The Joomla! Forum ™

For discussion of Joomla 1.5.14 Released

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Kenneth Crowder - Omaha, Nebraska, USA
Global Moderator - Joomla! ...because open source matters
Recipes for people with food allergies: http://intolerantoffspring.com
Author of "Joomla! 1.5: Developing Secure Sites": http://www.lynda.com/home/DisplayCourse.aspx?lpk2=73559

Friends I am concerned about the release of patches very close to another, even questioned it before the forum was created 1.5.14
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=416119&start=30
Even with the 1.5.14 update has been successfully run with this type of application updates get a little of our confidence in the quality of the project. I personally notice that things look is kind of getting out of control with this process of change of coordination. No more congratulations to the team and community ...

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Karlos Rikaryo
Inventtive.Com.br
(88) 8809.9022

Here is another interpretation:

Joomla! is a complex framework and uses plenty of technologies which are beyond the control of the team, e.g PHP and associated 3rd party libraries. These don't remain static. Additionally those miscreants out there who are determined to create mischief (aka crackers) don't exactly sit on their butts twiddling their thumbs. So while it may be a bit of an inconvenience to implement upgrades with a bit of regularity as has been the case in recent times, it shows that the team is on the ball and those hard-working folks should be complimented.


That's a bit unfriendly don't you think ?

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Freedom of expression ... some may try to suppress it but they can never take it away ...
There is no problem a good miracle can't fix.

Oops the "No" there is a mistake of writing.

I thank the team and not cause any problem to friends of the community, even because I only have to thank the friends

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Karlos Rikaryo
Inventtive.Com.br
(88) 8809.9022

Sadly we do not live in a perfect world

However, there are many in Joomla who are working very hard for the benefit of others, including myself, and I want to thank them for their continued surport.

If people show a little patience and do backups before installing a new release they should be able to restore if it goes wrong. suggestion - check that your backups work, I have already had problems with one hosting company where there backup system did not work and they blaimed me for it! I am no longer with them.

I like to try the releases on my home computer WAMP sites first. If all goes well I then update my websites. As there were problems with 1.5.12 I discovered them on my WAMP and did not up date the main sites. I will do the same with 1.5.13/14

Keep up the good work and thanks.

Grand salute to the team!!!
hopefully the last for j1.5.x release???
im excited to see the future road map for j1.6

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Alumni of the Sisters of Mary School Inc. - Cebu http://sms-cebu.org

The team deserves a lot of congratulations, I support their policy, cause its better to update your site, and not to find it cracked. Well done!

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Lithuanian Joomla! Community http://www.lithuanianjoomla.com
lietuviškas Joomla! puslapis, naujienos, straipsniai, forumas, vertimai
always be open source, and be free as freedom

Is it just me, or does the "patch" download titled Joomla_1.5.3_to_1.5.14-Stable-Patch_Package.tar.gz contain an entire Joomla installation? Normally it only contains the files that need to be updated. Is this going to be fixed?

Well, when you allow php to display notices, you see lot of warning now ; during install and after ....
I know there's a recommended setting, but it's better to have a script
with no warnings at all. I just don't like this.

EDIT: I did some search and realized that now Joomla is not compatible with version 5.3 of php .
Mmmm ok .

gnubler what you have discovered is that there are so many files that have been changed, since you last upgraded that yes it's nearly a full install

So gnubler nothing "needs to be fixed" at all.

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We cannot become what we need to be ... by remaining what we are

I appreciate all the work done and realise that this project is under constant change and the reasons for it but this doesn't stop the upgrade process being a real pain. I run a pile of Joomla sites and it takes 5+ hours to upgrade them manually. A while back I discovered Advanced Tools 1.5 and it changed my world. I could update all my sites in a matter of minutes not hours.

Unfortunately Advanced Tools 1.5 broke and hasn't recognised any new updates since 1.5.11. I hope Sam Moffet upgrades it soon because when it's working I couldn't recommend it enough.

What Joomla needs in my opinion is to implement this functionality into Joomla's core. Making the upgrade process simple & quick would have to be the number one way to encourage users to be up to date. As it stands now I have to wait till I can find 5+ hours free to update all my sites and the chances are by the time I get a 5+ hour free block (I currently work around 18 hrs per day 365 days per year) and do the upgrade, I'll only find a new update available a few days later.

As I said, I appreciate the reason for these constant upgrades, it's just that I would like a better upgrade process to be available.

Why does it take more then 5 hours to upload a couple of files?

