25 September 2010 Last updated on 16 January 2012

Admin Tools 1.0.b1 (beta) just released, fixing important bugs

We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of the 1.0.b1 (beta) release of our all-in-one utility for Joomla!, Admin Tools. This release fixes priority bugs which could render your site inaccessible under some circumstances, or hamper the functionality of other Joomla! components and modules. All users are kindly requested to update. Both the free Admin Tools Core and the subscription-based Admin Tools Professional releases are available from the Admin Tools area of our downloads section.

Do note that the live update feature of Admin Tools 1.0.a1 was broken. You have to update the component manually. Just download the installation package of 1.0.b1 and install it like any other Joomla! component. Do not uninstall 1.0.a1 before installing the new version so as not to lose your settings!

More specifically, this issue fixes the following issues discovered in the 1.0.a1 release:

  • If you have a buggy PHP version which doesn't report the full path to the current file or if you have a symlink pointing to your site's root (or above) inside your site, Admin Tools' Fix Permissions feature could render your site inaccessible. This release addresses both problems.
  • Some sites require directories and files to have permissions different than the 0755/0644 combination applied by default by the Fix Permissions feature. Therefore, we have added the option to customize the permissions to apply on your directories and files, letting you choose both the default values affecting all directories/files and per-directory and per-file permissions.
  • Older versions of the Apache web server (2.0 and earlier) would not support the [R=404] flag set in the rules produced by the .htaccess Maker. As a result, when this feature was used on such sites an immediate White Screen of Death or an Internal Server Error 500 page would appear until the user reverted to the stock Joomla! .htaccess. We now use the [F] flag supported since Apache 1.3.
  • The rule to redirect calls index.php to the site's root would hamper the functionality of the login module, the search module and component issuing POST requests to index.php on most host configurations.
  • The Joomla! update, database optimization and administrator password protection features could not work on some servers due to wrong Javascript actions timing.
  • A rare issue with some third-party redirection components, installed as com_redirect, could trigger a false detection of Joomla! 1.6 and subsequent fatal errors when trying to access Admin Tools.
  • Updating the Joomla! core using the FTP mode wouldn't work under some server configurations.
  • The live update feature was broken. You have to update to 1.0.b1 manually.

As always, should you need support for using Admin Tools do not hesitate to post in our Free Support Forum. We aim to respond to the vast majority of support requests (even for the free version!) within 12-48 hours. If you are a subscriber to the SUPPORT or AKEEBADELUXE subscription levels you are also entitled to use our Private Support Tickets system for high priority and private support.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos
Lead Developer, AkeebaBackup.com