PostNuke
Flexible Content Management System
News
AutoTheme Blocks module Security Fix!
Thanks to Infopro and Markwest for bringing this to my attention.
-Shawn
The AutoTheme module is not a core component of PostNuke, and so therefore this article does not apply to those who have not installed AutoTheme onto their site.
Speak Up: Take the PostNuke User Survey
Again, thank you in advance for your survey participation and feedback. Please click the link below to begin the survey it's appreciated and your answers are anonymous.
Take the Survey
Kevin Hatch, Author of PostNuke Book
Question
Vanessa Haakenson: Kevin first let me thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. Tell us about yourself and what attracted you to PostNuke. How long have you been using PostNuke? Why didyou choose PostNuke?
Answer
Kevin Hatch: Well for what it’s worth, I’m a professional web developer. I’ve worn a lot of hats over the years with different sometimes-fancy titles, but overall I’ve mainly been a front-end UI guy in most of the teams I’ve been with. Lately I’ve been doing more programming and database development than Photoshop graphics, but I also freelance as a designer to help balance out the creative side.
I was first introduced to PostNuke early in 2003. My workplacewas primarily Microsoft when it came to web development, and my background at the time was much more with VB/ASP and early .NET. But we were starting a change to Linux servers, and it seemed clear ASP was on the way out. It was a coworker friend of mine that originally suggested PHP as a more universal solution, and without any particular preference for ASP I was happy to give it a shot. My experience with C++, Java, and JSP allowed me to pick up PHP pretty easily, and I quickly feel in love with language.
My first PostNuke site was actually an intranet portal. I’d converted all our other sites’ ASP pages to PHP, but we started looking at different PHP content systems to make the intranet development a little easier. I tried early alternatives like PHP-Nuke and phpWebSite, but PostNuke impressed me as a more mature system that also possessed a strong community of users.
Question
Vanessa Haakenson: What is the easiest and/or most difficult thing you encountered building your site?
Answer
Kevin Hatch: Funny thing, the most difficult thing about my current site was the choice of methods for publishing the content. There were too many options. I struggled with a number of different combinations of stock and third-party modules like PageSetter. I went all out, creating complex layouts and forms for my pages, but ultimately my needs just didn’twarrant all the trouble. I came back to the basic Sections module for most of the content, and the simpler solution gave me more raw control.
The easiest thing had to be my solution for the column layout using AT-Lite. My original theme was done with Xanthia, but I later tried it in AutoTheme to see how the layout features would work for what I needed. I found AT’s AutoBlock objects to be anabsolute dream for easy block-to-page assignment, and that’s what I ended up using.
Question
Vanessa Haakenson: When did the idea of a PostNuke book happen? What's the back-story?
Answer
Kevin Hatch: Early on as I worked with PostNuke I knew it was a project under development. It didn’t solve all my development needs, and I quickly started hacking and extending the code to get the extra features and customization I needed. In order to reproduce those hacks later as needed for other installs or upgrades, I documented the steps I took. I quickly had a great deal of good content collected, and I decided it ought to be posted online in case anyone else wanted to make the same custom changes I had. I wrote up the hacks as walk-through articles, and added them to my website.
I did post links to the guides now and then when answering a forum post that could use them, but just having the articles online ultimately prompted the book. The publisher Pearson Ed was looking to do some books on Content Management Systems, and in searching online for PHP-Nuke and PostNuke resources the editor came across my site. They liked the style and content of the articles, and asked if I’d be interested in writing a full book along those lines. I also have a formal writing background, and said I’d be happy to do it. That was back in November 2003.
After the approval of the book proposal I'd put together, the book itself was written over the course of the next ten months. Things were going fine with it till the surprise release of version 0.75. Sweeping changes were made to the content to add in the 0.75 changes, and some of the existing sections were no longer relevant and had to be cut. In the end there was also an overall length issue, where some of the other third-party modules I wanted to cover were also dropped. There are a lot ofgreat modules out there, but there just wasn’t the room to do them all.
Question
Vanessa
Haakenson: How
is
the
book
selling?
Are
you
going
to
do
a
follow-up/update
when newer
versions
of PostNuke
are released?
Answer
Kevin
Hatch: I
know
that in
the first
month over
two thousand
copies
were
sold, but
I don’t
know the
overall
sales figures
yet. I
did secondary
edits earlier
this year
for the
second
printing,
so the
first runs
seems
to have
done better
than their
initial
expectations.
There was
also talk
of doing
a German
translation
of the
text, but
I’ve
not heard
back from
that department
to know
if it’s
gone through.
I've been
very swamped
with
work lately,
so I've
honestly
not been
following
it closely
the last
few
months.
Whether there’s a follow-up will probably depend more on the long-term book sales. I’m up for writing it if it works out. I’ve also considered doing a shorter book that picks up where PostNuke Content Management left off. I think it would be useful to have a step-by-step walk through on the development of an API-compliant module. In the first drafts of my book, there had been a section at the end just on module development, but all that made it into the book was the short API functions appendix.
The book was targeted well to reach a large audience, but I do with I’d done even more on the advanced side. I think PostNuke is a great core product, but I’ve never built a site with it that didn’t have third-party modules and custom hacks. It’s like how Firefox is a great core product, but having the right few extensions can literally change the way your browse. PN already does that; there is of course the NOC and many great developers, but I’d definitely like to see even more. You shouldn’t have to be a coder to get it to work. PostNuke can become anything you want it to be, but it’d be easier to have all those options possible in simple add-on modules.
Question
Vanessa
Haakenson: You
have
a great
site,
KevinHatch.com.
