PostNuke

...lead one to believe that the environment was PostNuke-ready when, in fact, it was not. This issue has been corrected. This release also contains a few minor display and text alterations. As a reminder, this version of the PNSCC tests a server to ensure that it is correctly configured to run a PostNuke .7.6.4 website, being that that is the current production version.

Working with pnRender was espacially complicated: Some stuff you best read at http://smarty.php.net and you also always have to have an open pnRender plugins directory so you can open the plugins you need and look up the exact syntax.

I tried to put the basic smarty stuff and the most frequently used pnRender stuff on just one page. And the great thing is: I am willing to share it with the community.

Personally I already love the cheatsheet - It contains the syntax with the backticks! And the date specifiers!! And the parameters for pnmodurl, pnmodfunc, pnmodapifunc aso!!! And I always forget in which order truncates parameters are. That's all on that on sheet!

I hope you like it too.

Download: pnRender cheatsheet 1.0

A document consists of nested sections, so you always end up with a
structure like this:

Document
+- Section 1
| +- Section 1.1
| | + Section 1.1.1
| +- Section 1.2
+- Section 2

You can also add "boxes" to your sections. These boxes contains images
(references to multimedia files from Mediashare), program examples, or simply
some text. Boxes can be positioned in various places of their containing
sections - top left, top right, above and bottom.

CoType is designed to cover the grounds between a Wiki and a single document.

Wiki elements:
- With CoType you can collaborate on document creation since every person can edit their own sections (can also be open to anonymous users).
- With CoType you can easily link different sections and boxes (there is a toolbar button for this in the editor).
- CoType has a complete revision history for each section and you can see who edited what, when and from where.
- Everything is instantly online.

Single document elements:
- All sections in a CoType document can be printed, exported or downloaded as
one single document for off-line use (not feature complete yet).
- You get a nice structured table of content.
- You can read the text linearly from section one and forward.


Features:
- Create unlimited number of documents
- Add unlimited number of sections to documents
- Add floating figures with images and text
- Organize sections hierarchically by drag-and-drop
- Automatic table of contents
- HTML WYSIWYG editing using FCKEditor
- Insert cross references
- Support for PostNuke .8 search API
- Complete revision history
- Only one person at a time are allowed to edit the same section. No more
overwriting of other peoples work (depends on PostNuke .8's PageLock
mechanism).


Download here.

Support site: www.elfisk.dk.

Enjoy, Jørn

All my modules have been developed for NetBiker.de, a postnuke powered motorcycle web community for german speaking bikers. Because of the need of programming some new functions I decided not to re-program one new powerful module. I decided to program some compact, little modules that can be linked together and be used in any kind of community. So perhaps the modules can alo be interesting for your postnuke community. As I wrote already - the idea of all modules is to increase the communication and interaction between the community members.

Graphical member search

Whenever community members want to get new contacts they can write personal Messages to other community members. So I first programmed pnMap, a graphical based user search engine. This is not a free module but all other modules are free and open source.

See how active a user ist (last login)

But very often there are many peoples members of a community but not everybody is very active. Perhaps someone has logged in the last time some months ago? If this is the case you do not really need to write an personal mail to these members - you better write mails to the more active members. So I released pnLastLogin, that loggs the last login of a user. These information can be integrated in a member search as a sort criteria with pnMap or in the profile page of a community member. So you can see who is really actice.

Do you want to know who has visited your profile page?

Did you ever think about the question who visited your profile page? I think this might be an interesting gimmick for all community members. So I released pnClickedMe. This little program loggs who clicks whoose profile page. You can install a little block afterwards on your page that shows a user who has visited his profile page. So many people get interested and want to see who is that person that clicked me? Perhaps this can create new contacts!

Manage friends in a little addressbook

If you have created new contacts, you might be interested to store a list of "friends" with additional information to the contacts. For this you can use pnUserinfo. This is like a little addressbook.

Give your community the possibillity to publish content in weblogs!

If you want to publish some things about yourself, blogging is the keyword. Weblogs can be a really great tool in a web community. pnWebLog for example is a weblog module for postnuke. You also can integrate the newest postings of a weblog owner in his profile etc.

We need faces not nicknames!

