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Friday, 29 December 2017 14:34

Move a Windows User Profile

Back your system and files up before doing anything.

Currently if you have split profile locations you cannot upgrade Windows 10. This might be the case for other operating systems.

This article came about because I had already moved my documents, pictures and music to my D: drive by changing the location of those libraries. It is an easy thing to move your libraries but I kept on finding programs such as VirtualBox created their own library folder and this was back in my profile on the C: drive so I decided that I might aswell move my whole profile on to the D: drive. There were serveral methods I came across all with various pros and cons:

  • Xcopy / RoboCopy - These softwares allow the moving of files and folders whilst keeping them permissions and other things and are what I have based this tutorial on.
  • Profile Relocator - This does not move the profiles
  • SysPrep - Using the Microsoft SysPrep you can repackage your windows installation and during this you can tell it to move your profiles. This is not an easy process.
  • USMT - The Microsoft User State Migration Tool is very powerful and complicated to configure. This has the ability to transfer profiles.
  • Copy To and Move To profile options - This has been removed in later version of Windows. I think it is present in Windows 7 and hidden in Windows 8.
  • 3rd Party Transfer Software - This software tends to be designed to transfer a profile from one machine to another but potentially can be used to move a profile from one loaction to another on the same PC
  • Symbolic Links (symlinks) - Using a symbolic link allows you to keep using the C:\Users location virtually while the real files are located elsewhere on you r PC. This has potential to be a really good solution if done right.
  • Moving Libraries - This is where you only move all of your files (Documents, Pictures and Music etc..) but not the actual profiles. This is what I original did and although it is fully supported by windows it is not my preferred option.
  • Windows Easy Transfer - This use to be the way to move profiles but it has been removed in Windows 10.

Moving your profile from one location to another on the same PC is not an easy thing to do, not any more, because you need to make sure that file permission are correct and that all references point to the new location properly. My process outlined below goes over all aspects of moving your profile correctly. This will should work on XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10.

One other thing to consider is are you just moving 1 User Profile or do you want to move all of your profiles in which case you will find is is also possibly to change the default location for new profiles easily.

Prerquisite Software

  • RoboCopy - All modern versions of Windows have this built in to the command line (except XP). This seems to be a replacement for xcopy.
  • ChoEazyCopy - Simple and powerful GUI to Microsoft RoboCopy tool (optional).
  • Registry Editor (select one)
    • RegCool - Free
    • RegEditX Pro - Extend Windows Registry Editor (REGEDIT). There is a 30 day evaluation copy available.
  • Profile Relocator - Profile Relocator is a step-based application that allows the re-locating of the Windows Users profile directory (optional).

1. Create a User Folder (optional)

I would recommend you create a user folder to hold your profiles (eg D:\Users) even if it is just for your one profile at the minute. This folder will have the exact same permissions as on the C: drive so you know the permissions are not going to cause any problems. It is possibly to put this folder anywhere but I prefer to use D:\Users\ as in this example.

Also read about changing the default profile locations before doing anything in this section as you might not want to do this step.

Method 1 - Manual

  • Create the folder D:\Users\
  • Manually duplicate the permissions from C:\Users\ to D:\Users\ folder by having both folder permissions windows open and then going through them one by one to make them the same.

Method 2 - RoboCopy / ChoEazyCopy

This method takes a little setting up and understanding but this method will do all of the heavy lifting for you whilst you know there wont be any mistakes. You can use either the RoboCopy command directly or you can use ChoEazyCopy whichs configures and uses RoboCopy via a GUI. Both methods do exactly the same thing.

RoboCopy Command

RoboCopy.exe "C:\" "D:\" *.* /E /LEV:2 /DCOPY:T /SEC /COPYALL /MT:8 /XF *.* /XD "C:\$RECYCLE.BIN" "C:\$SysReset" "C:\$Windows.~WS" "C:\Boot" "C:\Documents and Settings" "C:\MSOCache" "C:\PerfLogs" "C:\Program Files" "C:\Program files (x86)" "C:\ProgramData" "C:\Recovery" "C:\System Volume Information" "C:\VTRoot" "C:\Windows" "C:\Windows.old" /L
  1. Copy the rule above to a text editor and make sure you add any folder exclusions that you need to it. The folders that are configured cover most folders but do not forget to check hidden and system folders aswell.
  2. Remove the /L switch if you want to run this live (optional)
  3. Open a command prompt as Administrator
  4. Paste the modfied code in a command prompt and run

