Very true, but taking into

greg — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 13:22:27 +0000

Very true, but taking into account Joe's experience and knowledge, it is very clear that he is nowhere near the stage of overriding CSS with dupe named ID's and Classes.

Besides, in my opinion that's bad coding. I know in "some" circumstances it could be argued to be useful, but it's not best practice and should only be used by experienced coders. It shouldn't be advised to someone who could be soon learning the basics of CSS.

greg wrote: be careful you

decibel.places — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:42:04 +0000

greg wrote:

be careful you don't have two classes or id's of the same name

I presume you mean that the final definition will override earlier ones...

this may actually be desireable

When dealing with complex css in Drupal for example, with often 10 or more stylesheets in play, I typically create a separate stylesheet for my custom styles and load it last, so that I can easily tweak the styles, and reapply the styles when I upgrade components.

How do you know it's poorly

HolyWarlock — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:28:23 +0000

How do you know it's poorly done and insecure if you are not familiar with it?

I just want to mention

greg — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 20:07:43 +0000

I just want to mention something on a friendly note...

If you are adding additional stylesheets and don't know what the current ones are, then be careful you don't have two classes or id's of the same name.
Also, be careful editing/adding/modifying PHP/HTML/CSS in a website where you don't know what is already there or what code does what etc. What might seem like a simple little addition or edit may have a catastrophic effect in your site.

It is likely that it will be fine, but you really should have a better idea of what is going on with your sites code before changing it, especially one that has a CMS built in which will have quite a bit of code I imagine.

Again, you are likely to be ok, but just be careful as you could change something important, security or functionality wise.

Hi Joe, If you install the

decibel.places — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 14:07:59 +0000

Hi Joe,

If you install the Web Developer add-on for Firefox, it gives you an "Edit CSS" option that will display the stylesheet files and give you the option to edit them and view the results WYSIWYG (you still need to save them and upload them) - I think the file on the right would be the last one loaded by your template, so that is usually the best place to put custom styles, at the end, so they override previous defs.

Firebug is another indispensible tool/Firefox addon for editing CSS, use Inspect to determine the CSS selector for an object on the page...

Be aware that these tools only help you edit CSS for Firefox display - your styles may display differently in other browsers, particularly IE - (I think there is a developer toolbar for IE, not sure where to get it).

Thanks for your advice. Can

Joe Norris — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 11:49:53 +0000

Thanks for your advice. Can you hint as to where the "master" default stylesheet would be, and how it might be indentified? In the CMS, the styles are called 'Paragraph' and 'Heading 1' etc... but I cannot locate the actual css files that control these. If I could do that, then I could add another style or amend one of the existing ones. These styles are not likely to be in the master CSS that I have created, and which controls the page layout etc, as this was created by me separately from the CMS. Any hints please...?

Good catch there shaggy!

greg — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 17:31:51 +0000

Good catch there shaggy!

And if it truly has bad security (which i don't doubt other people's tests one bit) then I second what people have said regarding getting another CMS altogether.

CMS and other software created by a small company or one man outfit type scenario can be fine if done correctly, but being small it's likely only going to have a few users, and discovering bugs and security issues is often left up to the few people that use the software.
Even large organisations that have thousands of users' input and large development teams (like PHP, Wordpress, PHPBB, Drupal etc) have major security issues and other things in the software not functioning correctly from time to time, but as they have many people using it the major security issues are often found straight away and resolved with an immediately released update.

As for choosing another CMS, there are many out there, but try to use one of the larger, well known ones.
Both Joomla and Drupal sometimes have serious security issues, both often have bug issues, but are updated regularly so this isn't a major issue.
There are pros and cons for Drupal versus Joomla. Drupal overall is a better choice in terms of flexibility and being able to do anything you want with it (pretty much). Whereas Joomla is supposedly easier to use.

The summary is I would opt for Drupal. While the initial learning curve may be a little steeper, you will likely benefit for it in the long run.

Banging the Drupal drum

decibel.places — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 02:42:38 +0000

Banging the Drupal drum again -

I have never had a security problem with Drupal, they release updates every time you turn around, mostly for minor obscure stuff anyway..

I have seen some nasty hacks on Joomla! however...

Yikes, I see what you

pr0gr4mm3r — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 20:09:45 +0000

Yikes, I see what you mean.

Joe, I would pull that site off-line ASAP, and get a pre-written CMS up there if your programmer can't secure your site properly.

Because I can: 1) get access

Shaggy — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 19:16:30 +0000

Because I can:
1) get access to the 'backend' without having authenticate
2) I can
a) upload a script that would give me access to most if not all of the system it is running on without authentication
b) obtain system files such as /etc/passwd, etc.

Cheers,
Shaggy.