The problem is, that the update is buggy. At least it was on my rig. But reading the forums, there were plenty of other people having the exactly same problem: You can’t go past the login screen. Or you can’t go past the startup screen.

The source of the problem is, that Ubuntu switched from gdm to lightdm, but somehow they forgot to completely get rid of gdm. And some other tiny problems.

After hours of struggle, i’ve found this: http://askubuntu.com/questions/66482/cant-login-after-installing-11-10.

It solved my problem

A joomla! 1.5 installation does not differ much from a 1.0 installation (for a non-programmer’s eye, the programming model is totally different), but the configuration file has been changed. Instead of a list of standalone constants, everything is thrown into a class, and the mosConfig part from the variable names is missing.

Everything is working the same as in the Joomla! 1.0, except step 9., where you have to replace the following values:

a:)
var $log_path = ‘yoursitemaindir/jxcms/logs’;
to
var $log_path = ‘yoursitemaindir/logs’;
b:)
var $tmp_path = ‘yoursitemaindir/jxcms/tmp’;
to
var $tmp_path = ‘yoursitemaindir/tmp’;

How? Just google it, and there is near 80% chance to get some information about, or connected with the specific e-mail address, such as another blog post, or a public user listing, or a spambot catch page. If you can’t get any information about the subscriber, do’nt worry, there is another method to filter it(him/her) out. This latter method takes some time, as you have to check, if the subscriber is active or not, posting useful informations or valid questions on the forum. If the subscriber is not active (logged in a long time ago or never), posting nonsense, you can easily delete the related user account. This is why you have to keep your forum moderated.

If your forum is too large for one moderator already, choose the most active and most loyal users, and ask them if they are willing to moderate certain sections or the entire forum for you. Supervising 4 or 5 people instead of 400 is much easier, and they will do the rest of the job.

Returning to the googling method:

The method is not foolproof, but lets you filter out the most obvious and most known spam attempts, and that’s quiet enough. Be aware. As your site grows in content ands popularity, the chance to get spammed grows exponentially. Many good forum software has built-in capability to help in filtering out these scams, but human presence is always needed.

It’s been a long time since i wrote an article here.

I’m observing a deep stupidity which sits somwhere behind desks and home computers. Many people are sending and forwarding some idiotic messages which are pretending, that well known and rich companies are giving away a lot of money for just forwarding that message. And all that money for just an e-mail forwarding and several so-called non-relevant information: Your home address, and perhaps a little more.

The sad thing is, that ther are so many information sites, advises which are saying, please verify it before acting, but it seems that many people are unaware, or even not willing to hear them.

This is a greedy method of phishing, using social engineering techniques, since it reaches a large part of the society, and as internet reaches the farthest areas in the world, this part grows every day.

You may ask: what should i do if i got such a message? Just a few steps and you’ll be safer:

1. Check the sender of the message: if you don’t know the sender, just delete the message. It is 99% certain, that the message is spam.

2. If you know the sender: Just think about his/her habits, living conditions, etc. Check the message title. If it contains a Re, Fwd, etc. words, you can be certain, the sender of the message got it from someone else. Verdict: delete the message.

3. If  you aren’t certain yet: save the message, and ask the sender, what this message is. If the answer is like “you can get a lot of money if you will forward it “, “i was already contacted”, “i don’t know”, etc. the verdict is the same: delete the message.

Step 1, 2, 3, 4: DON’T FORWARD THE MESSAGE.

WHY?!!

Somehow (I just don’t wish to write how (due to lack of time)) this message will get back to the original sender, with a huge list of e-mail addresses. He will have a lot of useful and REAL e-mail addresses, which can be used for spamming, phishing(collecting sensitive informations, such as bank account authentication data – usernames, passwords, PIN codes, geographical addresses, habits, interests, etc.). By tese means, you can seriously compromise your personal security and financial independence, and you may get a lot of other problems.

Why? Many spam comments are coming as legitimate ones, apparently with an acceptable content, but all of them are linking to som dubious sites with references and links to well known industry segments, who are ofte recurring to these methods of advertising.

Every comment or message of this kind will be reported, and these IP addresses, or even IP address groups may be banned or blacklisted worldwide.

