Zounds and Gadzooks!

This week Turnkey released an important Sunshop security upgrade. Mildly peeved because I just upgraded last month, I asked Brad to work his magic again. He quickly set things up to do the deed this morning.

But first, to Turnkey’s Support forum! I found a couple of doozies.

First, the new password encryption will invalidate existing customers’ logins. I have more than 1,500 accounts (although most people who create one never come back, so only a few hundred of those are active). That's a shame, but into each life a little rain must fall, right? It's worse than that, though: the Forgot Password link won’t work for them. The Admin (that’s me!) has to reset their accounts manually. Those who create an account and return to it are precisely the people whom I least want to alienate. Zounds!

Second, this upgrade (and all future versions of Sunshop) requires the server to have a particular superpower. Mine apparently doesn’t. If we’d upgraded as planned, my site might have stopped working entirely, possibly for days. Gadzooks!

A user-created fix for the first issue will make everything work as intended. Existing users can still use their old passwords, new accounts will use the new method, and everyone can change their password normally. The problem is that if I make this modification I’ll have to carry it forward manually through all future version upgrades to maintain support for old passwords. Zounds!

For the second issue, my web host proposed moving my site to a server that has the necessary support. Moving is not at all trivial. Then they backpedaled and said that my server has the necessary module installed after all. I lack faith in their support department and won't strike my Gadzooks until Brad confirms it.

This morning Turnkey published a repack that should solve the password problem. We'll reschedule the upgrade for next week. Meanwhile, I'm watching the forums for any new developments.

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Last week’s appeal to my Facebook followers grew my legion from 82 to 84. Can you feel the excitement building? Not to seem ungrateful – any growth is good -- I wish it was translating into sales. Next week’s numbers report won’t be anything to crow about.