Several weeks ago Joomla released a significant update, 1.5.6 for Joomla 1.5 due to a security issue. Last week there was a new release, 1.5.7 that was a more general update. There was 1 critical, 1 major and 2 moderate security vulnerabilities fixed in 1.5.7. For more information, visit the Security Center.

Contributed by Hanh Brown of Investers Lounge Online

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The Joomla Project is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Joomla 1.5.7 [Wovusani]. This is a security release and contains a number of bug fixes, improvements as well as security fixes. It is strongly recommended that users immediately upgrade. It has been nearly four weeks since Joomla 1.5.6 was released on August 12, 2008. The Development Working Group's goal is to continue to provide regular, frequent updates to the Joomla community.

Instructions

• New installation
• Upgrade from an existing Joomla 1.5 version
• Migration from Joomla! 1.0.x

Click here to download Joomla 1.5.7 (Full package) »

Click here to find an update package. »

Want to test drive Joomla? Try the online demo. Documentation is available for beginners.

Release Notes

Security

• Several security issues were fixed in this release. There was 1 critical, 1 major and 2 moderate security vulnerabilities fixed in 1.5.7. For more information, visit the Security Center.

Articles

• com_content: Metadata handling; Alias not copied for Articles
• String Escaping: External links; Titles; Alt tags missing on images
• Blog Layout: Article Page break; new Left-to-Right option; Breadcrumbs; Archive Intro Text formatting issues; Section Blog Article links
• Submit Article: Article Order Drop-Down List on Front End Shows Archived and Trashed Articles; Preview edited Article does not use Template Editor.css
• RSS Feed: Publish Date fix; External URLs rendering incorrectly
• SEO: Index and Follow Meta Tag for Print View

Modules

• Show_noauth problem; Module Deletion after uninstall; Colspan in mod_latest; Copy Newsflash Module
• Name and Username in mod_login; Menu item is locked after closing
• Search: Textfield Width Parameter; Show Search Results option; Category Search

Legacy

• Menu Access Rights Corrections; Menu Separator shows as Link

Templates

• Beez: Contact Image; Typo in Attribute value; Newsflash Article URL
• ja_purity: e-Mail and Print Button files; Default Article Layout does not display Edit Icon for Authors; Site Logo Text goes under Header background; Top menu

Administrator

• $row is not Initialized
• Help: Latest Version check; Help Key Reference Update for Modules: New Screen
• Configuration: Time Zone correction
• Media Manager: Base path missing slashes
• Sample Content: Outdated Links in "Welcome to Joomla", Newsfeed Fixes, several updated articles and statistics
• Installation: Remove confusing error message about language files for extension installations

System

• IIS 6 and IIS 7: JRoute::_() and Application Redirect() fixes
• Parameter Types: SQL, Textarea for Templates
• E-mail: JMail class ignores JConfig.sendmail path for sendmail; Incorrect SEF URLs for outgoing recommendation e-mails
• API: JHTMLSelect fix; queryBatch logging in debug mode; JSite::getParams(); strpos(); setMetadata creates duplicate meta tags; $row is not initialized
• XML-RPC client id is to high; Profiling J1.5 framework; $row is not initialized
• Cache: JCacheStorageFile::gc flawed logic in cache expiry; Clean Cache file with Cache Manager

Today I was doing some work on JoomlaCode, looking at performance and logging to see what was happening and I noticed something really quite cool. Every week on average a little over 3600 extensions are installed into Joomla! 1.5 sites directly from JoomlaCode. You can do it yourself, navigate through JoomlaCode, find something you want to install but copy the URL of the download instead of downloading it to your computer. Then log into your Joomla! 1.5 site and paste the URL into the "Install from URL" box. Assuming you've got everything you need, it'll download and install the extension for you. Now it may not work properly in all hosting environments, especially ones who have disabled access to the web through either PHP or by blocking the actual connection at a firewall level.

Looking through the list of user agents we've got the usual selection of browsers (IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera), we've got tried and true downloader 'wget' grabbing files here and there, we even have some mobile browsers from DoCoMo flicking around the site and over 43k hits identifying as Google Chrome already. We've also got all of your friendly spiders floating about (Google, Yahoo!, MSN) as well as some language specific ones for languages like Chinese and Korean (e.g. Baidu). We've also got Feedreaders coming in and even some requests identifying themselves as various Java versions. Last but not least we've got Subversion clients coming in as well pulling up data from our various repositories.

So in 1.5 we added the ability to install from a URL, and it looks like people are using it. So what are we doing when we start looking at 1.6? Well we're going to start leveraging this to provide an update system that'll allow you to, within Joomla!, update your extensions. We're going to add some new extension types, such as libraries and packages. We've also done some work changing the way the installer system looks and we're unifying all of those extensions on under one 'manage' tab. Its not yet ready but its starting to take shape with little bits here and there coming together. We're nowhere near done with it but it is coming and we're hoping it'll have some really cool features for both developers and users.

To round up, Brad and Ron did some great work over the last few days upgrading JoomlaCode to the latest release of GForge and it seems to be running beautifully and has a new refreshing look. So we thank both GForge and Rochen for providing the application and hosting environment to keep JoomlaCode alive and the great resource it is for the community.