MangoBlog 1.4 Released and Important notes

I'm probably late on this one, but mangoBlog v1.4 has just been released. From the changelogs:

What's new in version 1.4

• Revisions of posts and pages are now stored and user can "restore" an older version
• Added a permission for users to not to be able to access the administation (thanks to Seb Duggan)
• Added a replacement for Verity search to search in database directly (this search now includes comments). It is the default search now.
• Plugin settings are now stored in database, which should make it easier to migrate a blog
• TinyMCE editor upgraded
• Configuration file now has placeholders for base path so that directories do not need to be hardcoded in configuration file
• Ability to disable or enable threading
• Plugins made for ColdFusion 8 only can extend org.mangoblog.plugins.BasePlugin without including BasePlugin in their own folder
• Friendly URLs for author archives

Changes in theme tags:

• Added a descending order option for the comments tag
• Enhanced Posts tag to be able to show posts for a given author
• AuthorProperty tag can now output the name of the role of the author
• Added AuthenticatedAuthor tag that allows the theme to know if the current visitor is logged in

Administration:

• Post pagination and search
• Session will be maintained while user is writing a post or page
• Added permission to manage pods and to run blog updates
• Drafts now always "float" to the top of the list
• Ability to remove plugins
• Added "beforeAdminPageContentEnd" event to the bottom of the page edit screen and "beforeAdminPostContentEnd" to the bottom of the post edit screen
• Ability to manually set the post URL (thanks to Seb Duggan)
• Added more functionality to BasePlugin to make it easier to write plugins. 
• Plugins can now run their own upgrade method when a new version is installed via the administration
• Paging for authors screen
• Cosmetic changes: Add ons renamed to Plugins, go directly to edit mode after adding a new post or page (thanks to Seb Duggan), changed Pod Manager icon

Updates to new installs:

• Added new plugin that allows keeping the old BlogCFC URLs functional
• Added sample data
• Include CFFormProtect (enabled by default instead of Captchas)
  
• New default theme called Cutline
• New installs on Railo will now have an error on main page (thanks to Andrea Campolonghi)

Plugins updated:

• formRememberer (included in update)
  
• CFFormProtect (not included in automatic update)

Bug fixes:

• Solved some compatibility issues with Railo
  
• Fixed XSS vulnerability (themes need to be updated to take advantage of this)
• Preview link was wrong in future posts
• Comments are now rejected if comments are closed for a post or page
• Error when entering an empty search string
• Error when not using friendly URLs
• and more...

Important:

Now, for those who are using Railo and are updating via admin interface. There is a bug with the mango updater and Railo, Laura (Mango blog's developer) explains:

"This is a known issue with Railo (we should report it, since it is an incompatibility with CF). I thought 1.3.1 included the fix, but apparently not.

Open file components/Updater.cfc and change line 436 from

<cfhttp url="#arguments.zipAddress#" method="get" path="#tempdir#">

to:

<cfhttp url="#arguments.zipAddress#" method="get" path="#tempdir#" file="#filename#">

"

More info can be found here:

Mango 1.4 upgrade bug / Railo 3.1 / Centos 5

  comments - Posted by Marcos Placona at 5:21 PM - Categories: ColdFusion | Railo | Mango Blog

Railo 3.1.1 released

Railo 3.1.1.000 has just been released and is available at www.getrailo.org

From the changelogs:

• [ RAILO-163 ] cfexecute and arguments containing spaces (Linux)
• [ RAILO-257 ] Railo will not start - start/stop shells contain ^M characters
• [ RAILO-275 ] Binary arguments to Railo treated as array
• [ RAILO-302 ] CFHTTP PUT sends corrupted binary data in body
• [ RAILO-342 ] Query/Array Rows not Bracketed; on large volumes causes slow performance and poor UI [FDAPI]
• [ RAILO-347 ] Unable to create remote clients in 3.1.0.024
• [ RAILO-349 ] Mapping stripped from CFCATCH.MissingFile value
• [ RAILO-356 ] Spelling Error in upgrade script
• [ RAILO-359 ] Problem with CF_SQL_CHAR type
• [ RAILO-360 ] XML lost when serializing an XML document to JSON
• [ RAILO-361 ] java.util.Calendar
• [ RAILO-362 ] ordered keys in struct dump
• [ RAILO-364 ] Error when using cf_sql_numeric with floating number
• [ RAILO-365 ] Query bracketing does not have correct row numbers in drill down [FDAPI]
• [ RAILO-366 ] Misspelled struct key on exceptions
• [ RAILO-368 ] serialize xml
• [ RAILO-370 ] Query Exception Compatibility: SQL
• [ RAILO-372 ] Query Exception Compatibility: Datasource

