Must be about time to update my thoughts on Gantry, as it has been oh, 9 months now. EXCELLENT WORK RT! Building exclusively from the start of 2010 in Gantry based templates, I blogged a while back, "good yes, but I can't wait to see the future". Well, the future is here now and I am loving my Joomla! life. Finally, we see from the RT pro template club, a fusion of styles, ease of use, and granular dedication. Now, I suppose the 1/2 the time it used to take while coding in CSS for every 3rd party extension and Joomla template tweak, is being replaced by eternally setting and testing parameters. Nuff said, it's great! I'll leave that last remark up to my analytical time management and analysis team. ;)

Talking UNIX server administration to a professional chef, will most likely prove a translator is needed. I find the same is true when talking Joomla! to just about everyone, save for other Joomla! professionals. I hope for those reading this, you don't need a translator. I'd like to get on with blogging about the highs and lows of the Joomla! "where" questions out there. And for me, the "where" starts with on what!

Fifteen plus years of web mastering, active scripting, cold fusion, php, and all that goes into making it look nice on the web, one can't help but pick up more and more, pros and cons. The cons here being your web host. A quick path to failure in Joomla is having a hosting provider that isn't willing to work with you, and in a timely fashion.

Many hosts offer software instant install packages these days via their cPanel or Plesk. This is where chown, chgrp, chmod "wrangling" will come into play "where" Joomla!.  I cannot tell you how many different hosts I've struggled with, and through these issues for friends and clients over my past three wonderful Joomla! years. The fact of the matter is Joomla! needs certain permissions. In particular, owner/group and that group needs to be "nobody".

Apache servers utilize that "nobody" group. Joomla must or things just aren't going to go your way at all. What I've found is these instant install packages will write owner/group as one in the same...this causes all sorts of headaches when installing extensions, namely a perfect failure and a perfect mess, not to mention stress, frustration, and fatigue to even the greater knowing out there.

I'm seeing a rise in exploits in Joomla! extensions over the past year. Not sure if it's due to the popularity, more developers writing JCode, or hackers thinking group nobody and chmod 777.

Most people plod through installation issues by chmod folders to 777 since the host they are on won't give them nobody group configurations. I hope there aren't, but I'm sure there are many out there that fore go working with their network administrators, and chmod everything to 777 so they can build their Joomla! What I fear is they aren't securing it when done building! Hence, the rise in exploits, perhaps and so it goes...

For those out there, like me, who have recently upgraded their tool kit to include the hat of UNIX network administrator...I'd like to share some links containing little gems for assisting you in your "where" solutions. If you are on a virtual private server, dedicated server, or running your own box you will need SSH. And for those who are not, please work with your network admins to get the best "where" out of your Joomla! applications.

Great overview here:

http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?t=121470

A bit clunky, but you'll get the idea from it:

http://www.juicytools.com/web-design/getting-joomla-permissions-to-work-on-a-dedicated-or-vps-server-liquidweb/

 

I loaded Gantry 2.0 about a month ago and haven't had time to work on much since here at Joomla-Webmasters.com. Though, I do find I lurk in the shadows quite a bit.

I'm always amazed how a Joomla! site can sit for a couple weeks, and the next time you poke around you find this and that need updating. It's a good thing, but time consuming over the long haul when managing multiple sites.

I do hope the developers at JDevelopers NYC headed my report of user out cry on this matter. Oh, to have a single button in the Joomla! backend that would magically go out and update everything installed on your Joomla! build....Like Ubuntu or Windows do updates.

Just dream of that day, I do!

JUG of PHX folks, I can only make time on weekends now. My weekdays are all filled, and I'm sorry for the delay.  I'm forever hopeful a window will open for me to jump through. :)