Tell
us
a little
bit about
the site
and how
you customized
it. What
modules
are you
using
for the
site? What
modules
were customized
or built
from scratch?
Answer
Kevin
Hatch: Well
my main
site’s
running
on PostNuke
0.75. As
I said
earlier
I’d
used a
variety
of third-party
modules
during
the development,
but I’m
currently
only running
AT-Lite
for the
theme.
The pages
have two
main content
areas,
and while
I began
with both
areas in
the “body” area,
my desire
to reuse
the side
column
for navigation
elements
prompted
me to
set it
up as a
separate
block area.
I created
an AT AutoBlock
object
for
each area
I wanted
to isolate,
like "Links" or "Homepage" for
example.
The
AutoBlocks
are displayed
in the
same place
in the
theme code,
but I
control
the visibility
of those
blocks
from within
AutoTheme
on a page
by
page basis
using the
AT Custom Modules
feature.
The site does have some custom code hacks, but for the most part they have been used to simplify the PostNuke install. I normally don’t need most of the core PN features for my personal site, so I removed what I didn't need. The links page is the most obvious example. That is just the core Web Links module, but I changed the display of the content and removed all the user features that were not needed anymore. I’ve considered writing a new links module from scratch as well, but for the moment just editing the core’s working fine, and I do have enough other projects to keep me busy.
The KevinHatch.com site is really not finished. I’ll be adding a PNphpBB2 forum for the application support in the next couple months, and I need to finally set aside a weekend to edit and upload some of my other guides and tutorials. I plan on expanding the old programming guide content to include information on UI design and Photoshop. The site is also currently a hybrid of PostNuke and raw PHP using server-side includes to pull in the PN theme elements. It was simply faster at the time to set it up that way, but eventually the site will be completely PostNuke.
Thank You
Vanessa
Haakenson: Thank
you
for
sharing
your
thoughts
with
the community
and readers.
Answer
Kevin
Hatch: I’d
just like
to say
thanks
again to
all the
developers
who’ve
put in
so much
time to
keep this
project
going.
The open
source
movement
for me
has really
re-energized
my love
of online
development.
I
know things
don’t
always
get released
as quickly
as users
might want,
but
the focus
on producing
a quality
product
is quite
admirable.
About Kevin Hatch
Kevin Hatch is a professional web developer specializing in user interface design. He has more than a decade of experience in Internet development and has worked in a variety of roles, ranging from graphic designer and interface systems analyst to webmaster and network architect. These days he mainly programs in PHP as a webmaster and application developer, and freelances as a graphic designer for select projects.
He has a combined degree in Computer Science and English. He's experienced in technical writing and is the author of a book on the PostNuke CMS. He currently lives in eastern Iowa with his wife and their nine pets.
Related Links: KevinHatch.com
Purchase the book: PostNuke: Content Management System
About Vanessa Haakenson
Vanessa Haakenson brings several years of experience in developing web based instructional products. She is an Open Source advocate and contributes her free time to managing, promoting, and working with the PostNuke content management system. She has used PHP for three years and has conducted workshops on PHP basics.
Related
Links:
Designs4Nuke.com
(http://www.designs4nuke.com)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
phpfreelance.org and Bidoodle.com - Official Opening
phpfreelance provides you with the following:
- A provider/buyers account in which to monitor projects.
- The ability to bid on any work would like to take on.
- Several levels of subscription from free (default) right up to ultra members (which provides unlimited adding of projects and more..)
- Communication through the site.
- 60 Main categories.
- 235 sub-categories (with more being added as recommended by you).
- Clear Structure - find what you want fast!!.
- Track your bids (for buyers).
- Edit your account / profile.
- Add / edit your portfolio.
- The ability to <font color="red">make your profile stand out from the rest</font> (so buyers will pick you out).
- Post new projects and keep track of them.
- Multilingual.
- Great for phpNuke, Postnuke and other Portals.
- Much, much more ...
If you are a buyer - then you can even think about auctioning off your new piece of work on our sister site:
Bidoodle.com - also just opened today!! Watch out EBAY :)
As an incentive - we are offering FREE premium memberships (for the first 6 months) to the first 20 people who sign up on each site (phpfreelance.org and Bidoodle.com).
This will mean you can post unlimited projects as well as bid on unlimited projects for the first 6 months at phpfreelance.org.
You may also sell an unlimited amount of goods (not limited to PHP stuff) on Bidoodle.com for free (no fees) for the first 6 months.
So what are you waiting for?
Head over to phpfreelance.org and Bidoodle.com today!!
pnAddons.com Under New Management, Soundwebdev.com Opens
pnAddons will continue to host all of Harry's old projects including zClassifieds and most of the hacks and blocks. Alex will do his best to support the users of these projects. Alex had this to say about the future of pnAddons: "I dont plan to change many things at pnAddons. Actually for some time [I'll change] nothing. In the future the site will continue the same line of postnuke development and probably I will just add new content to it and a postnuke sites portofolio."
Soundwebdev.com will be the new home of future pnBloodhound development and support as well as other projects including pnMyGuide and pnCopilot. Sound Web Development is a Postnuke-centered hosting and development company. Please consider soundwebdev.com for your postnuke-hosting needs!
Thank you to the pnAddons community for your past and ongoing support and loyalty. Please continue to support both pnAddons.com and soundwebdev.com!
Technote regarding DCrab Security Advisory
If any customers experience a problem and believe it to be related to this issue, they should open a bugtracker entry, including enviroment information for debugging.
Please also note our security contact form.
larsneo
PostNuke Development
Embedded PostNuke: Bringing the power of PostNuke to your mobile devices.
Unlike a WAP interface, embedded PostNuke runs natively on the device and needs no Internet connection.
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