Category Archives: Technical

Technical

Updating Joomla 1.6

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Regular users of Joomla! will have got used to patching their installation with FTP or on the command line. You may not be aware but the new versions of Joomla!, 1.6 and beyond, have built in updating. Here’s a very quick guide to updating Joomla! 1.6  yourself.

1. Login to your Joomla! administrator area ( www.domainname.com/administrator/ )
2. Go to Extensions > Extension Manager > And click on “Update”
3. Click on “Find Updates” in the top right and Joomla will automatically find any potential updates available to you.
4. If you see that Joomla is now listed, you should check the box next to “Joomla” and click “Update”.
5. Joomla will automatically update you to the latest version.

Find Updates
Find Updates

Notes: Joomla does not check automatically – administrators need to run the check from the control panel.

The “Find Updates” button is in the top right – the menu area that’s hardly ever used in Joomla and often missed.

With Joomla 1.7 about to be released, developers are wondering how many more updates of 1.6 there will be.

2020Media will be very happy to advise and help with any software update including making complete backups for you.

More information on our Joomla hosting can be found at www.2020media.com/joomla.

Technical, Tips and Tricks

Ease of Upgrade – Joomla, WordPress, Drupal

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Comparison of the upgrade methods used in Joomla, WordPress and Drupal

the logo's of Joomla, WordPress and DrupalPopular content management systems require updating from time to time. Sometimes this is for new features, often because a security loophole needs patching. In this article we’re not going to look at which CMS most often requires updates, but at the upgrade procedure itself. How easy is it, are the instructions clear and easy to follow, what the potential problems, and what can you do if something goes wrong? At the time of writing new major versions of Drupal (7.0) and Joomla (1.6) have been released and no updates have yet been produced for these releases. We therefore concentrate on the older versions, which run the vast majority of existing sites. Continue reading Ease of Upgrade – Joomla, WordPress, Drupal →

Technical

IPv6 Ready

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2020Media has been working on IPv6 (the next generation internet numbering system) for some time but the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses (IP addresses like 212.124.194.98) is finally gathering some press attention. If you look at this blog page today, January 31st 2011, the counter on the right is showing 1 day to go until there are no more blocks of IPv4 addresses in the IANA bank. If you’re looking at this page later, here’s what it looked like on this historic day:

1 day to go

Keep Calm and Carry On

Of course, the internet is not going to stop working. ISPs and content providers have been working on upgrading their systems to work with the new IPv6 addresses for some time. To draw attention to this, June 8, 2011 is World IPv6 Day – an event organized by the Internet Society and several large content providers to test public IPv6 deployment.

2020Media is a IPv6 capable provider and will be taking part in World IPv6 Day. We also sponsor and support the IPv6Matrix project – an über-cool look at the reality of IPv6 deployment today.

There is one part of the internet lagging behind on IPv6, and that is access – its is almost impossible to purchase an off-the-shelf broadband modem at the moment that supports IPv6. We hope that 2011 will see the release of low cost, easily configurable broadband boxes that allows the average small business and home user to connect via native IPv6.

Bye Bye Ipv4 Ceremony

NRO Handover Ceremony of last IPv4 Addresses

On Thursday, 3 February 2011, the Number Resource Organization (NRO), along with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the Internet Society (ISOC) and the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) held a ceremony in Miami, Florida to formally handover the last blocks of IPv4 addresses to the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs).  This means that there are no longer any IPv4 addresses available for allocation from the IANA to the five RIRs.

“Billions of people world wide use the Internet for everything from sending tweets to paying bills. The transition to IPv6 from IPv4 represents an opportunity for even more innovative applications without the fear of running out of essential Internet IP addresses,” said Vice President of IANA Elise Gerich.

Our depletion counter on the right of this page, now shows how the final blocks are being distributed by the individual regional registries.

2020Media's 4 star IPv6 rating
Technical

Wikileaks

Julian Assange

This week has seen continued drama surrounding the website WikiLeaks and it’s head Julian Assange. Behind the scenes, a cyber war is being fought by opponents and defenders of the site.

Various providers of services to WikiLeaks, including hosting companies, dns providers, payment gateways and others have withdrawn service over the last 2 weeks. This action prompted a furious backlash against their websites by angry supporters of WikiLeaks.

Most providers who withdrew services cited breaches of their terms and conditions in one way or another – some technical, some not. Paypal said “…our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity. We’ve notified the account holder of this action.” Others were subject to denial of service attacks. Few, if any, have stated their action was as a response to US governement pressure.

As quickly as providers have halted services, website mirrors and new domain names have sprung up around the world. Meanwhile supporters of the site have set up retaliatory attacks on providers who withdrew services. Mastercard and Visa have both seen outages on their website in the last few days. One such group , Operation Payback, even advocates a mass faxing campaign to tie up communications at companies such as Amazon, MasterCard, Moneybookers, PayPal, Visa and Tableau Software.

For web hosts, it’s time to take a good look at the terms and conditions of service. French host OVH is all over the news this week because of its decision to request a judicial review of its responsibility associated with removing WikiLeaks from its servers, and to continue hosting the site until that review is complete. A survey by WHIR of hosters makes interesting reading – hosts were split 50/50 on whether they would host WikiLeaks at all.

Monitoring website Netcraft has real-time performance graphs for all the main players at http://uptime.netcraft.com/perf/reports/performance/wikileaks

Opinion, Technical

Vint Cerf addresses 6::UK event

Vint Cerf at 6::UK

Vint Cerf, founding father of the internet, spoke yesterday at the first 6::UK conference to promote adoption of the next generation IPv6 IP addressing system.

2020Media was at the event and was pleased to find our preperations and progress are already well ahead of most of UK business.

2020Media published its plans for IPv6 last year here. It’s anticpated that all IPv4 addresses will be allocated from the central pool by summer 2011, so the 6::UK group aim to encourage all UK stakeholders to act now to be ready for the new addressing system.

Any broadband customer who’d like to start using IPv6 on their connection can do so right now, for free, using our free tunnelling service. Please contact us to request a tunnel.