Works as designed, but not necessarily as expected...
(for those non-Australian's out there, translate to; “Gee... It didn't do what I thought it would...")
Written by Russell Winter
Well, if any of you have seen some of my posts in the forum, you know that when I get on a roll, man. I can post some dooozies... So the plan is to deliver a series of articles in collaboration with a number of other Joomla! experts and well-known characters that relate to Site Planning, Integrity, Security and Maintenance over the coming months. For some of you, these might be a little basic, while others might find them to be worth the time spent reading them, we hope it will be the latter.
By way of an introduction for those that might not know me and to re-acquaint myself with those that do. I am Russ Winter, I live in Melbourne, Australia and have been around Joomla! for a couple of years now, you can commonly find me in the forums under the name of RussW. I tend to hangout in the Installation and Security forums mostly, but have been known to peruse the rest of the forums on occasion, I am probably best know for my odd sense of humour but can occasionally post something useful. I have most been recently been involved with the development of the Joomla! Tools Suite project and have been fortunate enough to also have been invited to join the newly formed Joomla! Security Strike Team (JSST).
Security, Integrity and Maintenance is an absolutely huge topic and is easily one of the biggest mine fields for new hands and experienced community members alike, over the coming months I will endeavour, with the help of many of the Joomla! experts and well known characters, to dispel some of the misunderstandings and urban myths, whilst also trying to simplify some of the hype and complexities of the topic.
Topics that are currently on the list to be covered are:
- Joomla! Site planning and preparation
- The meaning of “writable”
- Common hosting provider configurations
- Unix permissions and ownership issues
- Backup and recovery best practices
- Site lock down techniques and methods
- Joomla! maintenance and upgrades procedures
- Third party tools and utilities to assist the cause
and along the way.... why Australia is just so kewl...
The folks of the Joomla! Community Magazine and the JSST are looking forward to delivering this series of articles to you and hope you will find them useful and informative over the period.
Catch you in the forums
RussW
2008-12-06 09:12:47
2008-12-13 08:55:25
A case in point is user management. Any serious site with lots of users needs to be able to migrate these users between instances (dev, test, production, with subsets of the users if required), and also maintain the data across upgrades. Searching for this in Google or the forums is an exercise in frustration: there are many articles available on hosts of other topics, but this one seems to be brushed aside.
If you already have something like this, or know where to find it, a pointer would be greatly appreciated.
2008-12-18 15:03:50
2009-01-03 07:58:34
Sounds fantastic! I spend a LOT of time teaching my clients all the things you have mentioned and I suppose as a long time user of the various permentations from Mambo to Joomla 1.0 and then 1.5 I suppose I find Joomla 1.5 a little lacking sometimes in its usability (sometimes it is TOO simple) and there is not enough distinguishing between the administration and the CMS side of things. i.e. the majority of my commercial clients require a CMS but then also want all the whistles and bells.
The old components/module seperation was very handy as it made the widgets a lot more obvious and often hid the more breakable modules! (Thats a benefit not a negative)
I am looking forward to your articles and may even feed it to my site to help my clients!
I also agree wholely with what publicitate said - data packaging and migration across local directory/JSAS (WAMP) and then onto the server requires a real knowledge and removes some of the simplicity that newer users might require. (Including some new admins)
Well done so far!
Kaety
2009-01-03 08:00:42