Web communities are full of nicknames. But who is the person behind the nic? Mostly user's can upload an avatar but avatars are mostly used for funny pictures etc. But I think in a community that was build up to create real contacts you should be able to see who is the person behind a nicname. To reach this goal I release pnUserPictures. Using this module you can define picture templates that can be integrated in a user's profile page for example and you can also allow it that users can manage their own gallery. There is not only a category managment possible, usernames can be assigned to the uploaded pictures. So it is not only possible to see the picture, you know who is on the picture. You now can integrate a link in the user's profile that shows with how many other pictures a user is associated. This increases interaction in the community. For all pictures there are thumbnail galleries available. You can install a block that shows the newest pictures and so on.

Give the users the possibillity to delete themselfs - if they want it

Sometimes a user wants to leave a community. Did you ever notice that there is no possibillity in the postnuke core yet for a member so that a member can delete its account with a click? If a user can delete his account himself, the administrator even has less work with such things. To make this possible, I released pnUserDeletion. But before you use this module test the deletion process on an offline backup installation. Some modules might have problems if a user is not found any more in the database.

Invite guests to get registered!

OK - loosing members is not really great but sometimes you can't avoid it. It's better so see the community growing. To invite people to get registered I programmed pnRegisterNow. This module displays a nice javascript popup (no nerving popup...) after a specified number of pageviews. So if a guest surfs in your forum and he opens the 20th page for example, he'll see a popup with an register link and a login form.

The advanced postnuke profile links most of the modules automatically

Now you have seen various modules that can be usefull in a community. But you now say that linking these modules is hard work? No, not really. Take a look at pnProfile. This is an advanced profile module for postnuke. All modules listed above that are linkable are automatically linked after pnProfile is installed. You can define custom profile fields in pnProfile, integrate user pictures in the profile page, integrate the user's weblog and so on. Take a look at the information page of pnProfile and you will see that using these modules is very easy!

The PNSCC is a utility that first checks the PHP and MySQL versions of the server for the purposes of verifying that the server meets the minimum requirements of a PostNuke installation. The application is currently checking for 'PHP 4.1.0' (or later) and 'MySQL 4.1' (or later) as these are the basic requirements of PostNuke 0.7.6.4.The PNSCC also uses a number of PHP ini configurations to populate a tidy display of the most common ini settings. If a non-techy person needs to quickly locate and convey these values in a tech support exchange, this can be very handy. It can be useful in a variety of situations, check the display to see how it might be of use to you.As a security measure, the PNSCC expires and disables itself after a default of 20 minutes in an effort to avoid exposing server information beyond a limited span of time. Nonetheless, the file should be deleted from the server after use.Quick Rundown

• Shows PostNuke's minimum requirements


• Verifies and shows current PHP version


• Verifies and shows current MySQL version


• Provides pass/fail messaging


• Displays many ini-related settings


• Locks itself down after 20 minutes

Download the PostNuke Server Compatibility Checker utility.

Onboard Tools

• Configuration OverviewDisplays many site config settings including module, block and theme detection.
• Database Access RecoveryRe-encodes database credentials for the config.php file.
• Theme RecoveryResets default site theme and/or resets user-applied themes.
• Disabled Site RecoveryYou wondered what turning your site off would do...now you know! This utility restores the site to the "on" state.
• Modules Module RecoveryDeletes any Modules modules entries found in the database and freshly installs the Modules module to the System category.
• Blocks RecoveryA chart displays important block data and allows for disabling and/or deleting any content blocks. Changing the state of multiple blocks at a time is supported.
• PostNuke Site SearchA built-in search bar searches the PostNuke site for content by keywords. Searches for matches in the following modules at this time: pagesetter, users, downloads, weblinks, comments, ezcomments, all news stories/topics, and all forums.
• PHP InformationPHP info is displayed by section via a tidy menu.
• About The ApplicationA dedicated page that displays licensing, credit and other general information.

Additional Features

• Cross-browser-compatible CSS layout.
• Highly accessible onscreen display.
• Visual, interactive, informative navigation.
• Various (but few) core images used for aesthetic lists.
• Succinct onscreen instructions for each utility.
• All actions require confirmation and provide error/status messages.
• All forms re-populate themselves upon error.
• Applicable current settings are displayed on every page, before and after recovery.

Security

• Utilities that are not needed intelligently disable themselves.
• User input cleansing.
• Filename can be changed without breaking the application.
• Time-sensitive application lockdown.

