News

I have created RPM packages for Geeklog 1.4.1, Forum 2.7, Filemgmt 1.5.2, Captcha 3.0.2 and Media Gallery 1.5.0. Packages do install all software within /etc/geeklog, /usr/share/geeklog, /var/lib/geeklog and /var/log/geeklog directories, trying to stick as much as possible with the FHS 2.3 (Filesystem Hierarchy Standard). Basically anyone with minimal skills (to know hoe to use mysqladmin, mysql and any text editor) and with a working Red Hat™ Enterprise Linux 5 based OS (CentOS 5, etc.) may install Geeklog, Forum, Filemgnt, Captcha and Media Gallery in less than three minutes.

Software repository for fresh and new Geeklog installations, with RPM and SRPM packages, courtesy of Alcance Libre, is located at: http://www.alcancelibre.org/al/webapps/.

Over the last few weeks, I've been working on beefing up the wiki over at gllabs.org with some info regarding Geeklog theme creation. A large portion of that, a tutorial on how to port a theme, involved taking an open-source XHTML/CSS template and converting it step-by-step into a GL theme.

The tutorial is at a point now where I feel the first draft is written, and would like some feedback. Please check it out and post your comments in this forum thread.

The result of that tutorial is a fixed width, 2 column layout theme with left blocks and a main story column called Refresh. All credit for the theme design goes to the original author at www.styleshout.com. It is meant for 1024x768 and higher screen resolutions. I have tested it in Firefox2, and Safari public beta 3. In other browsers, your mileage may vary.

Grab it at gllabs.org or here at geeklog.net.

See it in action at lab.familycorner.us.

Since we had a few reports about hacked Geeklog sites again, all of which turned out to be due to running on old and insecure versions, I'd like to remind you to please check for updates regularly and if there is a security update, that you install it ASAP - in your own interest.

At the time of this writing, the following Geeklog versions are considered "safe" in that there are no known security issues with them:

• Geeklog 1.4.1 (Download: complete tarball)
• Geeklog 1.4.0sr5-1 (Download: "Combo" update)
• Geeklog 1.3.11sr7-1 (Download: "Combo" update)

The 1.3.11 versions are not officially supported any more, but sites running on the latest incarnation (see above) should be fine.

Security issues may also lurk in plugins and other add-ons that you have installed, so you may want to check those for updates as well.