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SiteGround is now completely ready for Joomla 1.6! After the new Joomla version was released there has been a significant adjustment activity at SiteGround. First, we made sure that our hosting is fully compatible with the new Joomla version, then we prepared a Joomla 1.6 tutorial and released several Joomla 1.6 templates. Finally, it was time for our extensions to get some attention too.

We have just released the new versions of our free Joomla extensions which are developed in compliance with the new criteria and requirements of Joomla 1.6. Now all our extensions except jAutoUpdate have a version that works perfectly with a native Joomla 1.6 installation. As soon as Joomla releases a newer subversion of its 1.6 branch we will start working on the jAutoUpdate too, as currently it cannot be useful with only one Joomla 1.6 version available. You can now download all new versions on our Joomla 1.6 Extensions page! The  Joomla 1.6 ready extensions are:

jHackGuard

jPageTranslator

jGeoIPFilter

jNoRightClick

jShareEasy

jAddAnalytics

Hristo
Product Development – Technical

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We are happy to announce the release of our first Joomla 1.6 template – Purple Sky. You can see a live preview of the template and download it from our Joomla Templates gallery. The template is not a Joomla 1.5 design converted to work with 1.6 but a completely new template created especially for the new version!

The template meets all the requirements of the new Joomla version and supports all the modules included in the default installation. Furthermore the template has a completely valid HTML5 output which guarantees maximum compatibility and is great for the SEO of your website.

Last but not least, we have included something for those of you who love Twitter – a nice widget showing the number of followers of your account. To enable it, simply enter your Twitter username at the template settings page. If you don’t want it, simply leave the field empty and the widget will not be displayed.

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2010 was quite an eventful for SiteGround. We have added many new services and applied a lot of technology innovations to improve the customer experience. In this post we will summarize the most important things that happened during 2010.

New Server Technologies

In 2010 we have incorporated numerous important server technologies. We continue to optimize the shared hosting servers performance by using the innovative server management tools of 1H. With the help of their unique server monitoring system we significantly minimized server downtime during 2010. 1H intrusion prevention systems also made our customer websites more secure than ever.

Cloud hosting, which is gaining popularity, is another important new technology we started to provide to our customers. In 2010 SiteGround launched its Cloud hosting packages and thus allowed many websites to benefit from being hosted on a cloud of powerful servers, and yet pay only the resources they need.

Last but not least we did a lot of improvements and innovations for our business customers. During the year our Business Hosting package went through a lot of improvements. We added one free year of SSL use to it, made the servers PCI compliant  and add  more server power to finally transform the business plan into a Semi Dedicated hosting solution. With these resources and the safer environment we believe that we have created the perfect place where everyone would like to develop his/her online business.

Joomla Extensions and dozens of new Joomla Templates

We did many innovations for our Joomla customers and all Joomla users during 2010. We have been working to provide free resources for this application since the beginning of our company. Now, we are proud to be the host with most Joomla resources resources in the industry.

The brand new Joomla related venture of SiteGround during 2010 was the development of our Joomla Extensions. The idea started with the simple will to help our Joomla users to become less vulnerable to hacker attacks. This is how our first Joomla Extensions – jHackGuard came to life. We put all our experience and knowledge into a simple plugin that does great work protecting Joomla applications from many different kinds of attacks. After we received a useful feedback from our customers and other Joomla users, we decided to make more useful Joomla Extensions and we developed six more modules, plugins and components.

As far as our Joomla Templates are concerned, we can proudly announce that our designers have created 73 unique and completely free Joomla 1.5 designs. In 2011 we will continue to contribute free resources for Joomla users, including designs for Joomla 1.6 when its stable version is finally released.

New and Improved Services

In 2010 we have done a lot to make our customers reach the services they need on our site easier and faster. We made it easier than ever to request a Script Integration, web design assistance, security audit, file transfer and much more.

In addition to the existing services we added a lot of new ones in order to help our customers create, manage and develop their websites better. Some of the new services we now offer are Google Analytics integration, Security Audit, Secure Shell Access, Spam Killer, Daily Backups and many more!

Last but not least we replaced our old SiteBuilder with the new Website Wizard. We have always wanted to provide our customers with no web design experience and HTML knowledge with a tool to make good websites. Our SiteBuilder tool was serving this purpose well for years but we wanted something newer, better and faster. This is why we replaced it with our new Website Wizard.

Continuing Improvement

Through the entire year our administrators have worked to improve our services and to make them more stable and safer. Our servers work faster than before, our customers’ sites are better protected than ever.

We will continue to work towards improving each aspect of the hosting experience you get from SiteGround. We hope that during the next year we will make our services even better!

