Two Drifters

We have seen this error with Concrete 5.5.1

You try to setup Concrete 5, and get strange SQL errors during the installation:

If installing with an empty site, like this

you get:

mysql error: [1048: Column 'uID' cannot be null] in EXECUTE("INSERT INTO Config (cfKey,cfValue,uID) VALUES ('NEWSFLOW_LAST_VIEWED','FIRSTRUN',NULL)")

If installing with Sample content with Blog:

The error you get is:

Catchable fatal error: Argument 1 passed to ContentImporter::importPageAreas() must be an instance of Page, boolean given, called in /concrete/libraries/content/importer.php on line 75 and defined in /concrete/libraries/content/importer.php on line 197.

Solution:

You don't run Varnish by any chance, do you? We do, and we had it set up to … dispose of some cookies. The solution is, in Varnish' case, to enable pass-through for the host you are installing on.

You want to enable cookies.

Explanation:

The code which breaks is located in concrete5.5.1\concrete\models\package\starting_point.php

Config::save('SITE', SITE);
Config::save('SITE_APP_VERSION', APP_VERSION);
$u = new User();
$u->saveConfig('NEWSFLOW_LAST_VIEWED', 'FIRSTRUN');

As you see, this is the first time a User is created and used.

The User class is defined in concrete5.5.1\concrete\models\user.php

if (isset($_SESSION['uID'])) {
$this->uID = $_SESSION['uID'];
$this->uName = $_SESSION['uName'];
$this->uTimezone = $_SESSION['uTimezone'];
if (isset($_SESSION['uDefaultLanguage'])) {
$this->uDefaultLanguage = $_SESSION['uDefaultLanguage'];
}
$this->superUser = ($_SESSION['uID'] == USER_SUPER_ID) ? true : false;
} else {
$this->uID = null;
$this->uName = null;
$this->superUser = false;
$this->uDefaultLanguage = null;
$this->uTimezone = null;
}
$this->uGroups = $this->_getUserGroups();
if (!isset($args[2])) {
$_SESSION['uGroups'] = $this->uGroups;
}
}

The constructor checks in the Session for a valid user ID. If no user ID is found, it is set to zero. This happens if you throw away the cookies! Because the session is stored in them.

HTH. Feel free to comment on similar errors and solutions.

URL Shortening is all the rage now. Sometimes you want to give people ridiculously long URLs, which might also be subject to change.

So you want to do it with C5, don't you?

Great, you think – there's the "add external link" menu option in Concrete's sitemap. Unfortunately it does not work the way you expect it to – it just adds the link to the Navigation, but no page alias to point to the external page (i.e. http://www.synapse-redaktion.de/FaceBook won't work after adding a "FaceBook" external link).

What to do to solve this dilemma?

My suggestion is to use both: add a (hidden) page "FaceBook" which does header JavaScript forwarding to the other page, so you can give out the links to the people, and a "real external link" so you don't have to rely on JavaScript for most of your visitors.

The SiteMap will look like this:

Adding custom attributes: (Header Extra Content, Exclude from Page List, Exclude from Nav)

The page's setup:

The script is easy:

<script type="text/javascript">
<!–
window.location = "http://www.surfnext.com"
//–>
</script>

with surfnext.com being the URL you are forwarding to.

If you have the time, you might want to add a static link or icon to the page (/*comment*/ the window.location = … part to be able to edit the page!) in case some person has their JavaScript turned off.

In Concrete 5, TinyMCE is used as an editor for Content blocks. If you have Privoxy installed with the default settings, crucial parts of this editor will be blocked, and you would be unable to edit the Content block properly. (no editor appears, you see a small box with the HTML instead).

You can verify that it's indeed Privoxy which is doing it, by checking the Network tab of Dragonfly or Firebug in Opera or FireFox, Privoxy will add a status message to files which have been blocked.

To fix this problem, edit your user.action file (located in the application's toplevel directory), and add a new line under the { fragile } section:

{ fragile }
#.forbes.com
/concrete/js/tiny_mce/plugins/.*
/updates/concrete.*

This should unblock all Concrete 5 – based sites.

Update (23.10.2011): The fix now works with updated Concrete 5 sites.