ChoEazyCopy Settings File

<ChoAppSettings>
  <MaxStatusMsgSize>1000</MaxStatusMsgSize>
  <SourceDirectory>C:\\</SourceDirectory>
  <DestDirectory>D:\\</DestDirectory>
  <RoboCopyFilePath>RoboCopy.exe</RoboCopyFilePath>
  <Files>*.*</Files>
  <CopyNoEmptySubDirectories>false</CopyNoEmptySubDirectories>
  <CopySubDirectories>true</CopySubDirectories>
  <OnlyCopyNLevels>2</OnlyCopyNLevels>
  <CopyFilesRestartableMode>false</CopyFilesRestartableMode>
  <CopyFilesBackupMode>false</CopyFilesBackupMode>
  <FallbackCopyFilesMode>false</FallbackCopyFilesMode>
  <UnbufferredIOCopy>false</UnbufferredIOCopy>
  <EncrptFileEFSRawMode>false</EncrptFileEFSRawMode>
  <CopyFlags />
  <CopyDirTimestamp>true</CopyDirTimestamp>
  <CopyFilesWithSecurity>true</CopyFilesWithSecurity>
  <CopyFilesWithFileInfo>true</CopyFilesWithFileInfo>
  <CopyFilesWithNoFileInfo>false</CopyFilesWithNoFileInfo>
  <FixFileSecurityOnFiles>false</FixFileSecurityOnFiles>
  <FixFileTimeOnFiles>false</FixFileTimeOnFiles>
  <DelDestFileDirIfNotExistsInSource>false</DelDestFileDirIfNotExistsInSource>
  <MirrorDirTree>false</MirrorDirTree>
  <MoveFiles>false</MoveFiles>
  <MoveFilesNDirs>false</MoveFilesNDirs>
  <AddFileAttributes />
  <RemoveFileAttributes />
  <CreateDirTree>false</CreateDirTree>
  <CreateFATFileNames>false</CreateFATFileNames>
  <TurnOffLongPath>false</TurnOffLongPath>
  <RunAgainWithNoChangesSeen>0</RunAgainWithNoChangesSeen>
  <RunAgainWithChangesSeenInMin>0</RunAgainWithChangesSeenInMin>
  <RunHourStartTimeTicks>0</RunHourStartTimeTicks>
  <RunHourEndTimeTicks>0</RunHourEndTimeTicks>
  <CheckRunHourPerFileBasis>false</CheckRunHourPerFileBasis>
  <InterPacketGapInMS>0</InterPacketGapInMS>
  <CopySymbolicLinks>false</CopySymbolicLinks>
  <MultithreadCopy>8</MultithreadCopy>
  <CopyNODirInfo>false</CopyNODirInfo>
  <CopyWithoutWindowsCopyOffload>false</CopyWithoutWindowsCopyOffload>
  <CopyOnlyFilesWithArchiveAttributes>false</CopyOnlyFilesWithArchiveAttributes>
  <CopyOnlyFilesWithArchiveAttributesAndReset>false</CopyOnlyFilesWithArchiveAttributesAndReset>
  <ExcludeFilesWithGivenNames>*.*</ExcludeFilesWithGivenNames>
  <ExcludeDirsWithGivenNames>"C:\$RECYCLE.BIN";"C:\$SysReset";"C:\$Windows.~WS";"C:\Boot";"C:\Documents and Settings";"C:\MSOCache";"C:\PerfLogs";"C:\Program Files";"C:\Program files (x86)";"C:\ProgramData";"C:\Recovery";"C:\System Volume Information";"C:\VTRoot";"C:\Windows";"C:\Windows.old";</ExcludeDirsWithGivenNames>
  <ExcludeChangedFiles>false</ExcludeChangedFiles>
  <ExcludeNewerFiles>false</ExcludeNewerFiles>
  <ExcludeOlderFiles>false</ExcludeOlderFiles>
  <ExcludeExtraFilesAndDirs>false</ExcludeExtraFilesAndDirs>
  <ExcludeLonelyFilesAndDirs>false</ExcludeLonelyFilesAndDirs>
  <IncludeSameFiles>false</IncludeSameFiles>
  <IncludeTweakedFiles>false</IncludeTweakedFiles>
  <ExcludeFilesBiggerThanNBytes>0</ExcludeFilesBiggerThanNBytes>
  <ExcludeFilesSmallerThanNBytes>0</ExcludeFilesSmallerThanNBytes>
  <ExcludeFilesOlderThanNDays>0</ExcludeFilesOlderThanNDays>
  <ExcludeFilesNewerThanNDays>0</ExcludeFilesNewerThanNDays>
  <ExcludeFilesUnusedSinceNDays>0</ExcludeFilesUnusedSinceNDays>
  <ExcludeFilesUsedSinceNDays>0</ExcludeFilesUsedSinceNDays>
  <ExcludeJunctionPoints>false</ExcludeJunctionPoints>
  <AssumeFATFileTimes>false</AssumeFATFileTimes>
  <CompensateOneHourDSTTimeDiff>false</CompensateOneHourDSTTimeDiff>
  <ExcludeJunctionPointsForDirs>false</ExcludeJunctionPointsForDirs>
  <ExcludeJunctionPointsForFiles>false</ExcludeJunctionPointsForFiles>
  <NoOfRetries>0</NoOfRetries>
  <WaitTimeBetweenRetries>0</WaitTimeBetweenRetries>
  <SaveRetrySettingsToRegistry>false</SaveRetrySettingsToRegistry>
  <WaitForSharenames>false</WaitForSharenames>
  <ListOnly>true</ListOnly>
  <ReportExtraFiles>false</ReportExtraFiles>
  <VerboseOutput>false</VerboseOutput>
  <IncludeSourceFileTimestamp>false</IncludeSourceFileTimestamp>
  <IncludeFullPathName>false</IncludeFullPathName>
  <PrintByteSizes>false</PrintByteSizes>
  <NoFileSizeLog>false</NoFileSizeLog>
  <NoFileClassLog>false</NoFileClassLog>
  <NoFileNameLog>false</NoFileNameLog>
  <NoDirListLog>false</NoDirListLog>
  <NoProgress>false</NoProgress>
  <ShowEstTimeOfArrival>false</ShowEstTimeOfArrival>
  <NoJobHeader>false</NoJobHeader>
  <NoJobSummary>false</NoJobSummary>
</ChoAppSettings>

NB: C:\\ (source) and D:\\ (target) it is intentional to have 2 trailing slashes and is a workaround for a bug when using root folders in ChoEazyCopy. This bug has been reported but only applies to ChoEazyCopy but not when using RoboCopy directly.

  1. Install ChoEazyCopy
  2. Create a new file called copy-user-folder.ezy
  3. Copy and paste the code above into it and save
  4. Run ChoEazyCopy as an administrator
  5. Open copy-user-folder.ezy with ChoEazyCopy 
  6. Add any folder exclusions that you need to it. The ones that are present cover most folders but do not forget to check hidden and system folders aswell.
  7. Remove the /L (ListOnly) switch if you want to run this live (optional)
  8. Save any changes.
  9. Run the command by clicking the play arrow at the top.

Switches Explained

  • "C:\" (Source) - Files/Folders Source
  • "D:\" (Target) - Files/Folders Target
  • *.* (Files) - Which files to select. We have to put something in here so i use *.*
  • /DCOPY:T (CopyDirTimestamp) - Preserve folder timestamps
  • /COPYALL (CopyFilesWithFileInfo) - Copy files with their attributes
  • /SEC (CopyFilesWith Security) - Keeps file ACL permissions as they are in the source
  • /E (CopySubDirectories) - Copy all sub directories including empty ones
  • /MT:8 (MultithreadCopy) - Do multi-threaded copies with n threads. Makes copying quicker.
  • /LEV:2 (OnlyCopyNLevels) - Only copy folders to 1 level below (i.e. C:\Users)
  • /XD (ExcludeDirsWithGivenNames) - Exclude all folders except C:\Users. With RoboCopy you select all and then exclude what you dont want.
  • /XF *.* (ExcludeFilesWithGivenName) - *.* excludes all files because we only want the C:\Users folder.
  • /L (ListOnly) - This switch is a test switch which prevents copying, timestamp changes or deleting of any files and is present to prevent accedentally running this command with setting things up properly. Remove this when you want to perform this command for real.

2. Change Default location for User Profiles (optional)

This can easily be done with a piece of software called Profile Relocator. This is ideally used when you first setup a new PC before you create any profiles (except the one you were required to do to set windows up which you can delete later), however you can still use this on a live PC.

Profile relocator does not move exisiting profiles.

Instructions

  1. Login to an Administrator account
  2. Install Profile Relocator 
  3. Run the software and follow the onscreen instructions.

This is what it does according to the readme:

  1. If the user has explicitly enabled the option, PR will copy the Public and Default folders from the old location - which varies depending on the version of the operating system - to the new location. The original folders aren't modified in any way.
  2. PR updates the following registry keys to reflect the new location the user chose: 
    HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\ProfilesDirectory
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\Public
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\Default
  3. To allow the process to be reverted back to its previous state, PR will then create - or update if it already exists - the following registry key with the location of the profiles directory it found when it PR was started: 
    HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\!ProfileRelocator-Original

Notes

  • You can make these changes manually in the registry so do not need this software for that but it makes things easier.
  • You get the option as to whether you want to copy the Public and Default folders and use them in the new location.
  • I do not know how Profile Relocator copies the Public and Default folders and therefore how it maintains their permissions. I am guessing that it does.
  • How To | How To Move A User Profile To Another Drive or Partition In Windows - YouTube - This is just showing the same thing that Profile Relocator does but also shows that when you change the Users folder location in the registry to D:\Users then Windows will automatically create the D:\Users folder when you create a new account along with the D:\Public profile.

