.

I didn't see any changes after i applied the hack made by Rob, though, thanks for the effort.

I saw everything... but i can't seem to figure out a way to use this on my site, i already have somethings that show only in frontpage, but either way, if i click on my article and make some columns hidden, i won't be able to show other positions... as i was saying i have popular items in 2 positions, user3 in frontpage and user9 in news and articles.

If i hide the column that has user3... it works, but i can't show user9, nor pathway

Amy would like to be my hero? 

I admit, I didn't read every post in this thread, but I think I understand all different point of views.

I am as unhappy with the ItemId changes as many of the other users here but I don't want to dwell on it. I just want to point out that there was much talk about technical difficulties in handling the ItemId and that there had to be a clear and predictive way for them to work. Ok, you've got that now - but for what price?

There should have been a discussion about the "LOGIC" of articles before the change and I bet the result would have been different. An article in the end always belongs into one section and one category - therefore there can only be one correct "Spot" for it even if many menu items link to the same article.

If in previous releases the resolving of itemids was guesswork why didn't you give the user the control over deciding which one the correct one would be. That should have been possible in the article parameters...

Well, I hope that the developers do one step back and look at the situation from a users point of view and rethink the whole logic of ItemIds.

Take care, Stefan

I've been using Mambo/Joomla for at least 4 years. This change in itemid behavior just killed more than a week of my time as I struggled to figure out what had gone wrong. Like any experienced Joomla user, I employ all sorts of extensions -- free and paid. Of course, I blamed them (or interactions among them) for the new broken behavior. I finally found this thread purely by luck, after a global Web search, when I realized that the itemids had to be the problem.

When 1.0.12 came out, there was (to my knowledge) no mention whatsoever of this radical change in behavior -- a change that would seriously affect page layout in virtually any Joomla site. Joomla 1.0.12 was a minor security update, period.

I've installed the two code snippets from RobS, and they do fix the problem by restoring previous behavior. For that, I'm grateful. I'm also grateful for the explanations that Rob has tried to offer here.

Unfortunately, those explanations are also fairly scary: Over the years, I've spent countless hours with this CMS, reading docs and thousands of posts (and writing posts), experimenting with a million components and modules, etc. Like all of us. And I never once heard that the itemid scheme was a fundamental screw-up in the architecture of the software. I'm now pretty much floored to discover not only that fact, but that it has not been addressed at all in 1.5.

I'm fully in sympathy with zigzag. All the theorizing is irrelevant if it doesn't address this basic issue: For years, Mambo/Joomla was used by countless people in real-world work to produce page layouts based upon module inclusion / exclusion in specific sections of sites. Those sections of sites were represented by menu items in main navigation that defined the site structure. Doing things this way was utterly fundamental to sophisticated real-world use of Joomla.

Given that undeniable fact, changing the software's behavior without huge announcements -- and also without making this behavior a settable User Pref in the UI -- suggests that the developers are surprisingly out of touch with what users are doing with the software. And people weren't hacking the software to use it this way. This real-world use of Mambo/Joomla was based upon the software's design, after all. And the sophisticated work of those site-owners has been a big collective global ad for Joomla as a CMS.

Some of the posts in this thread seem to suggest that because the software is free of charge, users have no right to complain about this -- in other words, that they have no right to expect professional behavior from the developers. If they're correct, we're in pretty big trouble, because the entire world is now depending upon Open Source software. Obviously, I can't agree with the sentiments of those posts.

I was surprised and disappointed when I heard that Joomla's famous ACL inadequacies would not be addressed in 1.5, meaning that if you want a multi-author publishing platform, you'll still have to patch core files with something like JACL (which works, by the way). Now we learn that this itemid issue in 1.0.12 will also persist in 1.5.

Who are the developers developing for? Not the typical Joomla user, it would seem.

In the past, I've looked hard at WordPress and Drupal and rejected them in favor of Joomla. I need to look again. Drupal has a tough learning curve, but I don't think it has the same kind of fundamental architecture problems that I now realize Joomla has. Does it? Does anybody have an informed opinion of Drupal vs. Joomla? I'd also be willing to spend $400 on Expression Engine with Forum if it did the job. Does it?

Maybe the most interesting revelation of this thread is that Andrew Eddie and Louis Landry are both involved with ivivio.com, a company that claims to have exactly the publishing platform I'm looking for. But there's absolutely nothing on their site except very general feature descriptions (scalability, ease of use, etc.) and a case study about National Lampoon using their platform. And if you read between the lines, it looks like their products are in fact... yup, Joomla.

I'd love to hear about a real, affordable CMS solution that works. Is ivivio.com real? Is anything mature being done with Ruby or Python, for example? If you don't want to post here, email me: user at spacewalk dot com

i'm coming to this late as i've only just finished my upgrades to 1.0.12 and like a monkey fool i didn't read the changelog.

i think it's important to point out for everyone that there is a changelog with every release and while it's not the nicest thing in the world to read it is there for a reason:

http://www.joomla.org/content/view/2495/78/

however, would it not be worth while, if changes are going to happen like this, that on the changelog there is an immediate reference to it. this wasn't a minor change in how joomla works; it was quite a major change