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Undefined property: stdClass::$userdata

EE 2.10.1 / Structure 3.3.17

In the Structure view I get this in my console:

A PHP Error was encountered

Severity: Notice

Message: Undefined property: stdClass::$userdata

Filename: structure/mod.structure.php

Line Number: 3750

Turns out it was Structure Tweaks causing the issue. Disabled it.

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Upgrading Republic Variables from 1.6.1 to 2.0.3 on EE 2.8.1

I got a few errors when upgrading Repulbic Variables 1.6.1 to 2.0.3 after upgrading EE from 2.5.5 to 2.8.1 .. posting it here so it is 'googeable' since I couldn't find any other info about this.

Downloaded 2.0.3 from devot:ee - and then got this PHP error when loading the CP:

A Database Error Occurred Error Number: 1054

Unknown column 'rv.save_to_file' in 'field list'

SELECT gv.variable_name, gv.variable_data, rv.save_to_file FROM (exp_republic_variables rv) JOIN exp_global_variables gv ON rv.variable_id = gv.variable_id WHERE rv.variable_parse = 'y' AND gv.variable_data != '' AND gv.site_id = '1'

Filename: /Users/bjorn/Documents/workspace/lf_total_rekruttering/third_party/republic_variables/model/model.php

Line Number: 1128

I added this field manually:

ALTER TABLE exp_republic_variables ADD save_to_file VARCHAR( 2 ) NOT NULL DEFAULT 'n';

Reloaded the CP. Got error that it would try to add "use_language" field twice.

uncommented first line in: update_to_1_6_2()

.. and the first line in:

update_to_1_6_4()

Finally, I got this error:

A PHP Error was encountered Severity: Notice Message: Undefined index: allow_to_save_to_files Filename: model/model.php Line Number: 1605 A PHP Error was encountered Severity: Notice Message: Undefined index: allow_to_save_to_files Filename: model/model.php Line Number: 1605

It is caused by the base64 encoded serialized setting array not containing the "allow_to_save_to_files" key. I loaded the settings data from "exp_repulib_variables_settings" and used this tool to inspect it: http://blog.tanist.co.uk/files/unserialize/ .. turned out it had the key now, so all I had to do was another refresh of the CP and everything worked.

Yeah!

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"After moving an ExpressionEngine installation I can not log into the control panel"

Is the EE install pre version 2.4? If so you need to upgrade - there's a bug that will cause this to happen. After upgrading you may want to try to set these variables in config.php $config['base_url'] = 'http://example.dev/'; $config['site_url'] = $config['base_url']; $config['cookie_domain'] = '.example.dev'; $config['cookie_path'] = ''; $config['cp_url'] = $config['site_url'] . "system"; $config['user_session_ttl'] = '72000'; // 7200 2 hours $config['cp_session_ttl'] = '72000'; // 3600 1 hour $config['admin_session_type'] = "c"; $config['user_session_type'] = "c"; $config['require_ip_for_login'] = "n"; $config['require_ip_for_posting'] = "n"; $config['secure_forms'] = "n"; $config['cookie_prefix'] = 'dev';

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Don't look at this post - you'll be logged out of both EllisLab.com and devot-ee :-(

*Sorry* about that .. don't say I didn't warn you. Don't believe me? Navigate to devot-ee or expressionengine.com and have a look ... .. and in case you're wondering how it's done: [check out this bugreport](https://support.ellislab.com/bugs/detail/18114) .. oh yeah, you'll need to login again to view it, sorry..

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Pro Network goes offline (temporarily?)

Email from EllisLab to Pro Network members: --(snip)--- Hello, You are receiving this email as a member of the ExpressionEngine Pro Network. Many of you have expressed to us that you feel that the Pro Network has become a bit crowded, with many members who did not keep their profiles updated. This has resulted in a once useful resource becoming less useful as the stale data made it frustrating for people to find someone who was both well suited to their project but also still using ExpressionEngine and in some cases even still in business. Thus we have decided to "blow out the dust" so to speak and do a full reset. As of today, our Pro Network will be going offline. We don't want to disband it and simply start inviting participants in the same way as we originally did though, or its loss of value will be cyclical. We would like to consider ways to rebuild it in a way that ensures that the listings stay up to date, relevant, and represent only the highest quality agencies and freelancers. For those those that wish to participate in the Pro Network if it returns, please let us know how your business can best benefit from the program so we can tailor the implementation to help you succeed. To help us organize the feedback, we'd love if you sent your emails to team@ellislab.com with the subject line "Pro Network", or simply reply to this email. We would like to thank you for your participation in this program, and we look forward to hearing from you about the future needs of the Pro Network. Sincerely, The EllisLab Team

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ExpressionEngine affiliate program notification