3. Copy User Profile to new location

This process will copy the selected profile to the new location with all of the ACL permission intact. In this example I am moving a single profile from C:\Users to D:\Users. This process will copy all profiles that you do not specify in one action so you do not have to repeat this for every profile if doing more than one.

You can use either the RoboCopy command directly or you can use ChoEazyCopy whichs configures and uses RoboCopy via a GUI. Both methods do exactly the same thing.

Notes

  • You cannot run these commands from within a profile that you are going to move. You must logout into another account that has administrator rights and that you are not going to move. You can create a temp administrator account for this.
  • Do not login to these profiles untill these instructions tell you that it is ok.
  • Disable your antivirus if you are moving folders with files in that might trigger it.
  • After a migration always check your error log
  • If find errors, you might find that running these in safemode gives a better result.
  • You cannot just use copy and paste because the ACL permissions and other things are not preserved.

RoboCopy Command

RoboCopy.exe "C:\Users" "D:\Users" *.* /E /ZB /DCOPY:T /SEC /COPYALL /SL /MT:8 /XD "C:\Users\All Users" "C:\Users\Default" "C:\Users\Default User" "C:\Users\Default.migrated" "C:\Users\DefaultAppPool" "C:\Users\LogMeInRemoteUser" "C:\Users\Public" "C:\Users\UpdatusUser" /R:1 /W:1 /UNILOG:"C:\profile-copy.log" /L
  1. Copy the rule above to a text editor and make sure you add any User Profile folders to the folder exclusion list that you do not want to copy. The list that is in the example code above covers most default/system folders present but do not forget to check for other hidden and system folders aswell.
  2. Remove the /L switch if you want to run this live (optional)
  3. Open a command prompt as Administrator
  4. Paste the modfied code in a command prompt and run

ChoEazyCopy Settings File

<ChoAppSettings>
  <MaxStatusMsgSize>1000</MaxStatusMsgSize>
  <SourceDirectory>C:\Users</SourceDirectory>
  <DestDirectory>D:\Users</DestDirectory>
  <RoboCopyFilePath>RoboCopy.exe</RoboCopyFilePath>
  <Files>*.*</Files>
  <CopyNoEmptySubDirectories>false</CopyNoEmptySubDirectories>
  <CopySubDirectories>true</CopySubDirectories>
  <OnlyCopyNLevels>0</OnlyCopyNLevels>
  <CopyFilesRestartableMode>false</CopyFilesRestartableMode>
  <CopyFilesBackupMode>false</CopyFilesBackupMode>
  <FallbackCopyFilesMode>true</FallbackCopyFilesMode>
  <UnbufferredIOCopy>false</UnbufferredIOCopy>
  <EncrptFileEFSRawMode>false</EncrptFileEFSRawMode>
  <CopyFlags />
  <CopyDirTimestamp>true</CopyDirTimestamp>
  <CopyFilesWithSecurity>true</CopyFilesWithSecurity>
  <CopyFilesWithFileInfo>true</CopyFilesWithFileInfo>
  <CopyFilesWithNoFileInfo>false</CopyFilesWithNoFileInfo>
  <FixFileSecurityOnFiles>false</FixFileSecurityOnFiles>
  <FixFileTimeOnFiles>false</FixFileTimeOnFiles>
  <DelDestFileDirIfNotExistsInSource>false</DelDestFileDirIfNotExistsInSource>
  <MirrorDirTree>false</MirrorDirTree>
  <MoveFiles>false</MoveFiles>
  <MoveFilesNDirs>false</MoveFilesNDirs>
  <AddFileAttributes />
  <RemoveFileAttributes />
  <CreateDirTree>false</CreateDirTree>
  <CreateFATFileNames>false</CreateFATFileNames>
  <TurnOffLongPath>false</TurnOffLongPath>
  <RunAgainWithNoChangesSeen>0</RunAgainWithNoChangesSeen>
  <RunAgainWithChangesSeenInMin>0</RunAgainWithChangesSeenInMin>
  <RunHourStartTimeTicks>0</RunHourStartTimeTicks>
  <RunHourEndTimeTicks>0</RunHourEndTimeTicks>
  <CheckRunHourPerFileBasis>false</CheckRunHourPerFileBasis>
  <InterPacketGapInMS>0</InterPacketGapInMS>
  <CopySymbolicLinks>true</CopySymbolicLinks>
  <MultithreadCopy>8</MultithreadCopy>
  <CopyNODirInfo>false</CopyNODirInfo>
  <CopyWithoutWindowsCopyOffload>false</CopyWithoutWindowsCopyOffload>
  <CopyOnlyFilesWithArchiveAttributes>false</CopyOnlyFilesWithArchiveAttributes>
  <CopyOnlyFilesWithArchiveAttributesAndReset>false</CopyOnlyFilesWithArchiveAttributesAndReset>
  <ExcludeFilesWithGivenNames />
  <ExcludeDirsWithGivenNames>"C:\Users\All Users";"C:\Users\Default";"C:\Users\Default User";"C:\Users\Default.migrated";"C:\Users\DefaultAppPool";"C:\Users\LogMeInRemoteUser";"C:\Users\Public";"C:\Users\UpdatusUser";</ExcludeDirsWithGivenNames>
  <ExcludeChangedFiles>false</ExcludeChangedFiles>
  <ExcludeNewerFiles>false</ExcludeNewerFiles>
  <ExcludeOlderFiles>false</ExcludeOlderFiles>
  <ExcludeExtraFilesAndDirs>false</ExcludeExtraFilesAndDirs>
  <ExcludeLonelyFilesAndDirs>false</ExcludeLonelyFilesAndDirs>
  <IncludeSameFiles>false</IncludeSameFiles>
  <IncludeTweakedFiles>false</IncludeTweakedFiles>
  <ExcludeFilesBiggerThanNBytes>0</ExcludeFilesBiggerThanNBytes>
  <ExcludeFilesSmallerThanNBytes>0</ExcludeFilesSmallerThanNBytes>
  <ExcludeFilesOlderThanNDays>0</ExcludeFilesOlderThanNDays>
  <ExcludeFilesNewerThanNDays>0</ExcludeFilesNewerThanNDays>
  <ExcludeFilesUnusedSinceNDays>0</ExcludeFilesUnusedSinceNDays>
  <ExcludeFilesUsedSinceNDays>0</ExcludeFilesUsedSinceNDays>
  <ExcludeJunctionPoints>false</ExcludeJunctionPoints>
  <AssumeFATFileTimes>false</AssumeFATFileTimes>
  <CompensateOneHourDSTTimeDiff>false</CompensateOneHourDSTTimeDiff>
  <ExcludeJunctionPointsForDirs>false</ExcludeJunctionPointsForDirs>
  <ExcludeJunctionPointsForFiles>false</ExcludeJunctionPointsForFiles>
  <NoOfRetries>1</NoOfRetries>
  <WaitTimeBetweenRetries>1</WaitTimeBetweenRetries>
  <SaveRetrySettingsToRegistry>false</SaveRetrySettingsToRegistry>
  <WaitForSharenames>false</WaitForSharenames>
  <ListOnly>true</ListOnly>
  <ReportExtraFiles>false</ReportExtraFiles>
  <VerboseOutput>false</VerboseOutput>
  <IncludeSourceFileTimestamp>false</IncludeSourceFileTimestamp>
  <IncludeFullPathName>false</IncludeFullPathName>
  <PrintByteSizes>false</PrintByteSizes>
  <NoFileSizeLog>false</NoFileSizeLog>
  <NoFileClassLog>false</NoFileClassLog>
  <NoFileNameLog>false</NoFileNameLog>
  <NoDirListLog>false</NoDirListLog>
  <NoProgress>false</NoProgress>
  <ShowEstTimeOfArrival>false</ShowEstTimeOfArrival>
  <UnicodeOutputLogFilePath>C:\profile-copy.log</UnicodeOutputLogFilePath>
  <NoJobHeader>false</NoJobHeader>
  <NoJobSummary>false</NoJobSummary>
</ChoAppSettings>
  1. Install ChoEazyCopy
  2. Create a new file called copy-user-profile.ezy
  3. Copy and paste the code above into it and save
  4. Run ChoEazyCopy as an administrator
  5. Open copy-user-profile.ezy with ChoEazyCopy 
  6. Add any User Profile folders to the folder exclusion list that you do not want to copy. The list that is in the example code above covers most default/system folders present but do not forget to check for other hidden and system folders aswell.
  7. Remove the /L (ListOnly) switch if you want to run this live (optional)
  8. Save any changes.
  9. Run the command by clicking the play arrow at the top.

