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Geoffrey Chapman - Macrotone Blogs - Page 18

Macrotone Blogs

Macrotone blogs upon Joomla, our products and other matters.

An IT professional with a wide experience of IT systems, specialising in Database Management and Security.

Problem remote posting blog entry with htaccess rule - resolved.

I recently implemented the strict htaccess rules generated by the Akeeba Admin Tools utility.   I then discovered that it was not possible to use Windows Live Writer to post entries to the blog anymore.   It was obviously a problem with the htaccess rules since a simple test removing the htaccess file enabled a post to complete successfully.

Looking at the configuration in more detail the most obvious cause appeared to be two rules related to access the xmlrpc directory:

RewriteRule ^xmlrpc/(index\.php)?$ - [L]
RewriteRule ^xmlrpc/ - [F]

But these rules permit access, they do not deny access. so they were obviously not the cause of the problem.

Then the light dawned.  There was a rule to redirect www addresses to non-www addresses:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.+)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%1/$1 [R,L]

Because the Windows Live Writer (WLW) blog account was set up before the htaccess setting were changed it was set up to use the ‘www.xxxx’ address NOT the ‘xxxx’ address.

For this reason the posting was being disallowed.   The redirection was getting in the way.  Just disabling this one rule enabled the posting to proceed.  It was desirable to have the rule in place, so once I had changed the WLW blog account to use the non-www address posting could resume and complete successfully.

I hope others find this interesting and perhaps do not spend as much time as I have trying to resolve it.

I thoroughly recommend Akeeba Admin Tools Professional as a user since it has stopped SPAM on the site almost completely.  That alone is a triumph.

LinkedIn Users note!

I have been watching the unfolding news that details of LinkedIn users and their passwords have been leaked out into the wider web.  The most recent story is here.

I don't (currently) have a link to LinkedIn on my site although I do have an account, and have done for many years.  It seems sensible to at the very least to change your LinkedIn account password ASAP, and check that your information has not been changed, which as least one report I have seen has suggested.

Use of ampersand or not

I have recently been looking at the use of ‘Strict Standards’ and the impact upon any Macrotone written extensions.  One thing that has struck me is the use of the ampersand when making calls to JFactory (and other similar functions).

A lot of the examples on the Joomla documentation site show the call with the ampersand present, but it then generates a warning message if ‘Strict Standards’ reporting is turned on.

i.e.  Is it:

1.   uinfo = JFactory::getUser($user_id);

or

2. uinfo = & JFactory::getUser($user_id);

My understanding is that the ampersand after the equals sign is not required.  It was necessary to let PHP4 know that we wanted to assign a reference of the object to the variable instead of a copy. In PHP4 if the ampersand was not supplied it created another copy of the requested user information.   The default behaviour in PHP 5 is to assign by reference and using the ampersand produces a notice.  Joomla! 2.5  only runs on PHP 5, so the ampersand is not only redundant, it also throws a  strict notice.   I suspect that in PHP5 that if any extra instances are created by the use of the ampersand that they will be closed by the garbage cleaning when the containing function or class is closed, so apart from the Strict Standards warning message it is not really a problem at all.

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PECR–Cookies and Joomla Part 2

Since my original post there have been several new developments announced, so this is to update my list of software:

1.  Name:  Kookie Grab   Website: JED

Notes:  An updated version announced  on the Joomla Extensions Directory, written by Kevin Griffiths.  Non-commercial it seems to have resolved the initial problems I discovered with it.

3.  Name:  Channel Computing   Website:  Channel Computing

Notes:  A plugin that displays a banner on the page.  A free lite version  and two commercial available.  This is the solution with have chosen to use (at least initially) as it minimises the changes required.   There seem to have been at least 3 updates to this software, some of which introduced problems along the way.  Still a very simple and clean solution.  

5. System - EU e-Privacy Directive

An extension by Michael Richey, which is non-commercial.  I have used some of Michae’s extensions previously and they all work very well.  Definitely worth a look at, especially if it does as claimed.

6.  Cookie Alert

A commercial offering, which I have not tested.

In addition there are several commercial offerings which seem to be appearing.  The Oracle web site used a product from Etrust which is interesting although probably over kill for most Joomla sites.

If you want to roll your own Portent have a free script code example.  Also worth looking at is Wolf Software which has a collection of scripts.  They do however store a cookie themselves even if you request no cookies, which somehow seems to defeat the object, and of course it all relies upon Javascript.



