Whilst checking a site today I came across some code that triggered my scanner alert scripts.

I was unable to read the code as it was obfuscated/encrypted/encoded - select whichever you think is appropriate.

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Spend any time on the joomla forums and you will see "help my web site has been hacked".

The first response is always the same "please read the security checklist"

In numerous places you will see

"Use proper permissions on files and directories. They should be should never be 777"

But with JomSocial the reverse is true!

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Sadly in the last 6 months there have been two published circumstances where an extension provider has been hacked and malicious code inserted into the extensions that they offer.

This meant that as soon as you installed the extension your site was vulnerable to defacement etc.

If there have been two published cases perhaps there have been more that we don't know about.

So is there anything we can do to prevent this?

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OK, I admit it it, I just don't get why you would want to integrate these two applications.

I just can't see where the benefits are.

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Every day I read and hear a lot about SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and SEF (Search Engine Friendly) urls.

For me the number one question is "are the urls HEF (Human Ear Friendly)?"

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When I started this blog I was not going to have any comments system at all. "Agree or disagree... I don't care" didn't really make sense if I let you comment but I was convinced otherwise.

The problem was, that I had never really found a joomla comment system that I liked. (Note I have never looked at closed source systems, or would I, so don't start telling me that product xxx does the job)

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Whilst looking through the list of high traffic joomla sites at joomla.me I was disappointed, but not surprised to see that many of them were warez sites offering links to rapidshare, hotfile, megaupload etc.

Not all of these are offering joomla warez but almost every day a new warez site pops up on my google alert offering me the latest and greatest Joomla extensions and templates.

Is it worth the effort trying to close these sites down? At best all that you will really be able to achieve is to get the hosting account closed down and they will spring back up again in a few days.

If your work is being offered on these warez sites then take it as a compliment and a free advert that someone is ripping of your work and move along. I know I did.

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Is there an extension that you regularly use and regularly modify (hack)? If you're anything like me then I'm confident that you have found a joomla extension that is just perfect for a site but just needed a little tweaking.

When I mentioned this to several people during Joomla!Day many people came back with the same answer, "Oh yes I always use XXXX but each time they release an update I have to re-apply my fixes".

That's a pain in the proverbial butt, of course, and yet not one of the people I spoke to had actually passed on their "fixes" to the extension developer.

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One of the slides I had to drop from my "Hidden Joomla Secrets" presentation was an ugly hack to solve what for me has been a long standing issue with Joomla user registration.

By default joomla provides no method to pre-approve registrations before providing access. Currently there are two choices

1. Automatically approve on signup.
2. Automatically approve once email has been confirmed.

There is no option for the site administrator to approve registrations first. For me that has been an issue on many sites, hence the ugly hack, and I see many people installing complex extensions e.g. Community Builder to resolve this simple issue.

Not any more!!

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