Switches Explained

  • "C:\Users" (Source) - Files/Folders Source
  • "D:\Users" (Target) - Files/Folders Target
  • *.* (Files) - Which files to select. Select all files
  • /DCOPY:T (CopyDirTimestamp) - Preserve folder timestamps
  • /COPYALL (CopyFilesWithFileInfo) - Copy files with their attributes
  • /SEC (CopyFilesWith Security) - Keeps file ACL permissions as they are in the source
  • /E (CopySubDirectories) - Copy all sub directories including empty ones
  • /SL (CopySymbolicLinks) - Copy symbolicLinks versus the target. Not sure this does anything didnt harm my profile when I moved it.
  • /ZB (FallbackCopyFilesMode) - I think this is volume shadow copy and is used when a file is locked and a 'Access is Denied' error is returned.
  • /MT:8 (MultithreadCopy) - Do multi-threaded copies with n threads. Makes copying quicker.
  • /LEV:2 (OnlyCopyNLevels) - Only copy folders to 1 level below (i.e. C:\Users)
  • /XD (ExcludeDirsWithGivenNames) - Exclude all folders in C:\Users except the profile(s) that you want to move. With RoboCopy you select all and then exclude what you dont want.
  • UNILOG:"C:\profile-copy.log" (UnicodeOutputLogFilePath) - If you dont use this Eazy Copy will crash.
  • /R:1 (NoOfRetries) - As default the retry limit is 1 Million which is daft so this switch will limit it to 1. In Eazy Copy if you set this to zero the switch does not get added.
  • /W:1 (WaitTimeBtweenRetries) - Default time is 30 seconds which is far to long so this sets it to 1 second. In Eazy Copy if you set this to zero the switch does not get added.
  • /L (ListOnly) - This switch is a test switch which prevents copying, timestamp changes or deleting of any files and is present to prevent accedentally running this command with setting things up properly. Remove this when you want to perform this command for real.

4. Change the Registry to reflect the Profile's new location

Once the profile has been moved the registry needs some changes making to it so things work properly. This needs to be done for each profile moved.

Step 1 - Change Profile Image Path

  1. You should be logged in with the temporary Administrator account
  2. Create a System Restore Point (optional)
  3. Open Regedit as an Administrator
  4. Change the Profile Image Path from C:\Users\{username} to D:\Users\{username} in the registry key below. Each profile with have a slightly different parent folder in the registry for obvious reasons. It will not look exactly like it does below. 
    HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\S-1-5-xx-xxxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxxxx-xxxx\ProfileImagePath
  5. Change the profile state from 0 to 1 in the registry key below. The base type should stay as Hexidecimal. I do not know why you need to do this but this YouTube video tells you to. 
    HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\S-1-5-xx-xxxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxxxx-xxxx\State 
  6. Rename the orginal profile folders i.e. C:\Users\{username} to C:\Users\{username}.bak. This prevents accidental use and that only the new profile will be used. You can delete it at a later date as it should no longer be needed or used.

Once you have done all of the above for each of the moved profiles, reboot the computer.

Step 2 - Change the static references in the registry

We need to change all references of C:\Users\{username} to D:\Users\{username}  - this is also a good reason for keeping the same folder format but on the D: drive as it is slightly easier to change the locations in the registry.

For this we will use a Registry editor that will allow us to do a text search and replace within the registry. Install this via your temporary administrator account.

This procedure needs to be done for each profile.

  1. Log into the moved profile
  2. Create a System Restore Point (optional)
  3. Pick Your REG software
    • RegCool
      1. Open RegCool as an Administrator
      2. Search the registry for C:\Users\{username} in Values, Data and all HKEY hives and I did NOT match case.
      3. In the results window at the bottom select all of the results
      4. right click on the highlighted results and click replace
      5. You should now replace C:\Users\{username} with D:\Users\{username}
        • Make sure you double check the strings are correct as this cannot be undone
      6. Click start/replace
        • When I did this I found some registry keys would cause the software to crash. In this case just start the software again, do the same search but instead of selecting the whole block of results, select half and keep going until the are all done.
        • Some keys will not change or if they do they just change back again. they must be protected somehow. But it does not harm to leave them.
        • These are the keys I had issue with:
          • [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\4Developers\RCrawler\History]
          • [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Defender\Exclusions\Paths]
          • [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\AppCompatCache]
    •  RegEditX Pro
      1. Open RegEditX Pro as an Administrator
      2. In the menu at the top select (RegEditX-->RegEditX Crawler)
      3. Search the registry for C:\Users\{username} in Values, Data and all HKEY hives and I did NOT match case.
      4. Highlight all of the results
      5. On the right click Replace
      6. You should now replace C:\Users\{username} with D:\Users\{username}
        • Make sure you double check the strings are correct as this cannot be undone
        • Do NOT confirm every replacement
      7. Click Start
        • The program will appear to crash or lockup. It is still working. I think this is bug.
  4. Logout

NB: Some entries in the registry have the format C:\Users\USERNAM~1\ (old file format) you might want to change these but I suspect that this is fromm old buggy software I no longer have 

Once you have done the process above for each moved account then you should reboot the computer.