Macrotone Web Site Cookies

Cookies Overview

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites that you visit.   They are widely used in order to make websites work, or work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site.

The table below explains the cookies we use and why.  View our Privacy Policy to learn more about cookies.

First Party Cookies

Cookie Name Purpose More info
Google Analytics __utma
__utmb
__utmc
__utmz
These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our site. We use the information to compile reports and to help us improve the site. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the site from and the pages they visited. Disallowing the use of these cookies prevents us from accurately analysing visitor numbers and visitors trends.
Click here for more information on Google Analytics and the Cookies it uses.
Macrotone Consulting Web site bb2_screener_

This cookie is used by Bad Behavior  to ensure the security of the site and each visitor’s session.

This cookie is believed to be exempt from the regulation because it is a site security cookie meant to help comply with the seventh data protection principle.

 
 

‘encrypted name’

Encrypted session cookie used by the web site to track the visitor.  Both the name and the value are encrypted.

Expires at the end of the session.

The session cookie name is an MD5 hash of logged in username (if logged in),  ip address, and some other info. 
The names and values are to all extents meaningless. 
In addition to the session cookie, if you have set the "remember me" flag there is also a remember me cookie saved with an encrypted version of your username and password.

  cookieAcceptanceCookie Indicates acceptance of Cookies policy.  Created when visitor has accepted cookie policy.

 

Third Party Cookies

Cookie Name Purpose More info
Twitter 'Tweet' button unique id pid This cookie is set by twitter.com to save a unique anonymous id for each website visitor.
Only present if Twitter is used on the site.

Please visit twitter.com to find out more. To delete this cookie you must manually delete this via your web browser settings.

PECR – Cookies and Joomla

I have discovered a few pieces of software that provide a start in satisfying the PECR Cookie regulations which come into effect on 26th May 2012.

I make no claims for any of these pieces of software, but my searches may be of use to others.   In total I have found the following:

Continue reading

PECR, ICO cookies regulations

The new Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR), announced by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in 2011, comes into effect on 26th May 2012.  In advance of the ICO cookies compliance date, organisations are expected to take appropriate steps to be compliant, which include making proactive changes to their websites.

We have blogged about this topic before and reference should be made to the official EU cookie compliance guide (registration required) which contains news and advice for organisations in Europe and around the world for complying with the cookie law.

The ICO provides specific guidance on PECR compliance.  However this is not all that clear (to me at least), so the absence of clear guidance on cookie compliance, and the range of practical difficulties that will be encountered in determining what to do with each identified cookie, may lead many website operators to struggle with the compliance process.

Continue reading

Site Spam Protection

We have noticed for some time a steady stream of Spam Comments added to our Blog entries and articles.  We know that we are not alone in this and that it seems to be a ‘fact of life’ that certain individuals wish to waste their time in creating such trivia. 

To minimise the disruption and annoyance these cause, these have been kept under control using a variety of methods and we recently changed our Blogging tool as a step to minimising this problem.

However one thing we did notice was that there were still Spam comments being entered even for content items that were no longer visible on the site.

We are sure that the majority of our visitors are not that interested in goods that these Spam entries advertise so have decided to take another step to trap more of these entries and introduce a further step in our line of defences.

Akeeba Admin Tools Pro has a very useful tool in the ‘Web Access Filter’ that can be used to assist in this task.  [We are users of this product and recommend it to our users, as satisfied customers and for the excellent support provided.]

We hope that this will not create any problems to our visitors and will continue to monitor the situation as time goes by. 

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sh404sef plugin for Codingfish Discussions v1.5

We are pleased to release v1.0.0 of an installable sh404sef plug-in for the popular Codingfish Discussions v1.5 Joomla component.

Developed internally for our own use we have decided to make it available to the wider Joomla community.

Problems writing a sh404sef installable plugin - resolved

I have been having problems getting a sh404sef installable plug-in working on Joomla 2.5.  Looking around the web, it seems that there do not appear to be any at all.  Of the sh404sef plug-ins available they nearly all require that the code is placed in a sef_ext directory under the component, OR placed in the sef_ext directory under the sh404sef component on the site (along with the supplied components).   This is not quite the same as having a separate installable plugin component.

 

The Anything Digital website has an article explaining how to write one, but no matter what I tried it would not work.  They helpfully provide a 'Developer' support forum, so I raised a question.  Not very helpfully they closed it with an instruction to raise the question in another forum.  A complete waste of time.  Reading around on the web, it seems I am not the only person to experience this type of response.

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