I'm often asked for an extension that will translate a website into other languages. Although there are several available at JED that provide automated translation services I can never recommend them.
Why? Well if your content is important enough to you to write it in the first place then it is important enough to ensure that the translation is correct and no automated service will ever capture the nuance of a language accurately.
I love the ability in Joomla 1.5 to override the developers idea of how to present the data without touching their code. This means I can modify the output to my hearts content safe in the knowledge that if a new version is released my changes won't be lost.
Well that's almost true.
Dork : An inept or foolish person
What does this have to do with Joomla? Well a dork is also the name given to the method hackers use to identify if a site is running a vulnerable extension.
As soon as a vulnerability in an extension is revealed in either the hacker forums or on responsible security sites such as milw0rm or The Open Source Vulnerability Database the hackers of the world use google to search the net for sites using that extension.
On 14th April 2003 I released a newsletter component for Mambo 4.0 which at the time was one of the only "extras" you could get for a Mambo web site and yet today there are approaching 4,000 extensions for Joomla.
That newsletter component had to be installed manually via ftp and phpmyadmin was required to create the database tables and add the component to the interface. It was also the very first extension to use a WYSIWYG editor - at the time you needed to write all your content using pure html.
What do you use for backups of your Joomla web site? Until Joomla 1.6 (thanks Sam for adding this) there has been no backup routine built in to Joomla and yet backing up your website is the most important thing you should do.
No matter what your web host offers as a backup service this is your responsibility and only yours. Backups are too important to rely on anyone but yourself.
Since the beginning of Mambo "I want/need/demand ACL" (access control lists) must be one of the most common threads in the forums. But what do I/you mean by ACL and why is it just so dam hard to implement. (I assume it must be hard or it would have been done by now in the core)
One of the few pieces of code that I can claim any credit for is the ability to define a database prefix to all the tables in your site and this dates back to the early days of Mambo around the end of 2003. The reason it was frst introduced was to allow site owners to install multiple version of Mambo on a single mysql database.
But now it serves a second purpose in "helping" to protect your site from some of the more common security hacks.
Everyday a new warez site pops up on my google alert offering me the latest and greatest Joomla extensions and templates. I am not a developer but I talk to several every day and each time the conversation turns round to how to stop rapidshare, megaupload etc. or which method of encrpytion to use.
But what is the point! All encryption can be broken, people dont like encrypted software and the time spent firing off emails to ISP, domain registrars and hosts could be far better spent.
Take it as a compliment and a free advert that someone is ripping of your work and move along. I know I did.
There has been a lot of discussion and debate regarding the GPL and Joomla's use of it, or should I say "amended" implementation of it.
After a lot of thought I tried to condense my views into one relatively short article, which I am reproducing here for posterity. It was obviously written some time ago.