5. Housekeeping

Now you have moved your profile you might need to do some of the follwoing to keep you computer running correctly

  • Update AV exclusions in both your choosen AV and Windows Defender

6. Thats it Folks

All the changes have been made and hopefully you now have moved your profiles.

Known Issues

After I have finished moving my profile I noticed a couple of issues which might not always occur. These are easy enough to fix.

  • Library Folders dont work - This could just be my PC but to fix this you should delete all of the libraies (files will be untouchjed) and then click recreate default
  • Quick Access links might be come faulty - Delete/Unpin them and then re-add as required.
  • Outlook PST references become broken causing error 0x8004010F. See my solution.
  • ClassicShell menu layout is lost - If you have customised your start menu using classicshell and have spent ages arranging your menu, the arrangement will probably be lost. There might be a way to preserve this before moving profiles.
  • Moving profiles to a non standard location can cause upgrade issues? - This might not be the case anymore in Windows 10 and might only have been an issue on older versions of windows because the profiles were moved wrong. Anything using Windows 8 is flaky and I think this is where most of the issues were caused by this.

There could be some other minor issues that occur because of the change of folder and file locations but should just be a case of changing settings in the various softwares.

Links

General

Registry Software

  • RegEditX Pro - Extend Windows Registry Editor (REGEDIT). There is a 30 day evaluation copy available.
  • Registry Replacer | CNET Download.com - Registry Replacer is a search-and-replace utility for the Windows Registry. It lets you search the contents of keys and key names for strings and replace them.

Microsoft User State Migration Tool (USMT) Software

  • USMT GUI - Gui for MS User State Migration - This looks like a very comprehensive GUI for USMT. i.e. "Its a simple three-step procedure to backup a user profile and to restore the data and settings to another user profile /other AD"
  • Migrate-WindowsUserProfile - Migrate Windows user profile to a new machine using Microsoft USMT with a PowerShell GUI.

Microsoft User State Migration Tool (USMT)

3rd Party Transfer Software

RoboCopy GUI Software

RoboCopy

Xcopy

Symbolic Links

SysPrep

  • Move Users Folder Location in Windows 10 Installation & Upgrade Tutorials - A very indepth tutorial with videos on how to use Sysprep to move User profiles. The method described in this tutorial allows relocating Windows 10 main profile folder Users including all present and future user profiles and folders while installing Windows, before any user accounts are created, as well as later on an already installed system.

Managing Libraries

Quick Links

NTFS Cut and Copy Permissions behaviour

NTFS Extended Attributes

Published in Windows General
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Friday, 15 December 2017 14:03

My EasyBlog 5 Notes

These are for those fiddly settings you can never find.

Settings

cron jobs

You need to setup a cron job for both EasyBlog and Komento because

  • Emails are sent out via 'Send E-mails During Page Load' mechanism. This is slow and can cause issues with high traffic sites.
  • This will move the email handling away from the normal running of the website and will not suffer timeouts or other issues related to emails.
  • EasyBlog has a feature where it can autopost emails as articles from a defined mailbox. This feature will not work without a cron setup.
  • The crons can handle a lot more emails than the page load method.
  • Stackideas - In short, sending e-mails is a long process and it requires your server to communicate with the recipient's e-mail server. Sending one e-mail is perfectly fine but imagine sending it to 500 recipients because you have 500 subscribers. Two main issues for not utilizing cronjobs:
    1. The only way to dispatch e-mails is when someone accesses the component area (either EasyBlog or Komento). Imagine having 5000 pending e-mails and you do not have the sufficient traffic to these pages. Those e-mails would stuck in the queue.
    2. Even if you have sufficient traffic, it would cause delays when anyone accesses these pages because your mail server would need to communicate to the recipient's mail server.

Send E-mails During Page Load Location

Use this information to turn the feature off, if not already. This also where you can setup other notification options.

  • EasyBlog (Settings-->Notifications-->General-->General Settings-->Send E-mails During Page Load) = off
  • Komento (Settings-->Notifications-->General-->General-->Send E-mails On Page Load) = off

Official Documentation

Notification of the requirement to use cron

Currently the only notification that you need a cron job is if you visit the following pages. they also have a link to the official documentation for setting up a cron job.

  • EasyBlog (Mail Activities-->Mail Activities)
  • Komento (E-mails-->Email Activities)

Shared Hosts

remember that on shared hosts you will have limits on your email send and receive volume and the frequency that your cron can run.

These are a typical example of limitations on a well run server.

  • cron
    • Any client who schedules cron jobs in such a manner that jobs take more then half the time to complete before the next scheduled iteration, and more frequently then 10 minutes is abusing the cron system.
    • Any automated processes that excessively consume resources and impact server stability may be disabled at our discretion by our technicians.
  • Maximum email rate
    • The maximum allowed email send rate is 350 messages per hour per domain (cPanel is irrelevant). Please keep in mind that each recipient counts as a separate message as it is being sent to a separate address. This should be the only limitation in place as far as outgoing messages.

Setup your cron to run every 10 minutes with a 50 emails max send. You could push it to 100 emails max send.

Toolbar

Disable Blog Header Title and Header  Description

The settings to disable these are at

  • (Settings-->Layout-->Toolbar-->General)
    • Enable Headers Above Toolbar – set to no - This disables the global title at the top of easyblog (optional)
    • Enable Headers Description Above Toolbar – set to no – This disables the global description at the top of easy blog (optional)
  • (Settings-->Layout-->Toolbar-->Toolbar)
    • Display Tags Link = off
    • Display Bloggers Link = off
    • Display Teamblog Link = off
    • Enable Archives Link = off

Enable Automatic Approval of Posts

  • (ACL-->Author 'Group'-->Compose-->Compose-->Allowed To Publish Post) =  Yes
  • Also you must add content-editor into the Author group (publisher will not inherit author settings for EasyBlog)

In EasyBlog user author settings

NB: EasyBlog retrieves the info from Joomla, not a separate database

  • (Authors-->{username}-->Details)
  • (Authors-->{username}-->Blog Settings)
    • Blog Permalink – set to this something sensible, not the account username

Change the a blog post to userX

Assuming EasyBlog Composer

  • (Posts-->Posts)
  • Edit the requires Blog Post
  • Edit the Author on the top right
  • Select the userX account
  • Update the post

Storage Paths

(Settings-->Media-->General-->Storage Paths)

I need to test my folder selection to see if it all works as expected.

