One of the changes in Joomla 1.5.8 is changes with some of the newsfeeds supplied as sample data which according to this bug report

It appears that all Joomla installations have been providing a loophole for advertising for Linuxcentral.com products in every installation"

This suprised me as very few of the Joomla sites I visit actualy use the newsfeed component to display feeds, so if the component isn't in use on a site how is this happening?

The answer is both supsiringly simple and at the same time potentialy worrying. If you know the url that a component will generate then even if there is no menu link you can still access it, as I already showed in my "Where is the search?" post.

For an example of the newsfeed component in action, even on a site where it's not in use try

http://www.domain.com/index.php?option=com_newsfeeds

But this won't work on this site!

Why?
HINT:It's not because I've uninstalled the component (which you can't do anyway as it's a core component)

Instead I've used a little used option in Joomla, that I'm not sure is documented, to disable the component completely.

From this page you just click on the tick to disable the component and now it will no longer be accessible even if you know the url.

There is an added benefit that the component will also disappear from the menu, which makes it less cluttered and confusingly full of unused components.

Just look at how clean the components menu is for this site. The only components there are the ones that I use.

TIP: For components that you only use occasionaly like joomlapack or eXtplorer you can hide them from your components menu until you need them using this method.

SECURITY TIP: If you no longer use a component uninstall or disable it now. Many sites, that are hacked by weak third party extensions, are hacked because the site owner was no longer tracking the status of the extension.

Spot the difference was one of my favourite games when I was a child.

(No Wii or Playstations when I was a child, and only 3 television stations - how did we ever survive such a primitive lifestyle).

I always struggled to find all the differences, my sister was so much better at this game than me.

But I bet everyone can spot the differences in the next picture - a screenshot of the Joomla administrator interface.

I'm sure you immediately spotted the first difference. All the Control Panel icons on the left hand screenshot are different.

The Control Panel is the first screen that you see every time you log in to your Joomla web site. And yet how many of those icons do you ever click on? I suspect the answer is no more than 3 or 4.

So why are they there? Well its mainly a legacy issue, they're there because they're they're and no one has really ever looked at changing them. I can remember a quick conversation in the Core Team IRC chat a few years ago where we discussed changing the icons but the problem was that no one could actually agree on what should or shouldn't be there. For every person that said they never used an icon there were another two people who thought it was essential. And so, as with many hard decisions, the decision was taken to make no decision and to leave it as it was.

Thankfully a third party developer (3PD), Michael Pagler saw the need and released CustomQuickIcons (CQI).

For many site developers this is the first extension that they install on a site. It allows you to quickly and easily place as many, or few, icons on the control panel as they want. You can also:

• add access keys to the icon
• create icons for a single user or user group

A new version of the Joomla 1.5 series was released today, which is possibly the last release before 1.6.

Its code name is "wohnaiki" and the only reference I can find to that is in

"The Holy Dividing Line: Inscription and Resistance in Yaqui Culture"

and the establishment of the Wohnaiki Pueplom, the Eight Pueblos which are the backbone of Yaqui social, cultural, and political life....

You can download update packages at joomla.org

Two moderate-level security issues were fixed in this release:

• Default filtering for content
• Filtering for Web Link descriptions

There are 67 Bug fixes

There are no Additions

As always thanks to everyone who submitted bugs (and fixes) and to the Joomla Bug Squad for testing and approving the fixes.

2. Changelog
------------
This is a non-exhaustive (but still near complete) changelog for
Joomla! 1.5, including beta and release candidate versions.
Our thanks to all those people who've contributed bug reports and
code fixes.

Legend:

* -> Security Fix
# -> Bug Fix
$ -> Language fix or change
+ -> Addition
^ -> Change
- -> Removed
! -> Note

-------------------- 1.5.8 Stable Release [10-November-2008] ------------------
10-Nov-2008 Anthony Ferrara
 # Added security fixes

10-Nov-2008 Wilco Jansen
 # Changed version tags of default language file to 1.5.8 (Wohnaiki)
 # Change of version file

07-Nov-2008 Sam Moffatt
 # [#13590] New installation languages to get into 1.5.8

01-Nov-2008 Ian MacLennan
 # [#13470] Missing languagestrings in mod_breadcrumbs.ini
 # [#13440] Later versions of cURL break GMail plugin
 # [#13432] Description error
 # [#13412] typo in en-GB.mod_latestnews.ini
 # [#13388] Admin modules xml does not uninstall ini files
 # [#13373] Defaut config change to cope with flash10 issue
 # [#12854] emailcloak whitespace