Gracefully Degrades When

• PostNuke version is less than .8x.
• PostNuke initialization fails.
• Application is under lockdown.
• Application is uploaded to incorrect location.

Of Other Interest

• Written as a PHP class.
• Extremely commented code.
• Output source is XHTML 1.0 Strict; tidy and skimmable.
• Quietly runs with E_ALL enabled.

A big thanks to all who contributed to the original PSAK, which was the strongest inspiration behind this Recovery Console, and to those who contributed with ideas, feedback and testing of the PNRC, thanks for your time and effort!

Download the PostNuke Recovery Console now!

Thanks to Devin Hayes (aka InvalidResponce) for the information. He also posted a solution. See this thread in the forums. I have modifed the file and also made it available here. This patch is unoffical and comes with no warranty or support.

Anyone, using pnFlashGames should secure their websites.

Happy PostNuking,
David Pahl (aka AmmoDump)

Comprehensiveness and freshness are key initiatives for every search engine, and with autodiscovery of sitemaps, everyone wins:

· Webmasters save time with the ability to universally submit their content to the search engines and benefit from reduced unnecessary traffic by the crawlers
· The search engines get information with regards to pages to index as well as metadata with clues about which pages are newly updated and which pages are identified as the most important
· Searchers benefit from improved search experience with better comprehensiveness and freshness

In addition, Ask.com is now supporting submission of Sitemaps via http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=SitemapUrl.

Of course, neither autodiscovery nor manual submission guarantee pages will be added to the index. The pages must meet our quality criteria for inclusion in the index. And use of these submission methods does not influence ranking.

I will be talking about today’s announcement (along with my counterparts at Google, Microsoft and Yahoo!) during the SiteMaps and Site Submission session at SES in New York later this morning. If you aren’t able to join us, more information is available at http://www.sitemaps.org and http://about.ask.com/en/docs/about/webmasters.shtml#22.

We are excited about our participation with the Sitemaps via robots.txt protocol and look forward to our collaboration with Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! and others in furthering important initiatives that make search easier for webmasters and more powerful for users.

Source: http://blog.ask.com/2007/04/sitemaps_autodi.html

Like the PSAK, The PostNuke Recovery Console is an application that contains a variety of site-fixing utilities that can be uploaded via a single file to your server. You can then perform any repair operations by visiting the file in your browser and following the onscreen instructions, same as the PSAK.

One major improvement over the PSAK is that the Recovery Console has a countdown timer built into it which will only allow the application to be used for xyz amount of time, after which the file automatically locks out further access to the code therein. A realtime graphical timer (Javascript-based) visually shows you how much time you have left to use the Recovery Console. (The Javascript is purely for display purposes, and not relied upon for security.) As the PostNuke system does not make any checks for this Recovery Console, it could easily be left on one's server accidentally and thus, misused. To this end, the lockdown feature might be of some comfort.

A few other items of interest about the Recovery Console:

• Aesthetic, CSS-based layout. Nothing hacky, very straight-forward classes.


• Consistent navigation.


• Fixes that require database, when no database present, are visually disabled for clarity.


• Each utility shows the current status of what it's about to fix, before it fixes it, and after.


• Inline explanatory texts help you make the proper fixes.


• Overview of recovery-related site settings.


• Informational page about the application.


• Status messages tell you exactly what's going on.


• Large countdown timer lets you know how long you have left to use the application.


• Self-contained.


• Works with PostNuke .8+ (including MS2+)


• Highly accessible.

Specific fixes onboard at this time mirror those of the PSAK:

• Encode Database Credentials


• Toggle Intranet/Internet Usage


• Broken Theme Recovery


• Permissions Recovery


• Disabled Site Recovery / Turning Site Back On


• Modules module Recovery

The code is written so that other fixes can easily be added and thus, if you have any suggestions for other utilities to incorporate into the PostNuke Recovery Console, please share them! I'm at a point where I am commenting the file now, and that will take me a least a week more to finalize I suspect, so please post any ideas for fixes you'd like to see and I'll try to get them in for the first release.

Note that this application can be downloaded from here at the NOC, but that it will take a week or 10 days for me to get the first release uploaded.

Cheers,

- Alar

The key principle of his approach is the grid: The unchangeable elements of a site, like ads in standard dimensions, dictate the protortions of the grid that the rest of the layout has to fit in.

If you are interest in improving your theming skills, you should work through his presenation.

Links:
Khoi Vinh's Homepage