Default:

  • Article Images                images/easyblog_articles/
  • User media                     images/easyblog_images/
  • Shared media                 images/easyblog_shared/
  • User avatars                    images/easyblog_avatar/
  • Category avatars            images/easyblog_cavatar/
  • Team avatars                  images/easyblog_tavatar/

Mine:

  • Article Images                images/blog/article-images/
  • User media                     images/blog/user-media/
  • Shared media                 images/blog/shared-media/
  • User avatars                    images/blog/user-avatars/
  • Category avatars            images/blog/category-avatars/
  • Team avatars                   images/blog/team-avatars/

This is much neater as all of the blog media is within one folder. I have many application installed in my Joomla website.

Themes

If you are using EasyBlog and Komento it is important to match the themes.

I like the following EasyBlog themes:

  • bubbles
  • x origami
  • plain
  • timeless
  • wireframe

Kometo also has these themes:

  • bubbles
  • Wireframe

 

Questions and Answers

If easy blog has its own built in commenting system why do i need Komento ?
EasyBlog had its own commenting system, integrating with komento gives you more features given in the default easyblog comment.

  1. Instantly activate user interaction and get feedback from visitors to your site.
  2. Professionally control all incoming comments or spam in one easy centralized system.
  3. Migrate comments from EasyBlog and other comment extensions and have them display in Komento.
  4. Komento handles comments in K2, EasySocial, JomSocial, FlexiContent, ZOO, EasyBlog 3.5, VirtueMart, redSHOP, and more.
  5. Control certain activity that a particular user or user group can do in the comments area.
    You could read more about it here --> Komento, by stackideas - Joomla Extension Directory

Do i need to use the inbuilt media manager?
You do not need to use media manager to upload your pictures, using your editor would work.

What are the benefits of using the inbuilt media manager?
The build in manager makes it easy for you to upload picture, it also automatically create thumbnails and full view and will come in handy when using lightbox. It also has additional features like pictures that you could share with others using the shared folder.

Can you recommend which comment system to use? i do not know if disqus is better because it is cloud based ?
You might need to check your requirements and what you will need for your blogs.

Why does Easyblog not use the Joomla template?
EasyBlog had themes which you could choose to better suite your site. We also have partners with template developer that supports easyblog
Link --> http://stackideas.com/partners

Will ever use the joomla template?
As for the Joomla template, the default theme that is included in EasyBlog was created to inherit most of the styling of your Joomla template but some of the elements are designed internally. For instance, the toolbar in EasyBlog, we have to design this on our own because there's no other Joomla template that is designing the toolbar :)

You can read this documentation link and see is it helpful for you? -> Template Overriding - Customizations - EasyBlog Documentation

Does Easyblog allows the use of joomla plugins
EasyBlog does trigger content plugins but whether or not it works with EasyBlog is another matter because some of these content plugins are explicitly configured to work with Joomla articles. We can't really tell you which plugin works and which plugin doesn't but if I recall correctly, allvideos plugin does work but EasyBlog has a built in video embed tool so not too sure if Allvideos is really necessary?

Where does the number come from of the folder my uploaded images are put it?
The number comes from the User ID

When i upload an image using your image manager, the manager uploads the image and puts it in a folder of that user, ie /easyblog_images/623/ is there anyway of turning this off because running a blog i do not want images all over the place. i want them like /images/blog/2014/09 etc.. no user number
There is also a shared folder in EasyBlog where they are stored in a shared folder . The shared folder does not categorize images into user id folders. However do take note that storing them in a shared folder also means that all authors on your site will be able to access them.

When inserting an image using your manager it uses an absolute image link ie http://www.mywebsite.com/images/easyblog_images/mypicture.jpg this is really bad, lets say i was developing on my test server and then moved it, none of the image links would then work. please can you tell me if you can turn this off as i do not understand why anyone would have this option on anyway.
The URL that is inserted into the blog post is actually dependent on your editor's configuration. If the editor that you are currently using is configured to use relative URLs, the url of the image will be relative because these WYSIWYG editors would format the urls accordingly.

This is only seems to work with JCE Editor. Does not work with None/TinyMCE/JCK

 

Other Notes

Published in Blogging
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Wednesday, 13 December 2017 12:38

Proprietary Software Licenses and EULA

Proprietary software is computer software for which the software's publisher or another person retains intellectual property rights—usually copyright of the source code,[1] but sometimes patent rights.[2]. A Proprietry

A license for such software maintains the vendors rights tot hat software and affords the end user the use of the software under certain conditions and are usually aggreed to in a End User License Agreement (EULA).

For further information see these articles from Wikipedia

Examples of Proprietary Licenses

I have come across these examples of licenses.

  • RocketTheme Licenses - The RocketTheme Proprietary Use License (v1.3) and others. You should also look at their copyright notice for the site (link in the footer).
  • License & Terms of Service - JoomlaWorks
    • JoomlaWorks includes the following copyright notice in their code which points to this page. 
      /**
 * @version     3.0.x
 * @package     Simple Image Gallery Pro
 * @author      JoomlaWorks - http://www.joomlaworks.net
 * @copyright   Copyright (c) 2006 - 2014 JoomlaWorks Ltd. All rights reserved.
 * @license     http://www.joomlaworks.net/license
 */
  • License | Artetics - This has really simple and easy to understand Proprietry Use License. There is also a DMCA statement.

Examples of Eula

  • RSComments - Terms and Conditions
    By checking this, you agree with the following:

1. To accept full responsibility for the comment that you submit.
2. To use this function only for lawful purposes.
3. Not to post defamatory, abusive, offensive, racist, sexist, threatening, vulgar, obscene, hateful or otherwise inappropriate comments, or to post comments which will constitute a criminal offense or give rise to civil liability.
4. Not to post or make available any material which is protected by copyright, trade mark or other proprietary right without the express permission of the owner of the copyright, trade mark or any other proprietary right.
5. To evaluate for yourself the accuracy of any opinion, advice or other content.

 

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Tuesday, 12 December 2017 13:23

Debugging with Netbeans, Xdebug and Xampp in Windows

Getting Xdebug, Xampp and Netbeans to work together in Windows can be a tricky thing and I want to address that here. These instructions will get debugging working all on the same PC and IP.

A symptom of a PC that is not setup correctly is this Netbeans Socket Exception error. You get this error when Netbeans cannot communicate with Xdebug and is usually because you are running them both on the same computer and therefore IP so the traffic routing is getting mixed up. It could also because something else is running on the debug port you have selected.

Netbeans Socket Exception error

These Settings Work

These settings are what I am using now and work well.

