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.
On December 20th 2004 I set off on my travels. This time I was going to go white water rafting and trekking in the Jungles of Western Thailand on a guided trip supported by elephants.
As a committed off-beat traveller I've been to Thailand many times before but this trip was going to be a little different.
Over the previous few months I'd heard good things coming out of Thailand in relation to Mambo. The occasional postings in the forums at http://forum.mamboserver.com/ and announcements of Thai language versions of Mambo and various components at http://mamboforge.net/ had intrigued me.