30-Oct-2008 Kevin Devine
 # [#13326] Beez 'Your Details' page
 # [#12696] **SEF plugin does not convert object param and onmouseover/onmouseout rollovers
 # [#13405] Further Changes to Welcome to Joomla! Module

29-Oct-2008 Sam Moffatt
 # [#13387] Incorrect regexp in JTableUser matches too many fields

28-Oct-2008 Kevin Devine
 # [#13313] Archive is not getdate - 1.5.7

25-Oct-2008 Ian MacLennan
 # [#12920] **Perform isInternal checking on referer values in User Controller
 # [#10954] **Start Publishing is automatically changed upon editing an article when time zone is not set to UTC 00:00
 # [#12798] **Beez Html Folder
 # [#12372] **Secure password is not allowed when editing account details


25-Oct-2008 Ian MacLennan
 # [#13323] **New Welcome to Joomla module and Security Newsfeed module in CPANEL
 # [#12885] **Newsfeed Module Cache is broken
 # [#13165] please select an item message does not append task to javascript pop up
 # [#11798] Missing l10n in JApplicationHelper::parseXMLInstallFile() - patch 2 committed only
 # [#11807] mosMenuCheck missing return statement
 # [#13297] Missing languagestrings in com_menus.ini
 # [#13265] **Remove illegal characters in Article Keywords
 # [#11759] **Bug in menu system when changing menu link type

25-Oct-2008 Sam Moffatt
 # [#13264] **Untranslated Strings in en-GB.tpl_ja_purity.ini
 # [#13262] Untranslated Strings in Unknown file
 # [#13253] Untranslated Strings in en-GB.ini
 # [#13242] print icon on layout "blog category" as first page
 # [#13233] reset button on article selection for menu item doesn't work
 # [#13223] Same language string in Section layout of a menu item**
 # [#13217] **Error in the increase of hits count when editing article in front end
 # [#12878] error language string in mod_feed.ini
 # [#12542] **Inconsistent showing of default records in un-install screens (templates/language)



19-Oct-2008 Ian MacLennan
 # [#12697] **More sample data changes, including UTF-8 Fixes
 # [#12724] **Content Router appends ID to item and is different from the menu (revert 11561)
 # [#12859] **Backend: Disabled Admin Menu = javascript error
 # [#12864] Issue with JMenu and large sites
 # [#12950] **Beez template: The password reset doesn't work at all
 # [#13198] *** Temporary users cannot log out

15-Oct-2008 Kevin Devine
 # [#13076] **Feed module target attribute not validating
 # [#13064] **Problem with mod_related_items Keyword Matching
 # [#12550] **nameQuote() mixed order in strpos
 # [#12625] ** default_form.php in com_search has onClick on button tag which fails XHTML 1.0 Transitional validation

13-Oct-2008 Ian MacLennan
 # [#13164] JFolder::files and JFolder::folders don't function properly when using integral search depth
 # [#13152] Component Directories to be completely deleted upon bogus entry into jos_components
 # [#13151] Wrong wording in language file
 # [#13017] Install language with pdf fonts with both admin and site bug (patch included)
 # [#13015] Frontpage blog wrong number of links
 # [#12942] A tag of category link is not closed in Section blog view
 # [#12602] mod_stats shows wrong time
 # [#12533] Missing method in JRecordSet
 # [#12424] Correct or Remove Show_noauth parameter from sections module
 # [#11707] In category blog layout, edit icon not displayed for user who canEdit if show title is 'No'
 # [#11261] Cache: Undefined variable: rows in /administrator/components/com_cache/cache.class.php on line 114

10-Oct-2008 Kevin Devine
 # [#12722] STRIPOS

06-Oct-2008 Ian MacLennan
 # [#12843] Text 'New ordering saved' cannot be translated in weblinks
 # [#12734] Missing language string JA Purity
 # [#12031] File Not Found or Compoent Not Found When SEARCH Button is Pressed
 # [#12011] E-mail content pop-up window too short in Beez

02-Oct-2008 Ian MacLennan
 # [#12855] Misspelling of category in components/com_content/views/category/view.feed.php

25-Sep-2008 Ian MacLennan
 # [#12778] Remove commercial newsfeeds from joomla installation packages
 # [#12731] Wrong frontpage article after upgrade to 1.5.7
 # [#11521] ****Image does not display in Contacts when an image directory is configured
 # [#12338] URL: mod_login loses ItemID on redirect

22-Sep-2008 Ian MacLennan
 # [10254] Remove brackets around date/time in "Last Updated"
 # [12630] Plural/singular issue for Section list

09-Sep-2008 Anthony Ferrara
 ^ Disabled Installation Check