Posted by: Joel Larkin
on Jan 26, 2009
I had a recent issue on a website running QuickFAQ when I enabled it's JomComment integration. The JomComment "Panel" would not show up, a bunch of bullets would appear instead. After tracing this down I realized that the JomComment style sheets were missing.
A simple HACK to fix this is to add the stylesheet to the proper view file (components/com_quickfaq/views/items/view.html.php).
After the quickfaq CSS is added add this line:
Posted by: Joel Larkin
on Jan 22, 2009
I've recently made some code changes on a website to address some nagging issues with SermonSpeaker's latestsermons module. The following is the list of things I changed and you can find my version in the downloads section.
- Removed Extra
tags after a closing list item tag - Converted from
to <br> (for validation on the mouseove tops) - Added a Module Class Suffix to give Module styling
- Moved the end of the ">" at the end of link tag to after IF statement (if you turned mouseover OFF the list items would dissapear).
- Added DATE_FORMAT parameter to allow custom date in mouseover text.
Posted by: Joel Larkin
on Jan 15, 2009
I've been using SermonSpeaker 3.0/3.1 to organize & display sermons for customer websites. It was annoying me for awhile the default view that was presented (see below). It gives a Play Icon and the text (Play) as two seperate links requiring you to click on the links in order to get to a download link. I made some simple modifications to offer a download link right next to the play icon in order to simplify things.
In SermonSpeaker.PHP
Edit Line 238, 277,279,281,283,285 which are $query lines to include sermon_path after sermon_title. (remember each line contains a different sort)
Posted by: Joel Larkin
on Jan 15, 2009
After a few days of downtime I decided to spend some time today updating the Agora Plugin. I've been working on other things but wanted to circle back and make some improvements.
- Created a "Language File" allowing you to specify what will be displayed when no posts show up.
- Created an additional Plugin Parameter called Date Format which allows you to change the format of the date (I didn't like Day Month Year). This uses the PHP Date Function so check the manual for formatting options.
- Removed all the irrelavant code
- Updated some icons
This should work pretty well as nothing major has changed. I hope (when I get some additional time) to be able to update the Avatar used in Agora to the JomSocial avatar.
Posted by: Joel Larkin
on Jan 11, 2009
I developed a plug-in to JomSocial to address a need on our church website. The need was to have forum posts from a particular user show up on their profile. Unfortantely we use Agora which doesn't seem to get much development. I based this code of the FireBoard plugin AzrulStudies developed. You can download this from www.myne.org/downloads.html
Posted by: Joel Larkin
on Jan 7, 2009
Our Church uses a Church Member database system called ChurchInfo. In our Church we track members and regular attenders separately however we do similar things for each group (like track birthdays). The system out of the box only allows us to report members birthdays. This is kind of annoying and requires running a "free-text" query to get around.
Recently I got a request from the church secretary (my wife) to change this behavior. They wanted to have a drop down box selecting the month and a select box with the Classifications (Member, Regular Attender, etc) on the Query screen so they could easily see what they were doing.
I was able to modify the system pretty easily and wrote up how I did it. Here is what I did. It involved modifying a file (QueryView.php) and a few rows within the sytem.
Posted by: Joel Larkin
on Apr 10, 2008
I decided rather recently to rebuild my VMware Server running on RedHat Enterprise Linux 5 (RHEL5) with Windows 2008 Enterprise Core running Hyper-V. I currently use a Dell PowerEdge 2950 with approximately 16GB RAM and Dual Quad Processors. To make matters more complicated I don't run any Windows Machines at home, I only have my corporate laptop running Vista. This meant that the only PC I had was in a different domain than the Hyper-V server.
This is my first “real” experience with Windows 2008 Core so I wasn't as familiar with the commands as I should be. The install was quick and without issue. Then matters got complicated. Windows Firewall was enabled complicating matters and making it difficult to work with. I ended up completely disabling the firewall until after I got things setup. After setup I enabled to firewall and everything continued to work.
On the Client I had to enable Anonymous DCOM to get Hyper-V manager to work. I then used CMDKEY to save my credentials so I didn't have to type them anymore. The first link below contained some great information on the using Hyper-V without joining the domain. There are some manual edits that have to be done of the AzMan store for Hyper-V which is pretty easy to walk through. Now, beyond some occasional hiccups with the client, things appear to work.
The following links are full of great information:
Posted by: Joel Larkin
on Mar 19, 2008
Recently I got the question of QoS at work. There were a few questions that were asked surrounding it, most specifically the following:
- How does the QoS Engine Work?
- How does this compare to a Hardware based solution such as Cisco?
- Does this impact scalability?
I was unable to answer the questions off the cuff so I did some research.
Posted by: Joel Larkin
on Mar 19, 2008
The Cisco VPN Client for Vista works great unless you want to run the 64bit versions. I installed Vista Enterprise 64bit with Service Pack 1 onto my Thinkpad T61p recently. This install went very easily and I was pleasantly surprised to find that Lenova had 64bit versions for all their software. I then went to look for a 64bit version of the Cisco VPN client and was surprised that they haven’t announced support for, nor published a beta for the Legacy client. They have a SSL VPN (AnyConnect?) version for 64bit but not the legacy client. This is surprising. Attached is a MS link for more information: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929490
Posted by: Joel Larkin
on Mar 5, 2008
I've had various servers over the years running SSH but recently I've seen more and more brute force attacks from various locations around the world. I've recently been looking at modifying the hosts.deny file for the IP addresses that attempt more than 1,000 invalid connections per day however this shouldn't be a manual process in this day and age so I turned to the internet for an answer.
I came across this utility: DenyHosts (http://denyhosts.sourceforge.net/). It looks pretty neat and the setup was relatively simple and pretty well documented. Various tests illustrate it works pretty well even if it has a bit of a lag prior to modifying the hosts.deny.
I'd recommend implementing a similar utility for anyone running a publically accessible SSH Service.