Email from EllisLab sent out to all affiliates just now: --( snip )-- Hello, In just a few weeks we will be launching a new, simplified and improved shopping and user experience. At that time, we will be suspending our affiliate referral program. After careful evaluation we've determined that the affiliate program has not been as effective at bringing new ExpressionEngine users into the fold as we had hoped. Mostly the program has provided long-time users and agencies with a commission on additional purchases. Making this change will enable us to look at more effective forms of advertising as ways to reach new ExpressionEngine users and grow the community. Final payments to your PayPal account will be made on November 1st, 2012 for any remaining balance. We appreciate everyone who has participated over the years. Thank you, The EllisLab Team

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List of top-secret, undocumented Structure hooks

Did you know that [Structure](http://www.buildwithstructure.com) actually has a couple of hooks? Here they are: ### Control Panel hooks **structure_index_view_data** - Used to expand the tree switcher (new tabs and content) > $data = $this->EE->extensions->call('structure_index_view_data', $data); ### Frontend Hooks **structure_get_data_end** > $data = $this->EE->extensions->call('structure_get_data_end', $data); **structure_get_selective_data_results** > $results = $this->EE->extensions->call('structure_get_selective_data_results', $results); That's all, kids.

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How to logout all logged-in users in ExpressionEngine

If you launch a new version of your website that requires users to do a fresh login then this trick to log out all users (forcing them to do a new login) might come handy: Edit /system/expressionengine/config/config.php Change the cookie_prefix to something else, e.g: **$config['cookie_prefix'] = 'new';** Changing the cookie prefix will effectively invalidate all existing cookies. Then delete all active sessions on your website: **DELETE FROM `exp_sessions` WHERE admin_sess=0;** The deleted sessions will all try to fallback to the cookies but since the cookie names have changed EE won't be able to use the old ones. All users will have to do a new login.

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ExpressionEngine: Call to undefined method CI_Config::site_prefs()

You're using FocusLab's master config and you replaced system/expressionengine/config/config.php and database.php with the files following that package. You should not replace those files, you should add a line to the bottom of those files.

See here.

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Stuff that cannot be discussed in an EE forum

Here are some topics you can't discuss in a CI based app, e.g. in an EE forum or in the comments of an EE site:

/* never allowed, string replacement */ protected $_never_allowed_str = array( 'document.cookie' => '[removed]', 'document.write' => '[removed]', '.parentNode' => '[removed]', '.innerHTML' => '[removed]', 'window.location' => '[removed]', '-moz-binding' => '[removed]', '' => '-->', '<![CDATA[' => '<![CDATA[' );

So remember that, before you consider discussing document.cookie or one of those other illegal topics in an EE forum ;-)

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A reason to use something else then the default /member/register etc.

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**Watch the entire course here: http://ow.ly/9Imdr** In addition to a general introduction to PHP frameworks it has sections for CodeIgniter, Zend Framework, Symfony, CakePHP - comparing the lot.

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Open Source Reality Check (Friday, July 21, 2006)

This post used to exist over here but has since been removed and was brought to my attention by @boyink which tweeted this:

EL founder @rickellis on open-source vs. commercial apps (with comments from creator of WP). Oldie but goodie: http://t.co/GR5Wc6B #eecms

This whole open source issue has been brought up again lately so that article from 2006 suddenly became very relevant. Anyway, the web.archive.org URL was too slow for my instapaper to grab it so I decided to republish the content here.

Here it is in full:

Open Source Reality Check

Friday, July 21, 2006 by Rick Ellis

There has been a long-running debate as to the relative merits of open source vs. closed source (commercial) as a software development model. It’s a tired debate, frankly, but it resurges all the time. Note: When I refer to “open source” I’m talking about the licensing of the product. The source code of our publishing software is open, it’s just not distributed under an open source license.

Just to stir up the pot I’m going to say something to irritate proponents of open source: Commercial development almost always produces more compelling applications, faster development, and provides a better customer experience. There, I said it. If you think I’m wrong, prove it.

If you think open source is the end-all of software development, show me the open source equivalents of Photoshop, ProTools, DreamWeaver, MS Office, PageMaker, BBEdit, World of Warcraft, QuickBooks, FinalCutPro, Performer, and thousands of other successful applications. For every product I listed there are many viable commercial alternatives, but only a few open source ones. The few that exists usually can not match the capability or raw development speed of their commercial counterparts.

The only open source companies that can compete on a similar level are those that generate enough revenue from ancillary sources to support a large development effort. In other words, only the big, well organized, well funded companies like PHP, MySQL, and Linux. A rare breed indeed. For every MySQL there are thousands of others that can’t create a model that produces a highly competitive, revenue-generating business, and thousands of commercial companies that can. In some limited realms like operating systems and server platforms open source has proven to be superior, but these are exceptions. Overall it’s not even a contest.

Paul reminded me that about two years ago when the open source blogging tool WordPress was released, the developer posted on his site that in six months they would support all the features of our own ExpressionEngine. Not only has that prediction not come to fruition, but we have continued widening the technological gap. We also have profitability and sustainability.

