PodHawk

Welcome...

Peter Carter — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 14:49:00 +0000

...to PodHawk.

PodHawk is a content management system specially designed for audio and video podcasters. Developed from the well-established LoudBlog software, PodHawk will manage your audio and video files, generate a full podcasting RSS feed, and allow you to present your postings on an attractive web-page. There is a choice of Flash players, so your listeners can listen to your masterworks straight from your site.

This site runs entirely on PodHawk, and shows a few of the things that PodHawk is capable of doing. You can read much more about PodHawk here, and download PodHawk 1.52 here.

Photo of a red-tailed hawk by Vicki's Nature/flickr

PodHawk 1.53 released

Peter Carter — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 11:58:00 +0000

PodHawk 1.53 has been released today. This is a minor bug-fix release. Instructions for installing or updating are included in the zip file.

PodHawk 1.6 will be released in the next week or two. It will require php5. If your server has php4, you should install/upgrade to PodHawk 1.53 and not PodHawk 1.6.

A PodHawk playlist

Peter Carter — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 17:27:00 +0000

PodHawk 1.6 contains a playlist manager. You can compile a playlist from any of your postings and play it in the JW player. Supported file formats are mp3, mp4, flv and YouTube videos, and files can be hosted locally on your own site or remotely. PodHawk can update your playlist automatically whenever you create a new posting.

This playlist contains a selection of postings in various formats on this site.

File download (0:00 mins | 0 MB)

PodHawk 1.52 released

Peter Carter — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 14:34:00 +0000

PodHawk 1.52 was released today. You can download it as a .zip or a .tar.gz archive here. The archive contains instructions (howtoupdate.txt) on how to update from earlier PodHawk versions.

This is principally a bugfix release. In particular, I have traced and corrected the bug which placed three invisible invalid characters at the beginning of the RSS feed. There is also a new theme (Black Urban) for you to try. You can customise the links at the top of the Black Urban page by simple editing of podhawk/custom/themes/black_urban/index.tpl.

Future plans for PodHawk include Facebook integration, so that your podcasts can be displayed in your Facebook profile, complete with players so that your friends can listen to them; a Flash uploader for file uploading; and a facility for creating and managing playlists. I propose to drop browser file upload (which can only be used for small files) and the CGI uploader; and also support for QuickTime , subject of course to any comments which users may have.

YouTube Video

Peter Carter — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 09:22:00 +0000

This is PodHawk with a YouTube video.

File download (0:00 mins | 0 MB)

PodHawk 1.51 released

Peter Carter — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 12:23:00 +0000

PodHawk 1.51 was released today and can be downloaded from Sourceforge. This is a bug-fix release with no significant new features.

PodHawk 1.5 released

Peter Carter — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:20:00 +0000

PodHawk 1.5 was released today. You can download it here. The download package contains instructions on how to install Podhawk, and how to update from PodHawk 1.4.

New features include :

URL rewriting. For example, instead of www.mypodhawksite.com/index.php?cat=music, your listeners can now ask for www.mypodhawksite.com/music. Further details in the PodHawk wiki.
Option to send a tweet to your followers on Twitter whenever you put a new posting on air.
Option to include Share This links on your posts.
A new system for counting downloads. PodHawk can now count plays of mp4 and flash videos from the JW player on your site; previously it could count only plays of mp3s.
thumbnail images in the images manager
Option to populate home page with posts from a single category, instead of from all categories

The big changes however are under the bonnet. Large parts of the coding have been rewritten to make PodHawk more secure against sql injection, cross-site request forgeries and other nasty stuff. Again, fuller details are in the Wiki. I have also replaced Adodb (the programme which handles database transactions in PodHawk) with adodb-lite, which uses smaller resources on your server.

Please update your PodHawk site as soon as possible to benefit from the important security enhancements in PodHawk 1.5.

PodHawk 1.5 will be the last release to support php4. Most php servers today run php5, and php6 will be available soon. If your server still runs php4, tell your web host or server administrator that it is time to upgrade!

Security

Peter Carter — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 11:16:00 +0000

You may have seen some recent reports about successful hacker attacks against WordPress sites.

