Add a form into your Joomla content or a form in a module
New Features Highlight: bfForms for Joomla 1.5.x – all versions over v0.2.83
I’m going to try and blog on some of the new features available in bfForms over the next few days. There are LOADS of new things to try out.
The number ONE feature requested, without doubt, was the ability to embed forms into Joomla Content Items and Joomla Modules.
I am pleased to announce that bfForms now comes with FREE plugins for Joomla 1.5.x, a content plugin that provides form embedding in Joomla contentembedding forms into Joomla Module positions and a module that allows .
Its so simple. To embed in content you use {form 1} where 1 is the id of the form you want to show – thats it!!!!! no other configuration in the content item is required! Simple, quick and easy!
For the module, all you need to do is assign the bfForms module to the position you want it and specify the form id in the params. – again amazingly simple!
Watch our blog for further hints and tips on the new features over the next few days.
NEW: Follow us on twitter: blueflameit
A Blank White Page Is Still An Error Page
Sometimes, due to a PHP error, a Joomla Extension can stop working and, without displaying an error, lead you to a blank page.
In that case, to find out why, do following:
- Check server error logs (not access logs) if you have access to them. (cPanel or other control panels often allow this)
- Go to Joomla Administration -> Global configuration and enable Error Reporting to Maximum, you can also turn on debugging. – try the action again – if you still get a blank page then goto 3
- put the following code at the END of the configuration.php file BEFORE the closing ?>
ini_set( 'display_errors', true ); error_reporting( E_ALL );
- Check the source of the white page – there might be still some HTML/Errors in the Page Source (Look in your web browser for the “View Source” option)
One of these should give you a nice detailed error message – which you can either email me directly or Google to find a solution
Remember this: A White Page is just an Error Page where the error message has been supressed by your configuration.
Update: Original article republished/hacked with original authors permission. Added point 4.
Easy Regex Programming for Joomla Developers
ok the title of this blog post is an oximoron 
I read a blog post on another Joomla related site today regarding easy regex’ing and I wanted to share a couple more links that I personally use while developing – and I actually DO use these myself.
This is the first one:
And the second is a plugin for the Eclipse Development platform, I use it in Zend Studio for Eclipse
How to check Joomla! download file for hacking
It has come to our attention that there is a site on the internet that is distributing Joomla’s full version zip files that are modified to add code to allow a hacker to break into your site.
This post is subtitled “How to check your downloaded Zip file is genuine and unmodified“.
Rule number #1: ONLY EVER download from a TRUSTED SOURCE (This is the joomlacode.org site) unless absolutely necessary.
Rule number #2: Check that your downloaded file is unmodified by checking the md5 sum of the file.
The md5 what?
Well check out this page (Click the files tab):
http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/joomla/frs/?action=FrsReleaseView&release_id=8897
You will see the main download Joomla_1.5.8-Stable-Full_Package.zip has a md5 of 36b9c161b46bf973a96201135e933219
We can check this md5 hash in several ways, for example on linux we can type
md5sum Joomla_1.5.8-Stable-Full_Package.zip
which will give us:
36b9c161b46bf973a96201135e933219 Joomla_1.5.8-Stable-Full_Package.zip
We can then compare that output with the md5 hash on the above web page – if they are different, even by only one char, then the zip file you have downloaded has been modified in some way – however little – DO NOT USE it if the md5hash does not match EXACTLY.
There are more secure ways of “signing” package files, with GPG Encryption/Signatures, but the Joomla Project Team are behind the times with GPG and have not yet taken advantage of the same system that linux package maintainers use – GnuPG.
There are many other ways to compare md5 hashs – and some windows applications as well
How To Add Forms Into Joomla Content or Modules
Using Phil-a-form you used to be able to put forms into modules or embed them into content articles using a mambot syntax.
I am getting a lot of emails from existing customers of Phil-a-form who are migrating to Joomla 1.5 and Joomla Forms asking how to do this in Joomla 1.5 – well at the moment you CANT with Joomla Forms ! (and we have said this a few times before! – And yes we know competing products have this 
)
But we are working on it! Along with a load of new features the next release – you will not be disappointed with the next release There are a lot of hidden gems in it and we are taking our time in getting it right.
Thanks for your patience – Joomla Forms is already a fantastic application and we are working harder and harder to make it better.
I’ll post again shortly when this feature is released
Red Flag Green Flag Cross Tick
This article applies to the latest versions of Joomla Forms, Joomla Knowledgebase and Joomla Tags extensions.
It came to our attention some time ago that using green 
and red flags 
to indicate published/unpublished states was not very easy on the eyes, and especially for those people who have trouble with colour-blindness or other disabilities.