Windows

  • You need to set a static IP on your ethernet adapter (or wifi)

php.ini

    • Use your static IP to set xdebug.remote_host. Setting a static IP seems to fix most connecion issues. xdebug does not like 127.0.0.1 it works sometimes but can be problematic.
    • Swapping xdebug.remote_port to 9001 helped when xdebug just stopped working. The default is 9000.
    • Disable output_buffering in your php.ini by altering/uncommenting the following line 
      output_buffering = Off
    • Add the following code to the end of your php.ini file. 
      [XDebug]

zend_extension="D:\websites\php\ext\php_xdebug.dll"
;zend_extension="D:\websites\php\ext\php_xdebug-2.5.4-5.6-vc11.dll"
xdebug.idekey = netbeans-xdebug
xdebug.profiler_append = 0
xdebug.profiler_enable = 0
xdebug.profiler_enable_trigger = 0
xdebug.profiler_output_dir = "d:\websites\tmp\xdebug"
xdebug.profiler_output_name = "cachegrind.out.%t-%s"
xdebug.remote_enable = 1
xdebug.remote_autostart = 0
xdebug.remote_connect_back = 0
xdebug.remote_host = "192.168.1.160"
xdebug.remote_port = 9001
xdebug.remote_handler = "dbgp"
xdebug.remote_mode = req
xdebug.remote_log = "d:\websites\tmp\xdebug\xdebug_remote.log"
xdebug.show_local_vars = 9
xdebug.trace_output_dir = "d:\websites\tmp"

;xdebug.show_exception_trace = 1

      Minimum working settings

      These are the minimum settings I have found to work but are here only for reference.

      [XDebug]

;zend_extension="D:\websites\php\ext\php_xdebug.dll"
zend_extension="D:\websites\php\ext\php_xdebug-2.5.4-5.6-vc11.dll"
xdebug.remote_enable=1
xdebug.remote_handler=dbgp
xdebug.remote_mode=req
xdebug.remote_host=192.168.1.160
xdebug.remote_port=9001
xdebug.idekey=netbeans-xdebug

Netbeans

(Tools --> Options --> PHP --> Debugging)

  • Debugger Port: 9001
  • Session ID: netbeans-xdebug
  • Maximum Data Length: 2048 - I think this is the default
  • Stop at First Line: off
  • Watches and Balloon Evaluation: All off
  • Show Requested URLs: off
  • Show Debugger Console: On

Browser

You need to send a trigger to Xdebug via your browser to trigger the debugger. You can send the trgger via GET/POST but you need a plugin for this.

Test Debugger is working

Now you have configured your system as above you need to test it before you can rely on it.

  • Set a breakpoint in Netbeans on the index.php (or a PHP file that is parsed) in your software project, preferably one before the content is displayed. (or you can enable the ‘Stop at First Line’ option in the Netbeans config
  • Start debugging in Netbeans
  • Open your project in a chrome browser with the xdebug helper plugin enabled
  • If the browser and Netbeans stop at the breakpoint, everything is working

Diagnostics

Things that Might help

If xdebug does not work straight away then trying these things might help.

  • could disabling ipv6 in the network adapter help? because xampp has issues with ipv6
  • xdebug might fail if you have multiple version of xampp running
  • Localhost is mapping to ::1 and not 127.0.0.1
  • Not all lines can act as breakpoints, these are displayed as cracked breakpoint markers in Netbeans. These breakpoints will not work because Netbeans does not like them. To fix this yoou should choose another breakpoint.
  • Run the Xdebug on another server which has another IP
  • Get the latest dll from xdebug site (i.e. php_xdebug-2.5.4-5.6-vc11.dll)
  • Comment out any zend extensions
  • Some people use port 9001 when they have issues with 9000.

Test the port is not already in use - dbgtest.php

This code is taken from 21.4.2 How to Set Up XDebug | Oracle

<?php
$address = '127.0.0.1';
$port = '9000';
$sock = socket_create(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0);
socket_bind($sock, $address, $port) or die();
socket_listen($sock);
$client = socket_accept($sock);
echo "Connection established: $client";
socket_close($client);
socket_close($sock);
?>

However I found this slightly better version from dbgtest.php · GitHub

<?php
// adapted from https://blogs.oracle.com/netbeansphp/entry/howto_check_xdebug_installation
$address = $argv[1] ?: '127.0.0.1';
$port = '9000';
$sock = socket_create(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0);
socket_bind($sock, $address, $port) or die();
echo "Listening to $address:$port\n";
socket_listen($sock);
$client = socket_accept($sock);
echo "Connection established: $client\n";
socket_close($client);
socket_close($sock);
  1. Create a php file with the code above called dbgtest.php and put it in the htdocs folder of your xampp server
  2. Change the port to 9001 if that is the port number you are using/diagnosing
  3. Enable sockets - extension=php_sockets.dll
    • only be need for the test script
    • You enable this by uncommenting the appropriate line in the php.ini
    • if you do not enable this you will get this error 
      Call to undefined function socket_create()
  4. Close Netbeans if that is running.
  5. Restart Xampp
  6. Run the script

If there is something running on this socket you will get an error as shown below. This shows that some other process is using the port 9000.

Warning: socket_bind(): unable to bind address [10048]: Only one usage of each socket address (protocol/network address/port) is normally permitted. in D:\websites\htdocs\dbgtest.php on line 5

Workarounds

These are a few workarounds I tried and might work for you. These are not designed to be a permanent fix.

Method 1

  • Make sure netbeans and xampp are not running
  • Put the basic xdebug settings in php.ini
  • Enable extension=php_sockets.dll in php.ini
  • Run xampp
  • Put a copy of the oracle script in your Webroot and run it. This causes xampp to open socket on 9000
  • Now open and run NetBeans debugging

* I am not sure if you need to do the IP fix aswell for this to work. It is all caused by routing issues on the loopback system of the PC. Or sockets might be needed.

Method 2

  • Turn of netbeans debugging (leave netbeans open)
  • Run the dbgtest.php to allow xampp/xdebug to grab the port
  • Now start netbeans debugging

Method 3 - (if working and then stops for no reason)

  • Close Netbeans, Xampp and browsers
  • Restart them all

Links

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Tuesday, 12 December 2017 12:34

array_walk() - Working with an anonymous function

This code is incredibly useful for going through an array and applying changes to the individual values without having to create a specific loop to perfom this action. In this example all apostrophes are escaped.

// Walk through the array and escape all apostophes (anonymous function)
array_walk($merged_config, function(&$value, &$key) {
    $value = str_replace("'", "\\'", $value);
});

this also works, without the &$key

// Walk through the array and escape all apostophes (anonymous function)
array_walk($merged_config, function(&$value) {
    $value = str_replace("'", "\\'", $value);
});

keep the '&' it is important. This creates a reference to the object in memory.

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Tuesday, 12 December 2017 12:15

Change a browsers language, locale and HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE header

When testing the translation system on QWcrm I needed to try different locales (languages) to see if the software actually worked how it should. The following are ways to change the HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE header that the browser sends to the webhost with its request.

FireFox

This will also fix the issue where Firefox was sending en-US instead of en-GB

Option 1 - Change the browser system settings

  • Goto (Tools menu --> Settings --> Content --> Languages)
  • Add English/United Kingdom [en-gb]
  • (optional) remove the other version of english. I do not know if this would cause issues so i have left them

Option 2 - re install

You can also just install Firefox with the correct locale.