Hristo

Product Development – Technical

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Few days ago the Drupal developers released the first Beta of the new Drupal 7 branch. As they stated, the official stable release will be available as soon as there are no more critical bugs. Their plans are to make the transition from the old release to the new one as smooth and trouble free as possible.

Since we at SiteGround have many passionate Drupal users, we decided to test the new Beta build ourselves and update you about our findings and the features you can expect.

What’s new in Drupal 7

Below I list some of the important features of Drupal 7. For the full list of changes you can check the Drupal 7 changelog. With Drupal 7 you will get:

• Database improvements
• Website Performance Improvements
• Enhanced Security
• Great new usability features such as:
  • Improved support for integration of WYSIWYG editors.
  • Improved installer requirements check.
  • Provided descriptions and human-readable names for user permissions.
  • Removed display order settings for comment module. Comment display order can now be customized using the Views module.
  • And much more
• Improved time zone support
• Revamped Themes System
• File and Image Handling via Drupal

Drupal 6 upgrade to Drupal 7

We tried the upgrade ourselves and managed to perform the installation via the web update.php script. The upgrade is exactly the same as on the previous Drupal version and we have experienced no trouble during the process. According to the Drupal team they even made an upgrade of a copy of their website in an experimental environment and it worked great. Still, as with every Beta release, it is important to mentions that it should not be used for live websites yet.

Drupal Themes and Extensions

All themes and extensions for Drupal 6 should be ported to Drupal 7. Most of the extension developers have already started working on their products and making sure the next releases will be compatible with the new Drupal 7. We strongly hope that all major and popular modules will be available for Drupal 7 too. We have tested several new module releases for both the Alpha and Beta versions and were very satisfied with the results.

Short Drupal 7 Administration overview

When I first saw the Drupal 7 Administration panel I was fascinated by its user-friendly interface. Its developers have achieved a great lot and included various new features, enhancements and better functionality that will greatly improve the management of your web site.

Here are few examples:

1. With the new Drupal 7 you will be able to rapidly customize your admin dashboard and add blocks by drag-and-drop.

In the old Drupal there is no Dashboard section for the administrator. The new interface allows you to create a unified view of the features you want to check every time when you log in as administrator (much like in WordPress). Additional modules can be added or removed from the dashboard which allows you to view the exact details you are interested in.

2. With Drupal 7 you can also enable the themes you would like to use with a single click, as well as automatically install themes from a specific URL or simply upload a theme package via the Appearance section of the admin area.

The new Drupal version 7 allows you to install the desired Module or Theme straight from the administrator backend without the need to manually upload the files under your account. You could use installation from an URL or simply upload the module or theme package browsing your local computer for it. All you need to do is copy the URL from which the theme or module can be downloaded, then paste it in the “Install from a URL” box and hit the Install button. The module is automatically downloaded, installed for your Drupal 7 website and on the next screen you can decide whether to enable it right away or not.

This was just a small overview of what you are to expect from the new Drupal release. As a conclusion I would like to say that the new Drupal 7 release is greatly anticipated. It will certainly help webmasters in managing their Drupal-based websites. Most of the changes are towards easier and better management of your website. Currently the only noticeable flaw seem to be the fact that it might take time for some modules and themes to be ported for the new release.

If you need a solid ground for your Drupal 7 testings, you can check our Drupal hosting package!

Martin V.

Senior Technical Support Member

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The newest component added to our free Joomla extensions addresses a problem we have identified while analyzing the Joomla-related technical requests we receive. It turned out that a lot of people ask SiteGround support team member for help after their application has been hacked as it was outdated. Most of the people experiencing such problems are actually well aware that it is important to keep their application up-to-date. However, the manual update easy enough for them and they do not perform it on a regular basis. So to provide an easy way for updating Joomla and thus prevent many security issues we have created jAutoUpdate. The component can be used to automatically update a Joomla application to the latest 1.5 version available with a single mouse click.

jAutoUpdate has three main functions that can be user through the Joomla administration area after the component is installed:

Once the version check icon is clicked jAutoUpdate looks for the latest available Joomla 1.5 version and compares it to the version currently used by the customer. If the application is outdated the Joomla Update option will appear.

This button will automatically apply an update patch from the currently used version to the latest Joomla 1.5 version available and will update fast and easily only the files that are different in the new version.

The forced update will replace all Joomla 1.5 system files with the ones from the latest stable package. This option is very useful for fixing more serious issues like Joomla system files missing or wrong modifications made to core Joomla files.

With the new component the Joomla update becomes extremely easy and we hope that fewer Joomla websites will be vulnerable to exploits due to outdated versions thanks to this component.

To download and learn more about this extension, check out the jAutoUpdate component page!

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