Therefore we have a hidden tweak in the above extensions If you would prefer tick 
and cross 
icons instead of the flags you need to edit the file:
/plugins/system/blueflame/bfTweaks.php
And change the line that says this:
define ( 'bf_useflags', true ); // DEFAULT: true
to this:
define ( 'bf_useflags', false ); // DEFAULT: true
job Done
Using Prism To Administrate Joomla Safer
A lot of talk has gone on recently regarding CSRF and Joomla 1.0.13/1.5. CSRF is a problem for all web based applications and the upcoming Joomla 1.0.14 and Joomla 1.5 stable have both been hardened against such security vulnerabilities. Hardened, not made secure, as it is practically impossible to secure against each and every CSRF there is without interrupting workflow. Joomla, as do most other webapps, has made it as difficult as possible to use CSRF to hack a Joomla site.
The advice issued by ourselves recently is still just as valid now as it will be when Joomla 1.0.14/1.5 are released – Please follow these rules:
– ALWAYS click LOGOUT in Joomla Admin when you finish
- NEVER browse other websites while logged in to Joomla Admin
- If you allow users to upload/modify your site through any third party component then don’t browse/or limit your surfing of your own site while logged in to Joomla Admin
- NEVER click on links to “Upgrade this component” in 3rd Party Components
- NEVER browse forums while logged into Joomla Admin
However, there is always a better, more secure option,
Introducing PRISM
Prism (formerly, Webrunner) is a prototype application that lets users split web applications out of their browser and run them directly on their desktop. What this really means in non-techie speak is that you can launch a scaled down web browser in its own process and use that to administrator your Joomla Site. Prism is a scaled down Firefox web browser that is designed for web applications – so already its more secure as its not Internet Explorer based
We have been highly active in using webrunner/prism since the first release – and we are addicted.
Learn More
Get Prism
Once you have prism installed, simply double click its icon and you will be prompted to give a URL and NAME (and a few optional options).
For the URL set this as your admin console – like http://www.mysite.com/administrator/
and the NAME set to “Administrator for mySite” – also check the desktop shortcut icon.
Then you will be promptly shown your admin page – you can now login securely and continue administrating your Joomla site in Prism and NOT IN YOUR REGULAR BROWSER – this creates separation between your normal surfing and your Joomla Administrator.
By doing this you 100% protect yourself from the CSRF vulnerability reported in Joomla and other web apps – once you get addicted (as are we) to Prism you will never use your browser for web applications again!!!
Hope you like the tip!
What to do if you lose your AUTO_INCREMENT properties on your Joomla Database Tables.
It has been reported to us twice over Christmas that a certain backup and restore component for Joomla is “cloning” Joomla databases without reinstating all the properties of the databases’ primary keys correctly.
You will know when you have this problem as you will not be able to add any NEW content to your Joomla site and you may get error messages about duplicate primary keys.
If you take a look at your jos_content table, check the ID field and see if auto_increment is a property of the field – if not then you have lost all your auto_increments.
I have compiled a short list of SQL commands to reinstate the correct primary keys and properties based on joomla.sql, the default joomla installation SQL. This will NOT fix 3rd party components tables which must be done manually.
The following SQL Commands are applicable to Joomla 1.0.x only. Read the rest of this entry »
Searching with multiple tags – new feature
For some time now customers have been requesting a certain new feature in the Tags component – The ability to link to pages that contain articles tagged with two or more tags by AND or OR. Well we listened and now we are happy to announce a new release of the Tags component with new features !!!
This new functionality allows you to search for articles that are tagged with the tag names suppled within a URL.
You can search for articles by two methods the and method and the or method.
The or method allows you to search for articles tagged with the tags x or y (x and y being tag names). The URL that is required for this search method to work will look something like this:
www.mywebsite.com/index.php?option=com_tag&tag=x|y
As you can see the two tag names are separated with a bar(|), make sure this bar is included in the URL else the results of the search will not be as expected.
The and search allows you to search for articles tagged with the tags x and y (x and y being tag names). The URL for the and search is the same as the or search but with one change the tag names are separated with a semicolon(;) thus the URL will look something like this.
www.mywebsite.com/index.php?option=com_tag&tag=x;y
Again make sure this semicolon is included in the URL else the results of the search will not be as expected.
Please note that it isn’t possible to mix the two searching methods together e.g. x;y|z as this will result in a negative result
(Thanks to Chris for doing this so quickly and Thanks to Conor for the sponsorship)
Special Chars in our xAJAX Components
As you may be aware we have been investigating why, under certain environments, non-latin based chars do not display correctly on websites when using our xAJAX based components such as Tags or mosKB.
xAJAX uses UTF-8 so we know it was not an issue with xXAJAX. Joomla 1.0.11 is not too UTF-8 friendly and even the Joomla Developers have blogged about the difficulties in acheiving true UTF-8 on a site.
After many weeks testing under different environments we are pleased to offer some more thoughts so that, if you are experiencing issues with the chars not displaying correctly, you can attempt these changes to your site to ensure the best compatibility. These changes have fixed every site we have personally seen that had problems so we hope that one of them will fix your site if you are having issues.
Credits and Thanks to the some great webpages
Read on tosee ways you can help yourself…