Matt Daniels
11-11-2008, 02:08 PM
Not many people know that I'm the webmaster for the ACNA website, which I've been working on since 2001, when I took it over from Darin Nederhoff.
At that time, myself, Jon Linkov and a couple of others ran the site, but for the past few years it's really only me that keeps it going. One of the ladies in the ACNA office has the ability to add content and make changes to the front end, but nothing on the back end.
I don't spent too much time working on the website and generally only add items when asked by the office. For the record, I do bill the Club my hours and I am paid for the time I spend on the Club's website, although I consider it 50% volunteer. In the past two years I don't know if I've spent 80hrs total working on the site.
Having said that, the log-in issues that have happened in the past week or so <b>have been completely my fault and nobody within the ACNA organization or the current BOD has had anything to do with the recent website troubles.</b>
The basic explanation is that what should have been a fairly standard software upgrade, turned into a very big pile of worms - of course it had to happened "now" - where two months from now nobody would probably have even noticed.
The ACNA website uses the Joomla Content Management System software to run the website. We were using version 1.0.11, which is a version about 2 years old.
For various reasons, I made the decision to upgrade our current version of Joomla, which has always gone smoothly in the past for this and other sites I run that use Joomla.
I backed up the website and then sometime over the weekend of Nov. 1st (sorry I'm not at home and can't tell you the exact date/time I did it) upgraded the website to 1.0.13. Unknown to me, 1.0.13 used a new encryption method for passwords. It wasn't until early- to mid-last week that I started getting notifications from the ACNA office that people couldn't log on.
The weird part was that SOME people could log in, but others couldn't. Why - I still don't have a clue. One person could log in, but the very next person in the database couldn't. It didn't make any sense to me (and still doesn't).
Most of last week and over this past weekend I tried to find a solution and tried many different fixes. Looking at the Joomla forums, this is a common "bug" but no official fix is available that I've been able to find (http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=268622). Joomla has moved to a completely new version (1.5.X) and the version we're using no longer is being supported.
I eventually downgraded one core Joomla file that reverted the password encryption back to the old way. This fixed the problem for those that couldn't log on. But then I discovered that those that were previously successful, couldn't log on because their password had been converted to the new encryption, which wasn't compatible with the old format.
After spending countless hours trying to find a solution (which I might add I am not billing the Club for, since this is my screw up), yesterday I finally gave up trying to find a solution and reverted the site back to 1.0.11. To make sure none of the "newer" password encryption was in the database, I revered to a database backup I made on Oct. 18.
I then manually had to delete all the users in the database, then imported the lasted member database that I received from the office this past Friday (the member database has to be manually imported - it is not linked to the main database at the ACNA office). I also had to manually add any content that had been added since Oct. 18.
As of right now, the ACNA website should be 100% functional for all active members. If not, please let me know and I'll do what I can to fix it.
Again, I just want to make it clear that the ACNA website issues recently have been completely my fault and have not been the result of anyone at ACNA. In hind-sight, I should have made a note on the website about the log-in issues and created a temporary user-name and password that could have been used for people to log on. This was my oversight - although generally the Members area isn't used very often and I didn't think it would be "that big of a deal."
Some of you that come here from the Rocky Mountain forum may be surprised to learn that I'm the ACNA webmaster, since I have been somewhat vocal on my irritation with all the "drama" that has happened with the RM Chapter and now the latest election issues. Generally I try and keep a low-profile.
If anybody has any concerns regarding the ACNA website, feel free to email me at matt.daniels@audiclubna.org. I'll try and follow up on this post, but this isn't a forum a check in on regularly.
At that time, myself, Jon Linkov and a couple of others ran the site, but for the past few years it's really only me that keeps it going. One of the ladies in the ACNA office has the ability to add content and make changes to the front end, but nothing on the back end.
I don't spent too much time working on the website and generally only add items when asked by the office. For the record, I do bill the Club my hours and I am paid for the time I spend on the Club's website, although I consider it 50% volunteer. In the past two years I don't know if I've spent 80hrs total working on the site.
Having said that, the log-in issues that have happened in the past week or so <b>have been completely my fault and nobody within the ACNA organization or the current BOD has had anything to do with the recent website troubles.</b>
The basic explanation is that what should have been a fairly standard software upgrade, turned into a very big pile of worms - of course it had to happened "now" - where two months from now nobody would probably have even noticed.
The ACNA website uses the Joomla Content Management System software to run the website. We were using version 1.0.11, which is a version about 2 years old.
For various reasons, I made the decision to upgrade our current version of Joomla, which has always gone smoothly in the past for this and other sites I run that use Joomla.
I backed up the website and then sometime over the weekend of Nov. 1st (sorry I'm not at home and can't tell you the exact date/time I did it) upgraded the website to 1.0.13. Unknown to me, 1.0.13 used a new encryption method for passwords. It wasn't until early- to mid-last week that I started getting notifications from the ACNA office that people couldn't log on.
The weird part was that SOME people could log in, but others couldn't. Why - I still don't have a clue. One person could log in, but the very next person in the database couldn't. It didn't make any sense to me (and still doesn't).
Most of last week and over this past weekend I tried to find a solution and tried many different fixes. Looking at the Joomla forums, this is a common "bug" but no official fix is available that I've been able to find (http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=268622). Joomla has moved to a completely new version (1.5.X) and the version we're using no longer is being supported.
I eventually downgraded one core Joomla file that reverted the password encryption back to the old way. This fixed the problem for those that couldn't log on. But then I discovered that those that were previously successful, couldn't log on because their password had been converted to the new encryption, which wasn't compatible with the old format.
After spending countless hours trying to find a solution (which I might add I am not billing the Club for, since this is my screw up), yesterday I finally gave up trying to find a solution and reverted the site back to 1.0.11. To make sure none of the "newer" password encryption was in the database, I revered to a database backup I made on Oct. 18.
I then manually had to delete all the users in the database, then imported the lasted member database that I received from the office this past Friday (the member database has to be manually imported - it is not linked to the main database at the ACNA office). I also had to manually add any content that had been added since Oct. 18.
As of right now, the ACNA website should be 100% functional for all active members. If not, please let me know and I'll do what I can to fix it.
Again, I just want to make it clear that the ACNA website issues recently have been completely my fault and have not been the result of anyone at ACNA. In hind-sight, I should have made a note on the website about the log-in issues and created a temporary user-name and password that could have been used for people to log on. This was my oversight - although generally the Members area isn't used very often and I didn't think it would be "that big of a deal."
Some of you that come here from the Rocky Mountain forum may be surprised to learn that I'm the ACNA webmaster, since I have been somewhat vocal on my irritation with all the "drama" that has happened with the RM Chapter and now the latest election issues. Generally I try and keep a low-profile.
If anybody has any concerns regarding the ACNA website, feel free to email me at matt.daniels@audiclubna.org. I'll try and follow up on this post, but this isn't a forum a check in on regularly.