Any Xoops Experts out there?
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| devnet Jul 23, 2006 9:05 AM EDT |
I'm a helper at lobby4linux.com (owned and operated Ken Starks aka Helios from the PCLOS community) and it was hacked on 7/20/2006. They were able to corrupt the database and I was able to isolate that corruption. Only one problem. I don't know how to fix it because I don't know squat about Xoops, table structure of xoops tables, nor do I understand how blocks work (it's the newblocks table). So, Lobby4linux.com is currently down until I can get it working again. If anyone understands blocksadmin and can read a database table and put a page back together again by reading that table...please drop me a line here. I need all the help I can get. I find Xoops (and drupal for that matter) terribly annoying (personal opinion only)...I hate repeating actions in multiple menu's to get what I need to get done. Anyways, this is a plea for help. Hopefully someone out there can do it while Helios has been hospitalized...I'd really NOT like to let him down while he's down if you know what I mean. Devnet |
| Sander_Marechal Jul 23, 2006 2:14 PM EDT |
The table structure is easy to find. Download xoops from http://www.xoops.org and see xoops-2.0.14/install/sql/mysql.structure.sql for the layout. I don't know xoops but IIRC it's a phpNuke derative (and I used to play around with Nuke in the past). The layout seems very nukish anyway. I'll have a look at the newblocks table. |
| Sander_Marechal Jul 23, 2006 2:23 PM EDT |
Here's a short writeup of how blocks work. Open [url=http://66.249.93.104/search?q=cache:6BJsOlRAFhcJ:www.lobby4linux.com/ &hl=nl&gl=nl&ct=clnk&cd=1]http://66.249.93.104/search?q=cache:6BJsOlRAFhcJ:www.lobby4l...[/url] (the google cache for lobby4linux). Blocks are the things that make up the left and right columns. Blocks can hold several kinds of content. They can hold default block modules (like the login box, who's online, etcetera), they can hold text (stored in the table alongside the rest of the block - e.g the "new linux users" block) or they can point to a user-written php file on the server (from the google cache it doesn't look like there are any). The blocks admin interface manages what blocks you want to show to which users and at which place. The blocks documentation is at: http://xoopsdocs.net/modules/docs/en/xu-003/online/ch02s05.h... I suggest using the blocks interface to recreate what the google cache shows. Quickly scanning over the xoops docs, it looks like the block anmin menu also manages the center column, so the "Welcome" article and the blog-of-helios banner can probabely be found in the blocks menu too. |
| grouch Jul 23, 2006 6:18 PM EDT |
devnet: I don't know jack about Xoops, but I've done some work with MySQL, PostgreSQL and a bit with geeklog. If there's any grunt work I can do to help, just give a yell. Thank you very much for working to re-hoist that Jolly Roger! |
| SFN Jul 24, 2006 4:56 AM EDT |
At the risk of starting a grumblefest, what about switching to another platform that more people are familiar with? This sad situation has highlighted a problem with using xoops for lobbyb4linux. Like many people, I'm not at all familiar with xoops but I know that a number of us are familiar with other systems. It sounds like it might actually be easier to duplicate the pages in a system that has a larger number of knowledgeable people amongst lxers. This isn't meant to be a usurping of helios' work. Just an opportunity to continue it until he's available again. |
| devnet Jul 24, 2006 6:15 AM EDT |
SFN, I agree...however, porting at this time would be more labor intensive than fixing. And it also isn't my call since Ken is the one that has to deal with things. Xoops can be a fantastic CMS as evident from dotmil's site http://debcentral.org You just have to keep it patched and up to date. Ken wasn't able to do that due to his illness and DC trip. We'll get this puppy licked. |
| jdixon Jul 24, 2006 6:18 AM EDT |
> Any Xoops Experts out there... I think VarLinux (http://www.varlinux.org - Nick Petreley's personal site) runs on Xoops. You might try asking for help there. |
| devnet Jul 24, 2006 9:21 AM EDT |
Got it repaired...did it line by line but got it. anyways, I gotta test everything now and make sure it works...then we'll be back online. I've made a new look for it while I was at it. |
| devnet Jul 24, 2006 1:27 PM EDT |
Just went live with it...we're back in business. I found what happened...they input some extra ' ', '', in about 9 records inside that table...got em purified and then back up and running! I hope it looks good. |
| Sander_Marechal Jul 24, 2006 1:40 PM EDT |
Looks great from here. Good work!Quoting:Xoops can be a fantastic CMS as evident from dotmil's site As a Nuke-based CMS I'd rather say clear of it. The Nuke codebase has been plagued with security issues since day one. About two years ago I was pretty deep into Nuke hacking (not cracking, mind you) but their codebase was pretty horrible to work with. I don't know how much it has improved since then, but the code I browsed through yesterday looked awefully familliar to what I worked with two years ago. |
| dcparris Jul 24, 2006 1:56 PM EDT |
Looks good to me! Great job, and many thanks! |
| grouch Jul 24, 2006 2:40 PM EDT |
Way to go devnet! |
| devnet Jul 24, 2006 2:49 PM EDT |
