Archive for September, 2007

phpFoX Konsort Version 1.6 RC2 (Build 2) Released!

Posted September 30, 2007 * Comments(0)

Version 1.6 RC2 (Build 2) has been released.

Note: This is only a Build release. For more information about builds and how to install them check here:
http://wiki.phpfox.com/guide/Konsort_1.6/Install_Build

With this build we have fixed various bugs since our last release, these fixes include:

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:: Where can I test a live demo?
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Here: http://benchmark.phpfox.com/1_6_RC2/

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:: Where can I download it?
================================================

Go to: http://clients.phpfox.com/index.php?cmd=licenses/index

From the download list look for “phpFoX Konsort :: Version 1.6 RC2″.

Beta vBulletin Integration for phpFoX Konsort 1.6 RC2 Released!

Posted September 24, 2007 * Comments(0)

With our past versions of this plug-in it required clients to modify their vBulletin source code. Which isn’t a hassle the first time around, however it can be a hassle once you need to upgrade your vBulletin and then figure out what files to modify again. With this update we have integrated phpFoX using vBulletins hook system which stores all plug-in related calls in their database. In return this should help you not worry when it comes time to upgrade in the future.

Part of the hook system is during the install of this plug-in it will automatically update your vBulletin templates to look and feel like the default phpFoX template. Giving your users the illusion that your sites are in no way separated.

One major inconvenience in the past was how the main menus on the vBulletin side would not match up with the phpFoX templates unless you hard coded parts of the plug-in files. With this new plug-in all the menus (top, main & bottom) are connected to the phpFoX menu class which displays all the current links you have on your phpFoX site. So you won’t have to worry if you add a new menu in the phpFoX Admin CP or if you were to translate your site into another language.

With the improvements there have also been several bug fixes for this plug-in which include:

This is currently the first official release for this plug-in for the version 1.6 release so this plug-in is still considered beta. There is currently no support for this plug-in, however if you run into any problems please take the time to post it in our official issue tracker: http://tracker.phpfox.com/

Stable release for this plug-in will be released with the stable release of Konsort v1.6, if not sooner.

We have a live demo setup for this plug-in and it can be viewed here: http://benchmark.phpfox.com/vbulletin/

To download this plug-in it can be done direct from this thread.

phpFoX Konsort Version 1.6 RC2 Released!

Posted September 24, 2007 * Comments(0)

We would like to announce that Version 1.6 RC2 has been released.

No new features have been added to RC2 as our main focus is on clearing out all the lingering issues. Depending on how RC2 performs this could be our final version before the stable release. Our next release will be marked as v1.6 RC3 (Release Candidate), however if we find that there is a low number of “bugs” we will release builds that will patch all the remaining issues directly. We can thereafter jump direct to the stable release and skip RC3 altogether.

If you would like more details on what has been added to phpFoX Konsort with version 1.6 feel free to check out our last release here as it has more details regarding this matter.

With version 1.6 we will be going a different direction with our documentation and will be using a Wiki based system. We have recently started to fill up the database with more articles, however it is still far from complete. It does have some essential articles to get things going with Konsort, such as:

Our Wiki can be found at: http://wiki.phpfox.com/

vBulletin Integration has also been updated to work with v1.6 and includes numerous “bug” fixes. More details regarding this plug-in will be released shortly.

We have also fixed various bugs since our last release, these fixes include:

================================================
:: Where can I test a live demo?
================================================

Here: http://benchmark.phpfox.com/1_6_RC2/

================================================
:: Where can I download it?
================================================

Go to: http://clients.phpfox.com/index.php?cmd=licenses/index

From the download list look for “phpFoX Konsort :: Version 1.6 RC2″.

Strip out comments, whitespaces & new lines in PHP files

Posted September 6, 2007 * Comments(2)

I was working on a little script that creates an MD5 check sum for phpFoX Konsort, which will help the support technicians see if a client has modified a file or if they are using the default build released. Earlier I had used the most common method in doing this which is:

$sHash = md5(file_get_contents('filename.php'));

Another alternative to that is:

$sHash = md5_file('filename.php');

Both worked for the most part, but I found some abnormalities on windows servers and in numerous cases where files would get corrupted during an upload of a file via an FTP client. The corruption of the file would be that it would have extra whitespace’s and extra new lines added to the source code, which would still allow the script to function per its design but will also appear to be modified since any changes to the file would cause a drastic change in the MD5 hash.

One workaround I have found and thus far has been rather successful is to first strip out any comments, whitespace and new lines in the PHP source code. This would in return hash only the actual PHP code needed for the software to function.

If you use PHP5 you could use the function php_strip_whitespace, however this function has trouble when it comes to HTML embedded in the PHP source code. It does not remove any of the new lines, which would also cause drastic changes in an MD5 hash. Not to mention it only works on PHP5 and if you had to run the hash check on a PHP4 server it would return a fatal error.

The function I speak off can be found here.

Usage:

print StripWhitespace('filename.php');

The method I used was to create an MD5 hash which could be done like so:

$sHash = md5(StripWhitespace($sFileName));

If you have any other methods in getting this sort of job done feel free to share.

Missing Security Tab in Windows XP

Posted September 4, 2007 * Comments(1)

I’ve got an IIS server setup to run some tests for various scripts. Its setup on a Windows XP Pro and allowing “write” permission can be rather annoying. If your searching around you will find many guides on how to change a folder or a files permission and this is done by Right Clicking, going to Properties and then click on the “Security” tab. The “annoying” part of this all is by default Windows XP Pro does not come with the “Security” tab, even after IIS is installed.

To reveal the Security tab follow three simple steps:

1. Open Windows Explorer, and choose Folder Options from the Tools menu.
2. On the View tab, scroll to the bottom of the Advanced Settings and clear (click) the check box next to “Use Simple File Sharing.”
3. Click OK to apply the change, and you should now have a Security tab when viewing the properties of a file on an NTFS volume.

Additionally you can visit this link to get more info :
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=290403