remository

- the home of the great file repository! Also the home of the Glossary component and the Remosef URI transformer.

Registering a Remository account

To participate in the forum you will need to create an account and login. This is a simple process and you will find a link to the registration page in the login box on the left. All you have to provide is your name, a username (which will be used as your name in the forum) and your email address. The system will mail you a password, which you can use right away. If you forget the password, the "Reset Password" link will create a new one and mail it to you, also telling you your username again.

For improved security, only passwords generated by the system are accepted. You may want to retain the email telling you your password, although you can reset it at any time. Please report any problems with the registration system using "Contact Us"

Once logged in you can amend your profile, including adding extra information. In time, further options may be added. To reach your profile, you will find that the name in the "Hi name" message shown in the login box after login is a link that leads to the profile. Also, there are numerous links to your profile in the forum. Changing your username will change it for all existing messages in the forum. Whenever you make a change to your profile, an email will be sent confirming your username, which is needed for login.

There is now a system wide avatar, which is currently used only in the forum. By default you will be allocated an avatar taken from Gravatar. If you have not registered an avatar at Gravatar, an identicon is used, based on your email address. In your profile maintenance, you can change the avatar to an image of your choice, or reset it to the avatar that comes from Gravatar for your email address.

Running your site on a VPS?

When I first moved sites, including this one, to a VPS the results were initially chaotic with apparent problems with resources.  In particular, memory seemed a problem, and the hosts urged me to move to more expensive plans.  It took me a lot of work to figure out the issues, but in the end the sites are running well without needing to spend a lot of money on hosting.  The technical issues with a VPS can be obscure, but I've tried to clarify them in my blog to help other people to reach solutions more quickly than I did!

Alternative Remository icon set

A Remository user has posted an alternative icon set in the forum, with a download link.  For more information look at this posting .

The aTicket support ticket system for Help Desk

Just launched! I was concerned that the formerly open source eTicket (based on osTicket) system had changed hands and stopped being open source. So aTicket is a new development, based on the last open source version of eTicket. It is a slick, easy to use system for small to medium support operations. Tickets can be raised by email or Web, and are neatly followed using just the owner's email address and the ticket ID. There are extensive admin functions. You can find the new project at http://aticket.org

The aTicket system is currently stand alone, although I hope to develop RESTful interfaces that will make it possible to create front ends for aTicket in other environments, such as within a CMS. The code has been greatly cleaned up, and the output now comes close to conforming to XHTML.

CMS framework development

If you're interested in PHP 5 development, especially as it applies to the creation of a CMS framework, take a look at my new book. The examples are taken from the Aliro CMS, developed by me and now released in beta, but the techniques are applicable to building any PHP framework for use on the web, and to some extent to any kind of PHP development. Click on the image of the book to go to the publisher's site to see more information and purchase options.

Problems installing into Joomla 1.5.x

Some people are having difficulty installing Remository into Joomla 1.5.x and receive the message "Error - could not find an XML setup file in the package". The error is an unhelpful generic message and really means that Joomla is not having success unpacking the archive. It appears that the reason for this is use by Joomla of very recent additions to PHP for archive handling, and these appear to be less than totally reliable. The problems are erratic and not easily linked with a particular software configuration. Remository for Joomla 1.5 is now available in two formats - a zip file or a tar.gz file. If one of these does not work for you, then please try the other.

Name clash on "downloads"

The default directory for the Remository file repository is called downloads. But if you create a system that uses SEF to have a file repository URI like http://mydomain.com/downloads this will not work because the CMS sees this as the real directory and not as a SEF'd CMS URI. The solutions are: either avoid using the exact name "downloads" at the start of a SEF URI, or put the files somewhere else and change the default location in the Remsitory configuration and any containers that have an absolute path specified. Make sure any new directories exist before changing absolute paths.

Remository on Joomla! version 1.5+

As one of the first major components to be published in a version capable of running as native Joomla 1.5, Remository is leading the field. But that doesn't mean that people using other systems are being left behind. In fact, code has been developed so that the major components hosted here are able to run on any of the supported platforms.

Versions that will run on Joomla 1.0.x are in the Mambo download section. Extensions are the same for Mambo 4.x and Joomla 1.0.x. The packaging has to be different for Joomla 1.5, so there is a special Joomla section to cater for software built to work there.  This sentence is a test & please ignore.