Quoting:he Nuke codebase has been plagued with security issues since day one. Yep..them and e107 can be such a hassle. I steer clear of all of those CMS's if I can. I've found Joomla! and Mambo to be pretty solid so when I think about a new site I generally use that...although at http://mypclinuxos.com I chose to implement mybb...their portal feature will make it really easy to have a robust portal with static pages all while keeping their install at only 672kb. They're really good about patching security holes so I feel pretty fortunate to have found that particular BBS. |
| Sander_Marechal Jul 24, 2006 3:24 PM EDT |
I've stopped using CMS's alltogether on my own websites (www.jejik.com). I'm a web developer, I should show off what I can do :-) The added bonus is that custom coded sites are very unlikely to be cracked. A cracker might be motovated to crack Nuke and deface 1000's of sites, but he's not going to spend hours cracking my custom code. It's not worth his time. The only thing that I've sort of standardized on is my home-grown basecode (a derative of the long awaited phpBB 3.0 Olympus package) which implements basic features like session tracking, user authentication, e-mailing subsystem, database abstraction, smarty (http://smarty.php.net) as the templating engine and a custom mediawiki wikitext parser (for clients who can't grasp HTML). The rest I custom-code for every site I build. |
| Libervis Jul 24, 2006 3:30 PM EDT |
Someone mentioned a potential migration from XOOPS. Well one CMS I would suggest for consideration is Drupal (http://www.drupal.org). I am in a process of migrating Libervis.com to it and am taking notes on the way and will contribute them back publically as it might make the process easier on others. I've started from here: http://drupal.org/node/63796 So far I was able to succesfuly import users, news, articles, forums along with topics and posts. |
| dcparris Jul 24, 2006 3:55 PM EDT |
I don't care for Drupal at all. I much prefer Joomla. |
| jimf Jul 24, 2006 4:38 PM EDT |
> I don't care for Drupal at all. I much prefer Joomla. I'll second that, but migration from XOOPs to Joomla is a 'major' effort. |
| dcparris Jul 24, 2006 6:30 PM EDT |
I can believe that. |
| Libervis Jul 24, 2006 6:47 PM EDT |
Joomla looks good too, at this point almost definitely surpassing XOOPS. What I like about Drupal is its flexibility and extendability. It's as much of a CMS as it is a CMF (Content Management Framework). As such it's also a good platform to learn and acquire new web development skills (for example drupal phptemplate themes with their overridable functions are a good start). |
| devnet Jul 25, 2006 7:13 AM EDT |
Libervis,
This is the funny part about drupal. I've used CMS's for approximately 3 years and have developed plugins and extensions for those that I've used or helped code hacks that get done what I need to get done. I'm not a dummy by any means...yet when I go to use drupal...I'm a complete moron. I don't understand a single thing about how they do things. I have no ideas about nodes...don't understand them at all. So, it's not something I can jump right in with. That being said, I don't care for it. Unless it is immediately beneficial to me, I can't use it. This may be short sighted of me...but I like to call it practicality...which on the internet and in website design equally translates into the life or death of a site. I'd kill any site that I moved to drupal right now because I'd have to learn it (I've tried to learn it twice...installed and played with it for 2 weeks the first time, then appx 4 weeks the second time...It didn't happen). Look at it another way as well...At the beginning of this thread, I had little interaction with Xoops. Since then, I've learned it and full administration of it as well as their templating system and plugin installation/removal. All over the course of 3 days. THAT is valuable. Drupal holds no value for me. |
| Libervis Jul 25, 2006 8:20 AM EDT |
I understand devnet. Hey, both are Free Software so in this case I can really recommend to use what works best for you. :) Drupal has a steep learning curve I guess, and the fact that it does things so differently from most other CMS's is probably a big part of the reason for that. I've managed to figure out nodes though, at least and I feel I'm proficient enough with it to run a site on it, and as I improve I think I'll be able to do some really cool things with it. The basic difference between Drupal and other CMS's seems to be in that it's modules pretty much all share the same database structure. Most of everything in Drupal is a "node", be it a piece of text, an image or even a sound file. These nodes then have comments assigned to them. In forums, a topic is a node and replies are comments while in an image gallery the image with description is, of course, a node, and the comments to it are.. well comments. :) Taxonomy seems a bit more complicated. It's just a flexible way of categorizing things in Drupal that allows categorizing content from multiple types of content in same categories, something that is pretty much impossible in other CMS's as far as I know... Hmm well maybe that brief intro wasn't neccessary, but there. :) It has its annoyances and some limitations, but the sheer potential of what could be built on it and the ability to customize practically *anything* with some knowledge of PHP is what is getting me to switching sites to it. That and the fact that it's in rapid and stable development and with great future which gives some confidence. Oh and alot of famous sites run on Drupal, from NASA to Mozilla sites. :) |
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