Olaf

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Olaf Offick - Global Moderator
http://learnskills.org

I updated the Update Manager in the Advanced Tools package earlier this month to add some new features including a backported copy of 1.6's extractors (if you have issues with them, please tell me so that I can work it out; ability to use the native 1.5 version as well as PEAR Archive Tar (no FTP support with PEAR though)), a new download system with support for proxy servers and improved support for the FTP layer. It also now uses your Joomla! configured temporary directory instead of the cache directory as I had previously been using (a hold over from the 1.0 days of the extension). There is also the ability for it to more or less just extract the file for you if you provide it with the correct XML file and package which means you can upload those two files to all of your J! sites and upgrade them without requiring an internet connection. I also added some better support for updating the extension as well.

Check it out here: http://pasamio.com/2009/07/27/update-ma ... -released/

Edit: You can download and install the extension standalone on a Joomla! install (without Advanced Tools) or it will upgrade the version shipped with Advanced Tools. I have to update the Advanced Tools package to feature this version of the extension but I haven't as of yet had the chance to do that yet. If you are interested in Advanced Tools for other stuff (the package/library installers are used in my JAuthTools stuff) then I'd suggest installing that first and then upgrading JUpdateMan.

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Sam Moffatt
Updater, Installer and Authentication Systems
JoomlaCode Backend Systems
Pie.

That is a valid concern and if we maintained the pace that we have, I would also be worried. There have been some exceptional circumstances as of late (license issues, a high priority security issue and a significant bug that was introduced by the security release) which caused a few hiccups. Regression testing is always a challenge because it is sometimes hard to know where to look.

We're looking to increase our release cycle time and allow more time for testing. This will help in some respect, but what I believe in the long run will be more helpful is the move towards automated testing with tools like WebTest and Selenium which we are exploring.

Ian

I also encourage those who want quick updates to their sites to install pasamio's Update Manager. Once you have installed his extension, Upgrading Joomla! core is no more than a couple of clicks of the mouse. You'll be happy to know that Sam's Update Manager will be available in Joomla! 1.6 core.

Thanks to the Bug Squad for making certain we get quick turnaround on security and other important fixes. Having worked with you, I know it's challenging work and a responsibility the squad takes very seriously. As a community, we are quite fortunate.

Amy

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http://Twitter.com/AmyStephen
http://www.alltogetherasawhole.org/

I just updated all 20 or so of my sites with Sam's upgraded version of Update Manager in around 30 minutes without a hitch. Sam and Joomla rock!

Pasamio, thanks for your updated installer.

I have used it on my test WAMP site and it worked when I used 1.5 version. I presume that the 1.6 version is for the new 1.6 joomla version.

Once i have done some more testing I will use it to update my live sites.

Thanks again.

Hi flyerdave, the 1.6 extractor is a copy of the 1.6 archive libraries shipped with it and should work perfectly fine if not faster than the native 1.5 ones, but I'd like to get some testing with them from people to see if there are any issues. Of course its a configuration option so you can enable or disable stuff as required.

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Sam Moffatt
Updater, Installer and Authentication Systems
JoomlaCode Backend Systems
Pie.

It takes time to upgrade the joomla versions as we may change some joomla files to suit our requirements. We need to keep track of all the changes performed in the joomla files before upgrading with the newer version. Any negligence may overwrite our code changes in the Joomla files. We upgraded our Joomla site with this version and it took ~ 1 hour to upgrade though our site is in development stage with just 25% of code complete. Just imagine what if our project is released and we need to upgrade to the newer version.......

Anyway Thanks to the Joomla team for providing us such a powerful tool in developing the web sites....
The Joomla team deserves lots of congratulations......

Cheers

bbalasateesh - Hacking the core is not a good idea. To be honest, I have yet to find one reason why hacking was required. Perhaps, you could open a new thread and explain some of the reasons it necessary to do so and see if others might share better techniques.

If you are hacking the core, though, it will certainly take more time to upgrade. You could speed that up with a clever process that reapplied your hacks after using Sam's Update Manager. His process takes *seconds* and is something I encourage everyone to use.

Cheers!
Amy

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http://Twitter.com/AmyStephen
http://www.alltogetherasawhole.org/

I did try the 1.6 version on my WAMP server but it failed. I was trying to update from joomla version 1.5.11 to 1.5.14

One of our requirement is provide three types of admin users who have different roles after logging in to the admin site. We need to disable the creation of new articles, modules or components to the user who have less permissions and the complete permissions to use the joomla admin site to the super user. I achieved this by changing the Joomla files w.r.t restricting to display the New option in the modules etc.... by checking the login user permissions.

Is there any other way to acheive this?

@bbalasateesh: what change management tools do you have in place to keep up today?

Where I work (USQ Australia) we have a few third party systems and in particular I work on one called ePrints. We've customised ePrints heavily in some places with upwards of thousands of lines of code added or modified to meet our individual needs. We also do similar things to tools like Mahara where we have local customisations on top of the application. The way we handle it is by having a vendor branch in our Subversion repository. We then check in the major versions we run into them and merge these into our own branch. This way we can see any changes and usually only need to look at the points where a) a file is deleted, b) SVN can't easily merge changes (conflicts) or c) where we have merged in upstream patches ahead of time.

