Every hacker in this world knows, that by default all Joomla database tables have the "jos_" prefix. Is that well known, than even automated defacing scripts are using this, and there are a lot of "tools" which are capable to automatically probing your site having this presumption built into them.

Like the majority of web developers I develop my websites and services locally before Ipublish them on the Internet. This makes sense in a variety of ways, from saving a lot of bandwidth to faster updating or improved security.

Anyone who maintained/developed something with or for Joomla, or needed to troubleshoot something on a misbehaving Joomla site knows the feeling: something does not working, and the available error messages aren't showing enough information to help you track down the root of the issue.

Any extra bit of info can help, so here is a tip for Joomla 1.7 which might help you got that.

After upgrading to Joomla 3.6 I had a nasty surprise - in the Joomla Installer the tabs - Install from file,  Install from folder etc.., all but the Install from Web - where all gone. Of course, nothing found on the web: this happens when you are an early adopter. But I discovered the "fix" accidentally, on my own.

The full error looks like this:

You might see this nagging error every once you install something to your Joomla site. Apparently everything working, but - as any errors you see - should alert you: something isn't right with your site, and even if apparently everything works, you might have unexpected problems later!

As I said elsewhere on the site one of key issues of running Joomla on a Windows server is to understand and apply correctly the Windows files and folders permissioning system to your Joomla install. Instead of writing my own compilation of how-tos, I reproduce here the excellent tutorial written by Russell Winter on the Joomla tutorials site. All kudos are going to him!

For those of you that are either developing or delivering your Joomla! Web-Sites from the Windows environment, it is sometimes difficult to obtain relevant information regarding permissions. Unfortunately, it is a fact that most Web-Serving is offered under Unix and that Unix is pretty well documented within this environment. Hopefully the following information will go some way to clearing up any confusion and provide a little guidance.

You may think that updating your Joomla site to the latest version is not something worth doing every time a new version is released. The site works just fine, and you are not interested in the eventual new additions. You're wrong! There's always a major reason for update to the latest version of Joomla: Security!

If you’ve been trying to install a quickstart package received after a template purchase, and the installation freezes at the database creation/restoration step you might have to make few changes in the server/PHP environment in order to fix the issue.

If you purchased a commercial Joomla template it is very likely that in the package you got you have a special installation package, called Quickstart which let you have the carbon copy of the template demo site in just couple of clicks. It is a gread bonus, helpful especially for beginners. but once in a while you might have problems by installing this package, especially if you try to install it on your local machine.

Yeah, you may say that nothing coming out from that Redmond-based factory does not qualify as LAMP environment, and Joomla is built yo be used on LAMP servers, am I right? Yes... and no. Why not let them to play with the best CMS around .

So, what a Windows aficionado should know if wants to run Joomla on his favorite server?

You may already seen this annoying message instead of your Joomla site:

This site is temporarily unavailable.
Please notify the System Administrator.

And you are virtually clueless what to do about, and even the smallest bit of info on what happened can be a lifesaver.

A client of mine asked this question: "How can I allow registered users to log in and see the site even in offline mode, without giving them Super user privileges?"

Joomla generally is running at an acceptable speed -  users aren't seeing differences between an average Joomla site and another CMS'es. But what if they do? What can cause the (sometime unbearable) slowness of some Joomla sites?