WordPress does have more users then us due to its freeness; there’s certainly value in that so I’m not minimizing having lots of users, but when your app is free your users are not producing “now” cash flow. A popular free app might allow you to sell your company to Yahoo at some point in the future, but without revenue you don’t have a business right now. You have a dream for the future. Sure you can raise VC funds, but you still do not have a model that produces revenue directly from your product. You’ll have to provide services or think creatively about how to make money which comes at the price of your ability to focus all your efforts on development.

Open source proponents always tout community contributed development. The idea is that programmers from around the world donating their time will help the application improve faster. In theory this is nice. In practice it rarely ever happens. The vast majority of open source products are never able to assemble a wide-spread team of highly qualified programmers working in consort.

pMachine has grown in revenue by at least 35% a year, each of the six years we’ve been in business (most years we’ve grown much more than that), enabling us to re-invest right back into our product development and customer support. We just, in fact, hired another full-time developer and we’re scouting another tech support person, thanks to the solid year we’re having. Early next year we’ll add another staff member, giving us even more capability.

Now I’m not trying to get into a pissing match with other products, I’m just pointing out something that should be as obvious as the nose on ones face: When you sell software, as we do, you are in fact being paid to write code. When you give it away for free, as open source companies do, you have to find a different way to earn your jack, thus limiting the time you can spend writing code.

Which business model do you think produces more code faster? Which model enables the business to focus on its core mission? Which model places more emphasis on the needs of the end user? Which model generates working capital, enabling the business to expand, hire staff, and seize new opportunities?

There’s another very important dynamic at play, and again, I’m going to irritate people who are passionate about open source by stating the following: Commercial software companies take better care of their users then open source companies. Why? Because when happy customers correlate directly to your ability to earn a living you’ll work harder for them.

Obviously open source companies care about their users too, but the dynamic is different. The amount of responsibility a developer feels toward the end user is not as great when said end user has gotten the app for free. I created an open source app of my own and I simply do not feel the same sense of urgency to provide tech support, bug fixes, and add new features for free as I do toward those who have paid me money.

At pMachine we employ three tech support professionals to provide official support in our forums (our development team provides support too). Support is provided at no charge as an added value of purchasing software from us, and as we grow we will continue to increase our staffing to provide even better coverage.

There is no open source equivalent. The only way to get official support is to pay for it through a support contract. And don’t tell me about how good community support is. It’s not the same. It’s not as consistent, nor does it have the follow through, nor can bugs be addressed officially and immediately fixed when they surface. Every day when bugs are reported we fix them and provide our users with updated code.

Well over 50% of our users are business users and web professionals who use our products with their clients. If your business depends on your site you can’t hope that someone from the community will resolve your issue, you need professional support in a timely manner. As good as community support can be, it doesn’t provide a guarantee of support. We can and do provide a guarantee, thanks to our business model.

Another often cited advantage of open source is that if a developer decides to cease development, someone else can take over, allowing an application to continue on. While this is valid point, in practice, successful applications rarely leave the marketplace. Photoshop has been around for 17 years. Most of the apps I listed above have been around for over 10 years. We’re about to turn six years old. If an app is good there’s a better then not chance it’s going to have a long life-span.

There’s no implicit guarantee that if an open source app is no longer developed that someone will take over development or that the goals and trajectory of the app will remain consistent. With software, regardless of the distribution model, there is some risk that it might not be available forever. That’s simply the nature of the beast (heck, it’s the nature of every product we use). I’m willing to bet, however, even though I don’t know where I’d find the data, that the longevity of open source products is less then commercial ones since the potential for revenue is so low with open source.

Lest I be branded a heretic let me say that I love many open source apps. Heck, we’ve built our entire business upon two of them: PHP and MySQL. But we didn’t choose PHP and MySQL because they were open source, we chose them because they were the de-facto standard for web application development. Had either of these apps not been open source we would have still used them. It isn’t open source that makes PHP and MySQL compelling, it’s the fact that they are the best in class and have huge market share.

I’m not an absolutist with regard to licensing. I look for the best applications that meet my needs. In some cases it’s open source, in most cases it’s not. But my criteria is not based on an ideological panacea, but the more practical desire to fill my toolbox with the best available tools right now. I don’t really care much about the licensing of the products I buy, I care whether they are the best in their genre. And from where I’m sitting, the best are usually commercial apps.

Comments

To read the comments for this post check out the page over at web.archive.org.

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upload_unable_to_write_file / expressionengine / codeigniter forum upload

If you get "upload_unable_to_write_file" or "The file could not be written to disk." when uploading a PDF for instance in an ExpressionEngine forum it is because of this code in codeigniter/system/libraries/Upload.php:

/* * Run the file through the XSS hacking filter * This helps prevent malicious code from being * embedded within a file. Scripts can easily * be disguised as images or other file types. */ if ($this->xss_clean) { if ($this->do_xss_clean() === FALSE) { $this->set_error('upload_unable_to_write_file'); return FALSE; } }

Uncomment it to fix - of course, you risk XSS attacks in the process.