The front end of BalfBlog is now using prepared statements for everything. This was absolutely crucial since most of the front end relied on users sending GET requests to the blog. These are now completely safe since the update.
The dashboard has already featured prepared statements for sending information, but the front end was still lacking. I will point out however, as a result of this update you currently cannot combine queries. This means you cannot search for a user and a category at the same time. So this no longer works:
blog/?cat=General&poster=jamiebalfour04
This is coming back very soon however. As a matter of fact it is in the latest version, it's simply not tested thouroughly enough for me to be sure it can be released.
The big security update for BalfBlog is done! Now all statements are protected against SQL injection and use PHP's prepared statements. I'm hoping this will make BalfBlog much more secure for all users.
If you are interested in downloading a pre-release version, let me know by email.
BalfBlog will gain more success over the next few months when it moves away from being just a blogging system.
Plans for BalfBlog include the ability to create and modify pages on your website for you as well as be your CMS for your blog.
Currently, BalfBlog is also only available to request for download. This will change soon when I release it to my own Download Center.
BalfBlog 2.1 will be known as the social update. The reason for this is because the core focus of version 2.1 is on integrating social media much deeper. The plan is to allow you to post to the blog and automatically BalfBlog will post to social media. I will also bring RSS feeds into version 2.1.
I'm hoping version 2.1 will be released before the end of the summer.
The latest version of BalfBlog is everything a perfect blog system should be - lightweight, compact and easy to update. I'm very happy to say that the latest version, which I will put up on my website later today, is all of these things.
Equally as important, the new version of BalfBlog creates SEO friendly URLs. For instance, my latest post on my blog (prior to this one, of course) now has the following SEO friendly URL, automatically generated: http://www.jamiebalfour.scot/blog/posts/one-weird-issue-with-older-html-based-bgcolor
SEO URLs-friendly URLs
Since the update was applied to my personal blog, my SEO rating has gone up. URLs are based on the title of the post so they become more easy to read and identify what the page at the end of the URL actually is. Google likes this.
Categories can also be accessed in a more friendly manner:
http://www.jamiebalfour.scot/blog/categories/apple%20everything
And finally, tags can be accessed through a much more elegant way too:
http://www.jamiebalfour.scot/blog/tag/javascript
Updating to the latest update is easy enough at the moment, since you simply download the latest version and copy across the balfblog folder. However, future versions starting from next month will have their own installer. This installer will update the blog automatically by downloading a zip file from my web server and unzipping it to the appropriate destination. I still have not finished the initial installer either. These will come with time.
Also, BalfBlog now uses prepared statements for speed, security and ease of updating.
So it seems that now the email system I used before for sending emails is now integrated well into BalfBlog 2.0.
This functionality is included in a separate file so users may modify as they wish.
BalfBlog version 1.1 is my second major release to the public. It will resort back to the original plan/design of using query strings to post. I'm hoping to cut it to just two PHP files as a result of this: one for BalfBlog and one for the data and information. Ultimately, this may not happen, but it might.
More importantly, banner images will be removed as of version 1.1 (you should have received an email about this if you have downloaded BalfBlog in the last two weeks). Banner images were one of the first features to come to JBlogs back in the day but have since lost my interest in the development side of things - far too many complications.
Crucially, the new update will focus on the object oriented style introduced earlier in the year. The key focus within this project is to make the admin side of the blog easier to use.
I'm very happy to say that JBlogs has finally got a new name that I of course like. BalfBlog is the same product but it's just got a new name. I hope you all like the name. I will put an updated version up as soon as it's ready.
After a couple of hours of work, JBlogs is finally written in an object-oriented manner. To use JBlogs is far easier than before thanks to this.
Getting started requires a simple few edits to data.php file and then putting this code on your website:
$jblogs = new jblogs(); $meta_data = $jblogs->getMetaData(); $jblogs->generatePosts();
Since I first learned to program in early 2005 I have always been an object-oriented programmer. PHP became an exception in 2012 to this rule but I have since begun to move some of my own work to an object-oriented PHP. This change does mean you must be using PHP 5 or later by the way!
JBlogs is now available to download from my website. As it is still in alpha/beta stages you will need to login/register to download it.