Similar techniques involve splitting out your own modifications into patches and then reapplying that as you go along as well.

Upgrading to the latest release shouldn't take too long to achieve once you get the process down pat. The greatest thing about using a version control system for everything is that you never lose something. Unit testing for your own changes becomes more important at that point however as it allows you to verify quickly you haven't lost anything as well as helping you keep your code in check along the way. Fortunately for myself we have a functional testing team whose role is to validate that the system is behaving consistently and handle releases from there.

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Sam Moffatt
Updater, Installer and Authentication Systems
JoomlaCode Backend Systems
Pie.

bbalasateesh - please feel free to post regarding the hacking approaches in the Joomla! 1.5 Coding forum. viewforum.php?f=304

Thanks!
Amy

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http://Twitter.com/AmyStephen
http://www.alltogetherasawhole.org/

I also just installed this on two of my sites. It worked flawlessly on Site 1 - AWESOME! On Site 2 I'm getting an error at Joomla! Update Manager - Step 1:



I'm not sure what to do here. Both of these sites are running Joomla 1.5.13 and have identical server setups, so I don't know why the first update worked fine and the second one failed. Can anyone help? I didn't see any troubleshooting on the developer website.

gnubler -

Check your FTP user and password, make certain you can logon using another FTP client, like Filezilla. It seems that there is a permission error with that ID and the tmp folder.

If that doesn't work, though, please post requesting help in the Migration forum. viewforum.php?f=430 That way, we don't take this discussion off topic.

Good luck!
Amy

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http://Twitter.com/AmyStephen
http://www.alltogetherasawhole.org/

Since updating from 1.5.8 to 1.5.14, we are unable to create new users in the backend. The page displays with all of the fields for username, password, etc; however, the page consists of just these fields. The standard backend menu, including save and apply are gone.
Thanks!

Sounds like your upgrade might not have worked properly. Try reFTPing your files - you could even upload the entire distribution (less the installation folder). That can also be done with Sam's Update Manager. Try installing it - and then use the "Force full update" option. If you continue to have problems, though, please post in the Upgrade and Migration forum. That way, we don't take this discussion off topic.

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http://Twitter.com/AmyStephen
http://www.alltogetherasawhole.org/

It may not always be a "good idea" Amy but in certain situtions, it may be the most prudent/efficient option. Here are a few situations and possible alternatives:

1. Adding (OSTWigits) Captcha to the core (a) Registration and (b) Contact forms.
The hack worked flawlessly. An alternative for (a) would be Community Builder (CB) + the CB reCaptcha plugin. However, this is a bit of an overkill in my view and I retained the hacked com_user option. For (b) although the hack worked fine, It did require altering 3 files so I used AlfContact which natively uses OSTWigits Captcha, instead. I recommend this extension because not only does it offer Captcha support, it - unlike the Joomla! core com_contact - does not clear data entered in the contacts form if the Captcha code is incorrect or the page is refreshed. I usually avoid using 3rd party extensions for functionality provided in the core but I find com_contact's data erasing "feature" a major annoyance.

2. Adding more fields to the Registration form.
Once again CB can be used and may be viewed as a more user friendly option because hacking the Joomla! core for this procedure also involves manually updating the database. However I still think it is inefficient to use CB to simply add a "Location" or "URL" field to the core Registration Field .

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Freedom of expression ... some may try to suppress it but they can never take it away ...
There is no problem a good miracle can't fix.

Kevin Devine's UserMeta is an excellent extension for extending the User Object. You can add data elements or table(s) easily. The new data elements are automatically displayed on the frontend User Details and in the Administrator User Manager. Check the readme in the distribution - everything you need to learn how to use it is in that short set of instructions.

For an example of how to add Captcha-type support to Joomla!'s core components, see Moovum.

Neither require core hacks.

Recommend any/all of these development resources (first two are books, third is a subscription):
- Learning Joomla! 1.5 Extension Development
- Mastering Joomla! 1.5 Extension and Framework Development
- The Art of Joomla (Andrew Eddie)

I also recommend joining the Bug Squad to learn more about Joomla!. I don't think there is a better resource than working with others who are very experienced as you fix bugs.

And, to bring this back on topic , hope everyone is using Sam's Update Manager. Trying to figure out how to crack into the SVN and slip it into 1.5's distribution! Thrilled it will be in 1.6 - it's so very helpful.

Hope that helps, dizzi,
Amy

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http://Twitter.com/AmyStephen
http://www.alltogetherasawhole.org/