ePrints is one of those projects that I seem to spend a lot of time doing minor tweaks to and changes to help the Library do their job effectively. This shifts from major projects like Author ID to mundane tasks like refreshing their templates and style to match the marketing departments wishes. One of the things I’ve done recently is setting up ePrints to be able to reassign the depositor field.
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One of the things I’ve been working on over the last month is the ability to create distinct and unique author identifiers for ePrints. ePrint’s is a really awesome Perl based repository that the University uses to handle its research papers but whilst it is great at handling ePrints, documents, users and a whole host of other things it really falls over when you try to treat authors as individuals.

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So today I upgraded WordPress to its latest security release. I would have liked to use the automatic tool but somehow it forces me to use FTP for some reason unknown to me. So I did it the hard way and unlike Joomla! it asks you to delete files, copy things, make sure you don’t accidentally delete something and check that you included everything right. I always find it annoying how WordPress works however that’s the price that I pay for trying out something interesting. In other news my iBook G4 is in piece on my kitchen table whilst I try to work out how to fix it again.

A few hours ago Joomla! 1.5.14 was released and I updated my websites. It’s a great feeling to be able to update a Joomla! site in under a minute from logging in, to finding and downloading the update to applying it. Check out the latest update manager and download the latest Joomla! release now.

There are times when 140 characters just isn’t enough, microblogging works but in this case I have a quote which would be put 86 characters over twitters limits (I tried):

And generally speaking, “large, deep-pockets organization(s)” are no more stable than a startup, from the grunt’s perspective. At any moment, you’re one spreadsheet away from being laid off to improve the quarterly statements.

It’s taken from a comment on the Slashdot article about the JRuby guys splitting from the Oracle/Sun behemoth. It is an interesting statement and something I feel is a rather accurate representation of the way life really is and a quite straight forward and direct statement of fact.

Yay for Macroblogging!

Hi all, I’m happy to announce that I’ve released the final version of the update manager. I would kindly ask all those who downloaded and installed the beta versions to update to the final release going forwards. There is a small introduction with links to the latest release on my open source consulting site as well as a walkthrough of the process. This is the first stand alone release of the tool from the Advanced Tools package and I’m going to update the Advanced Tools package to incorporate this update sometime tomorrow. I’ve also applied to have this extension listed in its own right on the JED as well to make it even easier to find. Check it out and as always if you have any issues, let me know through the comments.

For those who had earlier versions of the extension installed, you will probably be getting the following message (or have issues updating to 1.5.12): Parsing XML Document Failed: Not a JUpgrader definition file!

Updating to this version of the update manager will resolve those issues, so what are you waiting for? Update!

As I edge closer to a release I have what I hope will be the close to final. So far I have one outstanding issue with parsing XML files which I hope to have resolved with an alteration of the XML file. So you can download the Joomla! Update Manager 1.5.1 Beta 3 which now has displays for issues where your temporary path might be wrong (unfortunately it isn’t easy to handle detecting if something is writeable when in FTP mode so when I work that problem out things will be solved). As always, comments welcome!

Some more updates and fixes including a message display system, the ability to force upgrade a site with a full patch and some minor bug fixes. Again, this release requires PHP5.

Download Joomla! Update Manager_1.5.1b2

If you have any issues, feel free to submit comments. So far I have one outstanding issue with some sites with FTP enabled not downloading files properly – I think it is a permissions issue but I’m still investigating this.

I’ve done a major update to the update manager that is distributed with the Advanced Tools pack. I’ve also released it as an individual download as well that you can get and update your Advanced Tools install or just install individually if you want. However the side effect of this is that I’ve killed the old version. It was a hard decision because at one stage I was going to have a new file location and have the old software work going forwards as well as the new software working fine. I thought I’d force the update though to bring things forward. But its a big change.

First if you’re on the old version, you will get the following error message:

Parsing XML Document Failed: Not a JUpgrader definition file!

Complete with a shiny red font and the like as well. Once you’re at that point you aren’t going to be able to continue with the old tool. It has reached the end of its era. The tool itself is a slight modification of the 1.0 version that I wrote a few years ago – so I guess its fitting that it gets a bit of a rethink into a new 1.5 like version with features backported from 1.6’s tree. Part of this means that I’m really only supporting PHP5 or greater any more. I don’t have PHP4 handy for me to test any more and really, its getting beyond a joke now. Joomla! 1.6 will require PHP5.2+, however most of what I’m working on should work fine with PHP5+ without issues.

So what features do we have:

1. The ability to update the updater itself? Check!
2. The ability to switch between the 1.5 extractor, a backported 1.6 extractor and 1.5’s built-in PEAR Archive_Tar? Check!
3. The ability to manually upload files and use those instead of requiring an internet connection? Check!
4. The ability to specify a HTTP proxy to download updates through? Check!
5. Support for fopen and cURL for downloads? Check!
6. Support for working with FTP mode as well as without? Check!

I’ve got a beta release that if anyone is interested in testing ready to go, just download the “Joomla! Update Manager 1.5.1 Beta” by clicking the link (or copying it) and installing it into your own site. It’ll work for new installs or update existing installs.

Let me know if there are any issues as comments here. Once I’ve finalised this release, I’ll switch over the paths from update2.xml to update.xml and get everything squared away all nice and tight.

Progressing forward with my releases, Ban IP Address and Range has just received an update to allow it to redirect to a location instead of just displaying a message. This means you can redirect to a static page somewhere with more details, an image or something similar like that.

As always you can check it out on the Joomla! Extensions Site and there is some documentation online as well (needs to be updated still though!). Downloads available from JoomlaCode.