PodHawk users may find the following helpful in making their sites as secure as possible:

There is no substitute for a strong password. There are several online facilities which will test your password for you and tell you how strong it is.
PodHawk allows you to have a login name (to access your admin pages) which is different from your ‘nickname' or screen name. Your screen name can be read by anyone who visits your webpage. Make sure that you set a completely different login name.
Turn off error messaging (admin settings page). Error messages contain information about the structure of your site. You can always turn error messaging on again temporarily if you encounter a problem.
Protect your configuration file by adding the following little .htaccess file in your podhawk/custom directory.
<Files config.php> Order deny,allow deny from all </Files>
Test it by using your browser to navigate to [yoursite]/podhawk/custom/config.php. You should get an “access denied” error.
The commenting system is an obvious possible route for an attempted SQL injection attack. If you use the Disqus commenting system, the problem belongs to Disqus, not you, as comments are not entered in your database. If you use Akismet, turn off the facility to store spam messages for 14 days. Most comment spam is simply an attempt to insert a link to a porno site in your post, but some may also contain an attempt at malicious code. Don't take the risk of entering it on your database.
Don't enter any data about your ftp username, password etc in the ftp section of the settings page unless you want to use the Java Applet to upload your audio files. This information has to be stored in unencrypted form in the database, so someone who successfully hacked your site would have access to your ftp settings as well.
SQL injection attacks may rely on the attacker knowing the names of the tables in your database. If you are making a new install of PodHawk, the installation programme allows you to insert a ‘database prefix' (ie a string of letters or numbers which will precede the ‘proper' name of the table). Originally, the idea was to allow you to run more than one PodHawk installation off the same database. But the database prefix can also be a valuable security tool. Without a database prefix, a hacker will know that all your database tables have names which look like “lb_tablename”. If you set a datbase prefix of, say, “jvx37pv_”, the tablenames will look like this “jvx37pv_lb_tablename”, which a hacker is unlikely to be able to guess. So, set a secure database prefix if you are installing PodHawk for the first time.
Can you retrofit a database prefix to an existing PodHawk database? Yes, with all the usual warnings about backing up everything first. The SQL command you want has the form
RENAME TABLE tablename TO newtablename
Use SQLMyAdmin to run the command; then add the new prefix in the following line in your config.php file.
"pref" => "[insert your new prefix here]". Don't forget that the ‘lb_' bit is part of the database name and must be preserved in the new name. If you have a second database user, you will need to change that user's permissions to refer to the new table names.

UPDATE Podhawk 1.5 contains security enhancements which overtake many of the points in this posting. Details here.

PodHawk SVN Repository

Peter Carter — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 23:07:00 +0000

I have now activated the PodHawk Subversion repository in SourceForge.net and uploaded the provisional code for PodHawk 1.5. You can checkout a copy from the terminal:

svn co https://podhawk.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/podhawk podhawk

or browse the code here.

I hope to release PodHawk 1.5 in a few weeks time.

How to make cakes ....

Peter Carter — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 15:53:00 +0000

PodHawk supports the JW Player from LongTail video. The player will play Flash videos (.flv), mp4 files with H264 encoding, You Tube videos and playlists, and streaming video.

For licensing reasons, the JW Player is not bundled with PodHawk. You have to download it separately from the longTail Video site. This is a very simple operation – full instructions in the PodHawk Wiki.

This is a little video that I made some years ago. It is an mp4 video, hosted on the PodHawk site.

If you are viewing this in the default theme, you will see that the JW player runs off the right hand side of the page. If you want to use this theme with video files, you will need to resize the player – easy to do in the admin (backend) pages.

File download (3:10 mins | 24 MB)

Elizabeth Wolff plays Rachmaninoff - 1.

Peter Carter — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 15:39:00 +0000

This is one of Rachmaninoff's Moments Musicaux, opus 16. It is played by Elizabeth Wolff. The recording comes from Magnatune.com.

Podhawk gives you a wide choice of Flash players for playing mp3 files, including the classic LoudBlog design (shown here), the One Pixel Out player and a range of emff players. The colours and behaviour of the One Pixel Out player are fully customisable.

Elizabeth Wolff ::
Magnatune ::

File download (8:56 mins | 8 MB)

Elizabeth Wolff plays Rachmaninoff - 2

Peter Carter — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 15:39:00 +0000

Elizabeth Wolff

A bit more Rachmaninoff, because I like it!

PodHawk contains an images manager which allows you to upload JPG, GIF and PNG images. You can resize and rename images if you want to, and use PodHawk to generate the HTML to place the image and a caption in your posting, as here.

File download (4:56 mins | 5 MB)

A YouTube playlist

Peter Carter — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 15:37:35 +0000

Here is PodHawk/JW player with a YouTube playlist.

File download (0:00 mins | 0 MB)

Remotely hosted Flash video

Peter Carter — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 15:37:08 +0000

The video here is a remote .flv file from the Longtail Video site.

File download (0:00 mins | 0 MB)

Bunny - streaming video

Peter Carter — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 15:37:00 +0000

This is PodHawk and the JW player playing a streaming video file.