PLEASE don’t bother me anymore!

What i like in this release, that it easily updated it’s database without any problem. I just have overwritten the old installation’s files and voila. When i logged in, the installation system just updated my DB in a couple of seconds, and i had nothing to do, except of customizing the admin area. Drag’n'drop and many other nifty things are built into this new version.

What i don’t like, is that updating does’nt work at all. Hopefully it will be allright in the next release.

Summa summarum, WordPress is a very good and robust blogging software, and also looks great!

Here are some expereience-born rules which may be good for you too (These things are for developers who are just starting in this big internet-thing):

1. Never use templates (especially when using CMS systems)

Exception: when all the other ways are ran out.

Why? templates ar tending to encompass you. They are a major blocking factor in the way of developement, especially beauty and top-notch things. There are many good javascript tools that may break the template and vice-versa.

2. In the exception above: to find the best, always compare them with others. Use commercial ones and only the best. WARNING! may be quiet expensive.

3. Learn to the smallest details possible: If you get a CMS system, or you are using one, learn how to create a template for it, and do it yourself.

4. When i said never use templates, i did’nt mean technologies. Pick up any good technology from the template, check for compatibility and use it (but always check for alternatives first).

5. Consult templates, but only for colors, font sizes, typography, maybe layout, and built-in technology. Templates can learn you, but cannot take your place. What is done by you, is familiar to you. The worst thing is, to scavenge in someone’s work. I saw professional templates put together in a very poor manner. Of course, they fell apart for the first unconventional thing on the pages i aplied them for.

6. If you wish to get something, there are a lot of free and good alternatives, but they are’nt always the best ones. Afford some money to get really good or even exceptional commercial things. They are’nt always expensive. If you get a good freeware which gives opportunity to donate, if you can afford, help it’s developer by a few bucks (even 2 dollars or euros can make a difference). This is the top level of appreciation for freeware developers.

Donating money is not always the only solution for them. Test their software and report problems or suggestions frequently. This helps improving them and creating quality software. Poor quality, bad or useless softs will not survive anyway.

I decided to reenable commenting after almost four months of inactivity. I’m waiting for fresh comments to read and “eat”

I got tired of this damnt shit, and decided to disable comments on this blog. I’m sorry, but this is the only way to get rid of them.

However, if you wish to send me comments about this, you can send a message to the support ( at ) beerwin dot com e-mail address, with the following subject format:

Blog: <article title> : your name

Thank you for your underestanding,

Beerwin

Be careful, this is a quiet complicated procedure, always use it as a LAST RESORT. AND BACKUP YOUR DB AND SITE DIRECTORY FIRST!

So, let’s get into the middle of the thing

Very first: Leave your old Joomla! installation as is

1. create a subfolder in your main site dir and name it “jxcms”. Copy a fresh Joomla! 1.0.15 installation in this new folder.
2. start the installation of the new Joomla!.
3. install it into the same DB, but with different table prefix.
4. when the installation is complete, delete the “/installation” folder.
5. Log in into the newly installed Joomla! backend, go to Site > Global Configuration – Database tab, and replace the MySQL Database Prefix field value with your old Joomla’s table prefix.
6. compare all directories between the old and new joomla! installation and copy all extra files from your old joomla! installation to the new. DO NOT OVERWRITE ANYTHING!
7. When finished, back up your old joomla! installation, but leave files there.
8. Copy all the files from your new joomla! instrallation to the old one and NOW OVERWRITE EVERYTHING.
9. Open your configuration.php and update the following:
   a:)
   $mosConfig_absolute_path = ‘yoursitemaindir/jxcms’
   to
   $mosConfig_absolute_path = ‘yoursitemaindir’;
   b:)
   $mosConfig_cachepath = ‘yoursitemaindir/jxcms/cache’;
   to
   $mosConfig_cachepath = ‘yoursitemaindir/cache’;
   c:)
   $mosConfig_live_site = ‘http://yoursitename/jxcms‘;
   to
   $mosConfig_live_site = ‘http://yoursitename‘;
10. If you wish, delete the new installation directory and the extra db tables.

And that’s it, now everything must work fine with your site.