Option 3 - Plugins

Using a plugin will allow you to easily change the settings on a temporary basis.

Chrome

Option 1 - Change the browser system settings

  • In the address bar type chrome://settings/ or click the 3 balls button-->settings
  • Open advanced section at the bottom
  • Goto languages
  • Install 'English (United Kingdom)' language
  • with 'English (United Kingdom)':
    • move to the top so it is first in the order of preference
    • set 'Display Google Chrome in this language'
    • set it as the language for spell checking
  • (optional) remove the other version of english. I do not know if this would cause issues so i have left them

Links

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Tuesday, 12 December 2017 12:04

Disable and re-enable PHP error reporting within a function

This is useful when you want to control the errors outputted tot he screen or is a class or some other code is not behaving as expected, such as the ADOdb error class.

The following code will preserve the current error reporting level so once your code has finished running the system's error reporting will be returned to its normal state.

// Get current PHP error reporting level
$reporting_level = error_reporting();

// Disable PHP error reporting (works globally)
error_reporting(0);

// Add you code here

// Re-Enable PHP error reporting
error_reporting($reporting_level);

 

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Tuesday, 12 December 2017 10:42

My Composer Notes

What is Composer?

This needs to be cleared up for us newbies. and to start with you will come across the following statements which are both true.

  • Composer is not a package manager
  • Composer is a dependency manager

Composer is not a package manager because you are not downloading complete software packages but dependencies/libraries for your own software package.

Composer is a cross-platform software package that can is used to manage libraries for your PHP software project allowing you to install, update and remove libraries/dependencies from a single point reducing the need to manually update all of the dependecies individually which reduces time and makes it easier to keep things upto date. composer calls on its own library to get the latest updates of the various depencies. A vendor of software can make their software available from this library for others to use.

It is composer of the program mentioned above to manage your dependecies and also a small library to control autoloading of classes and other things.

Composer is useful because some packages use mulitple dependancies to get them to work and composer allows you to always get the latest version of all of the packages, or specify package numbers for your project. This process also correctly sets up all the required includes up as needed. This can reduce the time needed to update all of the packages.

The Wonderful World of Composer - YouTube - This is brilliant video that will explain Composer completely.

How does it Work?

  • Installing Windows Composer  does the following
    • Installs Composer
    • Puts the Composer binary into path
    • autodetects your php.exe and allows you to choose which if you have more than one.
  • Files
    • Composer installs all of the libraries usually to a folder called /vendor/ and is controlled by a single JSON text file which is parsed by the particular version of Composer you are using.
    • Each package that is downloaded is registered with the Composer framework.
    • There is sha-1 string for both the whole 'Composer vendor library' and for the inidividual dependencies which are stored in the composer.lock file. this allows the tracking of the various assets to see if they have been updated or just to compare against packages withing the Packagist repository.
    • composer.json - Is the control files used for the composer packages used within your project. This file allows multiple packages to be downloaded and combined
    • The standard folder to use is /vendor/
    • All dependecies will be installed into the vendor folder. they all have a unique name so collisions will not be an issue.
  • Commands
    • Run the command  composer install in the folder where you want you dependencies to be installed and if the composer.json file is present it will use it for instruction.
    • I can install motranslator by navigating to where i want it and typing composer require phpmyadmin/motranslator as you can see this has the require command in the string.
    • This gets the latest stable version of the called software, in the case motranslator - composer require phpmyadmin/motranslator
    • composer require phpmyadmin/motranslator from the Windows commandline will add this dependency to your Composer library, or build a new library if there is not one already there.
  • You only need to include the autoload.php once in your software project and composer will load all dependancies. This is all you need in your PHP project to get Composer. 
    require vendor/autoload.php
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Tuesday, 12 December 2017 10:33

mPDF - Renders tables and fonts smaller than in the supplied template

When using mPDF to generate a PDF from a template it renders one or more tables and the fonts within them smaller than what they are in the template.

Cause

Look at the code below:

<!-- Invoice details -->
<td valign="top" align="right" width="200">
    <table border="0" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse;">
        <tr>
            <td valign="top" width="90%" align="right"></td>
            <td align="top" class="olotd5" width="200">
                <table width="180" border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse;">
                    <tr>
                        <td>
                            <b>{t}Invoice ID{/t} - </b>{$invoice_details.invoice_id}<br>
                            <b>{t}Status{/t} - </b>{$workorder_details.status}<br>
                            <b>{t}Date{/t} - </b>{$invoice_details.date|date_format:$date_format} <br>
                            <b>{t}Due Date{/t} - </b>{$invoice_details.due_date|date_format:$date_format}<br>
                            <b>{t}Work Order{/t} - </b>{$invoice_details.workorder_id}<br>
                            <b>{t}Technician{/t} - </b>{$employee_details.display_name}<br>                                        
                            <b>{t}Credit Terms{/t} - </b>{$customer_details.credit_terms}<br>                                       
                        </td>
                    </tr>
                </table>
            </td>
        </tr>
    </table>
</td>

 and you can see this line.

<td valign="top" width="90%" align="right"></td>

mPDF cannot handle this empty cells with sizing statements.

Solution

I removed this line and then the template was rendered correctly.

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Sunday, 10 December 2017 13:04

My dhtmlxCombo Notes

These are some notes I made while integrating dhtmlxCombo into QWcrm.

  • in the package the code you want is ../codebase/
  • this codebase is prefilled with the dhxcombo_material skin
  • you don't need ../codebase/dhtmlxcombo_deprecated.js
  • you dont need ../codebase/fonts/ ? - doesnt seem to be called for what i use
  • fontawesome, dunno what this is for, again, something else
  • to add a new skin goto ../skins/ and into the folder of the skin you want. copy these files to ../codebase/ - the css will be overwritten
  • for QWcrm I use skyblue
  • only these JS and CSS are needed
    <script src="/{$theme_js_dir}dhtmlxcombo/dhtmlxcombo.js"></script>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/{$theme_js_dir}dhtmlxcombo/fonts/font_roboto/roboto.css"/>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/{$theme_js_dir}dhtmlxcombo/dhtmlxcombo.css">
  • roboto.css is for foreign characters, it might be used - cant be sure. i have not needed it yet
  • If existing select object was defined as parent - dhtmlxCombo will take all data from it (list of options, sizes, tabindex, name)

Example code I used in QWcrm

// This Call Transforms the Select Element by ID to a real Combo Box
var combo = dhtmlXComboFromSelect('description['+ iteration+']');

// This Call Transforms the Select Element by ID to a real Combo Box
 var combo = dhtmlXComboFromSelect('rate['+ iteration+']');
  • The code above auto resizes the combobox
  • var combo = can be removed unless you want to add options
var combo = dhtmlXComboFromSelect('rate['+ iteration+']');
combo.setSize(90);             // This sets the width of the combo box and drop down options width
//combo.setOptionWidth(200);    // this sets the width of the options drop down ONLY

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