File download (0:00 mins | 0 MB)

PodHawk 1.4 released

Peter Carter — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 10:41:00 +0000

I released PodHawk 1.4 on SourceForge today. You can download it here – click the “view all files” link to find the PodHawk 1.4 files. Read the “how to install” and “how to update” notes in the package for detailed guidance.

I have completely rewritten the “theme” templates. They are now in modular form, which will make editing much easier. There is now a Wiki article on editing PodHawk 1.4 templates.

I have also added language files for the web-page themes. At present, these are available only for English and German (for the German translation, many thanks to Andraes Auwärter!). You can make language files for other languages by translating one of the existing files – no more hunting through template files to find the bits you need to translate. If you do make your own language file, please post a copy on the PodHawk forums, so that others can use it too, and I can include it in later releases of PodHawk.

There are three new themes as well – derived from WordPress themes. I am now quite good at turning WordPress themes into PodHawk themes, so if you know of an open-source WordPress theme which would look good in PodHawk, please let me know.

Finally, I have fixed a number of bugs, particularly in author permissions.

PodHawk 1.3 released.

Peter Carter — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 15:30:00 +0000

PodHawk 1.3 was released today. You can download it from Sourceforge. The download package contains notes on how to install PodHawk and how to upgrade from PodHawk 1.2 or from LoudBlog. (If you have an earlier version of PodHawk than 1.2, please upgrade to PodHawk 1.2 first). Note that there are separate install programmes for mysql/sqlite and for postgres.

Upgrading to PodHawk 1.3 will return some of your settings to their default values. So if, for example, you find that commenting no longer appears to work, just go to the backend settings page and switch commenting on again.

The new release contains full support for the JW FLV player. This player is able to play .flv and .mp4 (H264) video files, YouTube videos, playlists and streaming video. This and the next few postings show some of the things it can do! For licensing reasons, you need to download the player from the Longtail Video site and upload a couple of .swf files to your site. There are full instructions here.

There is also a new backend page where you can choose and configure the audio and video players for your site. With the aid of some crafty JavaScript, you can see what your player will look like before you commit to it.

PodHawk 1.3 also supports the Disqus commenting system, which you can use as an alternative to the built-in PodHawk system. Just register your site with Disqus, choose the Disqus option in the backend settings page, enter the Disqus short name for your site, and PodHawk will do the rest.

The backend menu system has been redesigned, and there are fixes for a number of bugs which users have told me about.

On the security side, the PodHawk install programme no longer requires certain folders to have “0777” permissions if you, or your web host, have other and more secure ways of making the folders writeable by the PodHawk programme.

Happy Easter

Peter Carter — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 08:28:00 +0000

A Happy Easter to all PodHawk users.

There is a small Easter Egg hidden in the admin pages of PodHawk 1.2. Anyone found it yet?

Integrating Disqus into your PodHawk site

Peter Carter — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 16:47:00 +0000

Disqus is a comment management system for blogs. You can use it instead of the PodHawk comments system if you wish. It is now fully integrated into PodHawk - there are very simple instructions in the PodHawk Wiki. And to prove it works, this site uses Disqus for all new postings, including this one, so you can see how Disqus works and feels.

PodHawk 1.2

Peter Carter — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 23:16:00 +0000

I have released PodHawk 1.2 today. You can download it from Sourceforge.

The main new features are:

the nice people at www.perlscriptsjavascripts.com have agreed that their upload.cgi script can be bundled with PodHawk. I have rewritten the configuration section of the script to make it easier and more useful for PodHawk users.
improved options for post editing. I have integrated the Tiny MCE text editor into recording page 2, giving users a WYSIWYG option. I have replaced the old LoudBlog BBCode editor with a newer script which supports a greater range of BB tags (including smileys!) I have also integrated a simple BBCode visual editor. Markdown and Textile remain, and both they and the BBCode option support inline HTML. You can choose which editor to use for each post individually – PodHawk will remember which editor was used to create the post, and will automatically load it if you need to re-edit.
when a new post is created, PodHawk will attempt to read the ID3 tags in the uploaded mp3 file and use them to create both a title and a text for the posting, which you can then edit further if you wish. Specifically, PodHawk uses the id3v2 ‘title' tag to create the post title, and the id3v2 ‘unsynchronised lyric' or, failing that , the ‘comment' tag to create the post content.
PodHawk now supports the Postgres8 database.There is a separate install programme (install_postgres.php) if you want to use Postgres. (There is still a small Postgres bug – the first attempt to add a new record eg to add a new category or author generates a database error. Second and subsequent attempts succeed. It is something to do with the primary key sequencer for the table. I need to investigate further.)
php error reporting is on by default, but you can now switch error reporting off from the settings page.