steven-dowd.co.uk

Well, its taken me years to get round to putting anything at all on this domain, and even now, I still do not know what’s going to be here. I made some categories, Blog Stuff, LOcal Stuff, Web Stuff and Pano Stuff, anything I write must fit into one. .. maybe I should add Family Stuff. Lets see how it turns out, and work on it ‘as it appens’. Steven Dowd

Fot the last week my server seems to have been hassled by hackers, they most always seem to be using the same system, cross site scripting, and luckily they havn’t managed to get into the system, but what a waste of time it is for me, having to keep everything upto-date just to stop these dickheads getting in. it’s a hassle I don’t need.

Its been ages since I last posted anything, no real reason why, just didnt think to.

I did manage to transfer the whole of my Newton-le-Willows website into Joomla, lost a few things but otherwise the whole thing went ok

At first I setup the forums as smf joomlaboard forums, but they just never seemed to work correctly, so after a few days struggling, i decided to plump for a change to phpbb, the change of the forums from Xforum to pnForum then through to Joomlaboard and ending with phpbb had its moment, but eventually 3500+ posts were all working well.

[Read more →]

Today has been one of those days, firstly i didnt feel too great, so that wasn’t good, but then just as I sat at the keyboard to do my morning email check, i felt a drip of water on the keys, looked up to see that we have developed a leak in the roof overnight, and the constant driving rain which seems to have been a feature of the last few days, has managed somehow to get through the roof, to drip exactly on my keyboard. With help from a good friend, Mark Vardy, and from my Father, the roof was taken out, and the roof space made available, all that has to be done now is to trace the wet spots back to wherever the water is first getting in and to seal the spot. Hopefully this will be sooner rather than later..

Home at last, still very sore, but being home is cool, will be on crutches for approx 6 weeks, not supposed to drive for a few months, should give me time to get some of the many code projects i have hidden away to get completed. Have decided I am going to convert the Newton website to use joomla code, I am really impressed with Joomla, cannot see any reason to plod-on with postnuke, will probably convert my dowd webspace also to joomla, the easyspace hosting runs out soon and i have already transfered the dowd domain name to 123reg, so this enforced home detention will give me the time to get these things done Steven Dowd

I am still in hospital but must admit to feeling a little better, managed to walk with crutches, maybe i will be let home in a few days.

Well what can i say, I am still in hospital, I feel shit, hip was replaced, still not stood on it, have had a few probs.

Well I am in hospital, ward G2, Whiston Hospital. op is sometime later today, full right hip replacement, should be up and about in a few days all being well.

I have now done a few test conversions of a full working postnuke website into a joomla one Even managed to transfer all the forum posts from pnforum into joomlaboard. it wasn’t too difficult, finding the correct scripts via google and other forums was the hardest part. then i had to seperatly transfer all the pnforum posts into a standalone verion of phpbb, then later when i had inported all the users, weblinks, articles, categories etc from postnuke into joomla, imported the forum posts from the standalone phpbb, their seems no way to directly import the posts pnforum 2 joomlaboard and not loose the users details etc. So now i know I can do it, i suppose i have to decide am I going to, and if so when?

Steven Dowd

I am in a dilemma, I have used postnuke for years, but lately am very disheartened with it, it seems to be lagging behind other systems, particulally Joomla. I have used postnuke for websites since day one of nukes creation, I have been stood back from the community for quite some years due to my legal hassles, but have always kept up with whats been going on, at the moment I feel the system is failing to keep up, to make the system do some of the pretty things joomla does, i would have to find 3rd part addons etc etc, and then worry whether the authors would upkeep them, yet Joomla does most all things straight out of the box. If I had to list the particular things which have impressed me with Joomla, which are missing in postnuke I would have to list them as follows.

• Built in Image system, image uploads, content image insertion, Image admin for all sections, groups, links, contacts, menu items etc
• Front page management, article / news order management, ordering for front page items, ordering for links, sections, contacts etc
• Module, Components, Themes Installation system.
• Simpler permissions, Groups and User management.

[Read more →]