Admin Tools 2.2.9

Admin Tools 2.2.9 is released.

We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of Admin Tools 2.2.9, a bugfix release of our Admin Tools 2.2 series.

This release addresses an annoying cosmetic bug in Admin Tools Core which would erroneously cause a big yellow banner to prompt you for a Download ID. Admin Tools Core is free of charge and should not ask for a Download ID.

Moreover, this release also solves another issue which would make it impossible to edit multiple items in your Joomla! back-end if the "Set default expiration to 1 hour" option in .htaccess Maker is enabled. users of the Professional release, after the upgrade, please go to Admin Tools, .htaccess Maker and click on "Save and Create .htaccess" to regenerate your .htaccess file.

Finally, the "Remove all instances of Joomla! from the output" feature was removed from the Web Application Firewall. This feature did not offer any substantial protection, as it's possible for a semi-skilled attacker to easily determine within a reasonable degree of accuracy if your site runs Joomla!. Skilled attackers can easily determine the version of Joomla!, usually within 1-3 versions accuracy. However, despite the minimal protection offered by this feature, it would cause a lot of problems on many sites. Therefore we decided to remove it and spare you from the frustration of a pretty much useless feature.

This version is only compatible with Joomla! 1.5 and 2.5. It will not work at all on Joomla! 1.6 and we do not support using it on Joomla! 1.7. Moreover, this is the final release of Admin Tools compatible with Joomla! 1.5. Future releases will be compatible with Joomla! 2.5.x only. Joomla! 1.5 itself will become end-of-life on September 2012. We urge all of our users to upgrade their sites to Joomla! 2.5 as soon as possible.

Release notes

Using with Akeeba Subscriptions

If you are also using Akeeba Subscriptions 2.x on your site, please make sure that you have installed Akeeba Subscriptions 2.0 Stable or later before installing Admin Tools 2.0.a1 or later. Older versions of Akeeba Subscriptions can cause Admin Tools to fail and bring your site down.

Upgrading from a previously installed Professional release

Please DO NOT use Joomla! 2.5's extension updates to upgrade Admin Tools Professional. Doing so will most likely lead to errors and might even bring your site down (if that happens, read the next section of these release notes). Instead, you'll have to use our component's Live Update. If this is the first time you are upgrading the Professional release or if you receive errors while updating, please follow our Admin Tools Professional update instructions. If this doesn't help, please consult our installation troubleshooting page.

Installing / updating Admin Tools brought your site down

If you accidentally installed Admin Tools 2.2.x on a live site with an unsupported Joomla! or PHP version, or if the installation/update failed, your site might be inadvertently taken down. No worries, it's very easy to fix. You will have to manually uninstall Admin Tools' files and retry the installation. If you have a Joomla! 1.7 site, you will have to install Admin Tools 2.1.14, not 2.2.x.

In order to perform a manual file uninstallation, please follow this procedure. Using an FTP programme, please remove the following files and directories, in the order outlined below:

plugins/system/admintools.php (Joomla! 1.5 only)

plugins/system/admintools

plugins/system/atoolsjupdatecheck.php (Joomla! 1.5 only)

plugins/system/atoolsjupdatecheck (Joomla! 1.7 only)

plugins/system/atoolsupdatecheck.php (Joomla! 1.5 only)

plugins/system/atoolsupdatecheck (Joomla! 1.7 only)

administrator/modules/mod_atjupgrade

components/com_admintools

administrator/components/com_admintools

libraries/fof (only if you are NOT using Akeeba Subscriptions or Akeeba Backup)

Then, please download the ZIP package of an earlier Admin Tools release, compatible with your Joomla! version, from our Downloads area and install it on your site.

Getting Admin Tools and receiving support

As always, you can download the free version, Admin Tools Core, from our Downloads page without any charge. If you are a Professional subscriber you can download the Admin Tools Professional release from the same page; just make sure you are logged in before visiting the download page. Alternatively, you can use the integrated Live Update feature of our software to update it automatically on supported server environments.

Since July 2011, support is provided only to subscribers. We have created a cheap (7.79€) subscription, MINISUPPORT, which gives you access to our Ticket System for eight days, with the same priority as all subscribers to any subscription level. If you have an active ATPRO subscription you already have access to the support forum; you don’t need to buy a new subscription. Moreover, if you have an active AKEEBADELUXE or SUPPORT subscription you can get top priority, private support through our Private Ticket support system.

Do you want the maximum protection for your Joomla! site without spending a fortune? Admin Tools Professional can do that, with a flat cost of 20 Euros – or just 10, if you bought an AKEEBAPRO subscription the last three months. An ATPRO subscription allows you to use the component on as many sites as you want, for as long as you want (even after your subscription expires) and receive updates and support for a whole year. For the price of a cheap dinner you can get the maximum protection for all your Joomla! 1.5, 1.7 and 2.5 sites. Go Professional today!

Supported versions

Our support policy is to provide support only to the latest published stable release of Admin Tools, as well as to the latest published preview (alpha, beta or release candidate) release, if one is available. Furthermore, we will only support running our software on the latest published Joomla! version. Earlier Joomla! versions are vulnerable to security threats or buggy, therefore unsupported.

Moreover, we only support the Joomla! versions officially supported by the Joomla! project. Due to the plethora of active Joomla! versions, we have consolidated the support terms for different Admin Tools and Joomla! version combinations in the table below: 

* Only the latest Admin Tools 2.2.x release is supported. At the time of this writing, this is version 2.2.6

** If a new Admin Tools series (e.g. 2.3.x or 3.x) is released before August 2013, Admin Tools 2.2.x will cease being supported, per our support policy stated above.

*** Future versions will drop Joomla! 1.5 compatibility. Users running the latest published version of Admin Tools 2.2.x on Joomla! 1.5 will be supported until August 1st. After that point, no support will be provided to Joomla! 1.5 users.

We would like to remind you that Joomla! versions 1.5.0-1.5.25, 1.6.x, 1.7.x and 2.5.0-2.5.2 all contain a very high importance security vulnerability which allows an attacker to easily reset your Super Administrator password (Joomla! 1.5) or create a new Super Administrator account (Joomla! 1.6, 1.7, 2.5.0-2.5.2). Due to the way these attacks work, it is impossible for Admin Tools or any other security component to protect you against them. The only secure thing to do is to immediately upgrade to Joomla! 1.5.26 (Joomla! 1.5 sites) or 2.5.4 (Joomla! 1.6, 1.7 and 2.5) sites which, at the time of this writing, are the only secure versions of Joomla!. Using any other version WILL get you hacked, have no doubt about it. The attack for versions 1.6 and later is trivial and widely publicised. If you have an older version of Joomla! you are essentially a sitting duck.

Changelog

Minor changes

• Removed the "Remove all instances of Joomla! from the output" feature as it offers no protection and causes a lot of problems

Bug fixes

• [LOW] Setting the expiration time for text/html could cause problems in the administration section of Joomla! 2.5.x
• [LOW] Download ID banner would show up in the Core release