PostNuke Swiss Army Knife

VERSION 1.02 - Feb 09, 2005

Author: Christopher S. Bradford, Frank Schummertz (landseer)

What's New

Version 1.01 has some minor fixes and clean-ups. The biggest change is that it will now work properly with new versions of PHP with register_globals turned off. Thanks to contributor Martin Andersen for submitting changes.

Version 1.02 also supports PN .760 RC2 or later (changed include path to Adodb, added option to switch a PN site on after switching it off in the settings and logging out)

What is it?

This is a tool for system administrators of sites running the PostNuke content management system.   This tool contains a set of extremely powerful tools for helping administrators get out of some crappy situations, like when they lock themselves out of their own site and can no longer administer it.

Why?

I spend a lot of time in the PostNuke support forums, answering questions for people.  Mostly, the people that frequent the support forums are administrators new to PostNuke, or administrators that were handed a PostNuke based site and have little technical knowledge.  In either case, there are a few major pitfalls that a new PostNuke administrator can encounter.   These pitfalls occur frequently enough, that these same problems are encountered by different users several time each week.   Rather than continue to lead the users through technical details of fixing the problem, which they may not understand, I decided to do something about it.  Thus, I carved out the beginnings of a support tool to aid postnuke administrators in fixing their broken sites.

The Tool

The PostNuke Swiss Army Knife is contained within a single PHP script.  To use this script, copy it to your web root, and point your browser to the URL.  You'll begin at the main menu. The interface is extremely simple.  Anything fancier would be completely not necessary to get the job done. Here are the available functions in version 1.00, and the problem scenarios they are designed to fix:

• New DB Username/password encoding: When database information changes, such as after a server upgrade, or after moving to a new server, it becomes necessary to update the config.php file with the new database info.  Unfortunately, the username and password are normally encoded.   One solution is to disable the encoded username/password, and store them in plain text.  But, thats not desireable.  This function will take a username and password as input, and output the lines needed for your new config.php.
• Enable/disable 'intranet' config option Occasionally a new administrator will incorrectly configure the 'intranet' option when installing a new system, which can result in the administrator being unable to log in.  This may also occur when moving to a new server with a new configuration.  This function gives an easy way to fix the 'intranet' option without hacking the site apart.
• Theme Reset It happens to all of us.  Switch to a new theme... the theme is broken, and now the site is dead.  This function has 2 taks:  #1, allow an administrator to change the site's default theme... and #2, reset all users to the default theme.
• Permissions Reset: Permissions can be confusing to new administrators.  Occasionally, things get screwy and the administrator inadvertently denies him/herself permission to administer the site.  This function has 2 tasks:  #1, clear all user permissions... #2, reset group permissions to installation defaults.
• Site On: Lets the user switch the PostNuke site on again after switching it off and logging out.
• Show PHPInfo() Shows the PHPInfo debugging information. May be useful for debugging purposes.

*** IMPORTANT SECURITY WARNING ***

The PostNuke Swiss Army Knife provides very low level, raw access to critical components within the PostNuke system.  This script has no passwords, or other such front-end security. There are 2 recommended things with handling this tool to keep your site safe.1.  This script is designed to be renamed.  I HIGHLY RECOMMEND that you rename the script to something other than its default name. 2.  When not in use, move the script out of your web directory and keep in a safe location.

DOWNLOAD: psak_1.02.zip -- Version 1.02 archive

Design notes The PSAK is designed to coincide with postnuke, but work independently of system resources.  It does require the config.php, pntables.php, and the pnadodb database interface.  Otherwise, it doesn't use PostNuke system components, such as the API.  The nature of the tool is such that it should be as independant from PostNuke as possible.