 

To update your current installation, simply access Railo Server Administrator, select the left item on the menu called "update", and make sure the URL is set to be "http://www.getrailo.org". Simply click update, and the available updates will be shown.

Click the button called execute updates, and wait for about 10 seconds while it does all the work for you.

  comments - Posted by Marcos Placona at 1:45 PM - Categories: Railo | CFML - 101

Useless Information: Why is it called Railo?

According to Michael Offner-Streit (Railo CTO) at the Railo user Group:

"Railo is the name of the first alien dog ever seen in Star Trek. His name is Rhylo and because my english is not very good I have written it wrong, Sorry ;-)"

Which leads to an interesting question:

How do you pronounce Railo?

  comments - Posted by Marcos Placona at 5:31 PM - Categories: Railo

New Railo admin leaked?

Of course not! The guys over Railo Technologies GmbH are pretty serious about their stuff, but today Mark Drew CEO for Railo UK "accidentally" let some pictures of the administration interface leak over Twitter.

Here's a preview of what's coming up on the new version.

It looks quite clean and slick in my opinion. Just the sort of thing I'd expect from these guys

  comments - Posted by Marcos Placona at 1:40 PM - Categories: Railo

CFML 101 - Protecting Railo admin folder

I have seen people asking this question more than two times now, so I decided it's about time I write a blog post about it. In ColdFusion it was really easy to solve this problem, as CFIDE is a physical folder, so you could simply move it away from the webroot, and it wouldn't be accessible to the entire world.

On Railo it's a bit trickier, as the admin and server folders are virtual directories, hence you can't simply "move it away". Obviously it's password protected, so people won't simply have access to it and screw up with your configuration, but a more will powered person could easily brute force into it.

I have to reinforce here that a really will powered lad would probably break into anything, or even log into your server and make it a real mess. It's always good to have this false security sensation though, so I'll post here how I do my own security.

Read more...

  comments - Posted by Marcos Placona at 10:41 PM - Categories: Railo | Linux | VPS | CFML - 101

New version of Railo released

This is only a point release (3.1.0.015) for Railo, but it addresses many bugs we reported in the last couple of weeks. Moreover, when I say last couple of weeks, it really is it. It is breath taking to see how quickly the Railo team nails down all of our requests and bug reports. Railo is still in beta, but according to Gert, it will soon have its final version released (Gert says it is sometime in June 2009).

Updating could not be any easier if you are on Railo 3.1x already. Simply go to your server admin, click on updates in the left menu, and click the button execute update. It's all done via admin interface, and there's no need to move *.jar files or anything.

Here is a list (from the official changelog) of what’s included within this update:

Read more...

  comments - Posted by Marcos Placona at 3:04 PM - Categories: Railo

Placona.co.uk has a new home!

It took me quite a while to come back and write this post, but finally placona.co.uk is in a new home.

Most of you will remember that I've been using CrystalTech for quite a while, and they have been great up to this year when I decided to migrate to CF8. I was using CF7 with SQL Server up to then, but made the horrible mistake of upgrading to CF8 + mySQL.

I can't really complain about their support, as it's always been really good, but i have to be honest and say that when I really needed them, they turned their back to me,m and were quite rude in a few of their answers. But anyway.... water under the river.

I then decided I should stop being a girl, and set-up my own server. that way I'd have real freedom to do whatever I please, and configure the server exactly how I want to.

Obviously my choice was for a VPS, where I'll be running Apache + Railo + Resin and mySQL.

I'll make a big post this weekend describing all the procedures I used to get the server up and running, as well as the configurations I've made to optimize my 256mb box.

Keep an eye on this space

  comments - Posted by Marcos Placona at 7:53 PM - Categories: Railo