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Sticky article	Monday 28th October, 2002	PRINT
Welcome to www.PPCIS.org This is the official download site for PPCIS. PPCIS (the Portable PHP/MySQL Corporate Intranet System) is a portable, modular, intranet system. The system was designed to be fast, simple and compliant: ° It features no heavy graphics - just one logo per page (unless defined by stylesheet). ° To get from any part of the intranet to any other can be done in just two clicks, due to what appears to be (so far) a unique menu layout. ° The entire product generates HTML 4.01 transitional standard HTML (unless the database stores bad HTML). ° Since version 2.0 PPCIS supports full internationalisation. Currently there is only an English language file. ° Users can be given a choice of stylesheets, to provide accessible alternatives. It features a news page with topic filtering, user submission, and admin authorisation, a directory with support for internal lists, external contacts, and Web links, a helpdesk, with call logging, history, and a F.A.Q. database, and a file store, with hierarchical file storage and group-based security. There are several levels of administrative rights, meaning that different people can be responsible for maintaining different parts of the system. The system has a centrally configured colour scheme and logo, so rebranding is easy. PPCIS has been fully tested and works well in the following browsers: Konqueror - Internet Explorer - Netscape - Mozilla - Off By One - Lynx - Links - W3M Related link: http://freshmeat.net/projects/ppcis Submitted by Brian Ronald

Software release	Sunday 30th September, 2007	PRINT
Polish translation now available Thanks to Marcin Matyla, PPCIS has been translated into Polish. The language file is available for download. Related link: /files.php?fileid=62 Submitted by Brian Ronald

Software release	Wednesday 07th March, 2007	PRINT
SVN server online OK, rather than not release anything at all, I've decided to make my SVN server public. I've been using it for a little while now, and it's worth checking out the SVN copy if you've upgraded to MySQL 5.1 and find that your internal directory doesn't work any more. There are plenty of new features in the SVN trunk, including a search page for the helpdesk. I discarded a few months of new feature work which I wasn't happy with, but I did keep all the bug fixes. If you're not familiar with SVN go check out http://subversion.tigris.org/ My SVN server accepts only svn+ssh protocol connections. The address is svn+ssh://svn@ppcis.org/ppcis You can either email me with your public ssh key for non-anonymous access, or use the private key provided at the link below for anonymous access. If you wish to submit a patch of any kind, feel free to use svn diff to produce a patch file to email to me. Related link: /files.php?folder=5 Submitted by Brian Ronald

Website	Tuesday 01st November, 2005	PRINT
Helpdesk removed I've removed the helpdesk feature from this site. Unfortunately, the level of "test" calls and attempts to use the system as a mail relay have made it impractical to keep an anonymous helpdesk system. If you have problems with PPCIS, or wish to make suggestions, please email me. brian@ppcis.org Submitted by Brian Ronald

Security/bugs	Friday 15th July, 2005	PRINT
Logging in problems with new installations There is a problem that I'm busy coding around - I used the MySQL "password()" function to encrypt passwords, and now this function's algorithm has changed completely in the lastest MySQL release. On reading the MySQL documentation more closely, it seems that I should never have done this. What makes this a problem is that the SQL file I made for creating the database uses a hashed value using the old password() function, making it impossible to log in as admin. For now, what I suggest you do is connect to your MySQL server with the client, and run the following query: UPDATE `users` SET `password`=password('istrator') WHERE `username` LIKE 'admin'; That will force the password to be istrator, no matter which hashing algorithm password() uses. I've redesigned the password routines and will be releasing a newer version of PPCIS soon (er, soon? My track record here isn't good) which will allow you to set an old and a new password hashing algorithm in the settings.inc file so that you can actually migrate users seamlessly when things change or get updated. The new version's default is sha1(), although md5() and the original password() are options too. Related link: helpdesk.php?callmodule=Manage%20calls&callid=53 Submitted by Brian Ronald

Software release	Thursday 24th February, 2005	PRINT
New PPCIS database integrity tool released Copy the script (downloadable from the link below) into your PPCIS directory and view it in your browser to run a housekeeping check on your PPCIS tables. It is currently English Language only, and is not localisable. PPCIS is normally very clean (and will, over time, become cleaner) but occasionally records are removed leaving other, now redundant, records normalised to them. This script hunts through the tables for records which have become lost, and can repair them. This makes it possible to delete users or helpdesk calls using any MySQL database tool - the other tables can be updated by this script. It also helps where files or folders have been moved into non-existent folders, or worse, into themselves (or their own children). This script will become more capable over time, and will be included in the next release - please email me with your views about security. I will bow to user pressure to put login security on this file, if you think it's necessary. Once in the release, it will also be able to use different languages. This script does not require that the user be logged in. It only ever outputs database unique numbers, never names or other information, and is totally non-interactive. This site and the demo site both have a copy fully accessible to the public; I'm quite confident that it doesn't break things or reveal any information. Related link: http://www.ppcis.org/files.php?fileid=49 Submitted by Brian Ronald

Security/bugs	Wednesday 23rd February, 2005	PRINT
Issue discovered with SSL and Internet Explorer If you run PPCIS on an SSL encrypted server and attempt to download files from the files module with Internet Explorer, you'll get an error message. This is because, for some reason, Internet Explorer refuses to connect to an SSL server when it sees the no-cache headers that the PHP engine sends by default. The solution (more a work-around) is to copy the new fetchfile.php (linked below) over the one that came with PPCIS 2.0. It overrides the headers with empty ones, enabling Internet Explorer to deal with file downloads over SSL. You can use this file even if you aren't using SSL, or Internet Explorer. It will be included as standard in the next PPCIS release. Related link: http://www.ppcis.org/files.php?fileid=48 Submitted by Brian Ronald

Website	Monday 21st February, 2005	PRINT
Please use the demo site to test this product! It's linked below, and it's also linked from the links page. I woke up this morning to see a whole load of test calls logged on the helpdesk. Please use the helpdesk here if you are in need of support. If you just want to see if it works, please use the demo site. That's exactly what it's for. Related link: http://demo.ppcis.org/ Submitted by Brian Ronald

Software release	Monday 21st February, 2005	PRINT
Version 2.0 released! Like it would never happen... This has been a huge rewrite. Almost too much to list in one place. Summing up: * The product now has multiple (and per-user) language support. Unfortunately, only English is yet available. * The product now uses stylesheets instead of deprecated HTML for theming. This can be configured per-user. * The internal directory now supports photographs, and an extra searchable free-text field. * The helpdesk is now much more useable, with better history support, clearere forms, etc. * The FAQ section has been improved. * Users can now edit their own entry in the internal directory, unless they are flagged as a guest. * Users can change their stylesheet and language (where available) unless they are flagged as a guest. * The files module (AKA library) now sports a search facility (can search on filename and synopsis) * The files module has much better support for moving files and folders. * News articles can be opened in a print-friendly window (try it on this article!). Related link: /files.php?fileid=40 Submitted by Brian Ronald

Other news	Tuesday 01st February, 2005	PRINT
One year on... We're close to version 2. Am I a slow developer? Well, yes. Careful and busy both. Anyway, the new version's very different, whilst at the same time very much the same. The product is basically similar, but this time all of the system's look is courtesy of a cascading style sheet, rather than hard-coded (and deprecated) HTML entity parameters. I'll try to get a build to a releasable state soon. I'm still working on configuration tools (ie., an installer of some sort) and also some data repair tools for the Files module. I also want to tidy up the files interface, because it's too easy to lose folders when you move them... Also, there's a bunch of things my employers want included, and since they now pay me to do this stuff as part of my job, it's going to happen. Submitted by Brian Ronald