Managing Sites

Listing your sites

From the main page of Panopticon click on the Manage button above the list of sites.

Alternatively, click on the Administration, Sites item on the top menu.

You will see a list of the sites you are allowed to view and/or manage with your user account.

The Site column shows you the name you have given the site and below it its URL.

The Enabled column shows you if the site is active. A green circle with a checkmark means it's active, whereas a red circle with an X means it's disabled. If you have Administrator or Edit Own access on the site you can click on the icon to toggle the status.

The last column marked as # is the internal numeric ID of the site. This is how the site is identified in log files and tasks.

Editing and creating sites

To edit a site, click on its title. To add a new site click on the New button in the toolbar. These features may not be available depending on your user's access.

The add / edit page has the Site Name field at the top. This is so you can give a name to your site which will be displayed in Panopticon's interface. It does not have to be the same as the site name in your CMS.

Below that there are four tabs.

Connection

Controls the connection to the site.

Panopticon Connector

❗️ Every site you add to Panopticon needs to have the correct connector software installed on it. You can find the information about where to download this software at the top of the tab.

After installing the connector software to your site, you will need to get the Endpoint URL and API Token from it, depending on the CMS and version of it you are using.

• Joomla 4 and 5: Go to your site's administrator backend, Components, Akeeba Panopticon Connector. You will see the Endpoint URL and API Token there. If there is a problem, you will be told what to do to rectify it.
• Joomla 3: Go to your site's administrator backend, Extensions, Plugins. Find the “System - Panopticon Connector for Joomla 3” plugin and edit it. Make sure its Status is Enabled and its Access is Public.

Copy the Endpoint and API Token from your site's administrator backend to Panopticon's fields.

Panopticon will try to connect to your site using this information after you click Save or Save & Close.

Troubleshooting the connection

It should be pretty obvious that Panopticon and its connectors are tested against an assortment of sites, server, and execution environments. As a general principle, they are not shipped broken. If you have a problem connecting your site to Panopticon the problem usually lies elsewhere.

Please consult the Connection Troubleshooting for more information.

Administrator Directory Password Protection

Joomla!™ update may fail if you have password-protected your site's administrator folder. This will have happened if you did any of the following:

• You used a third party extension, e.g. Admin Tools' “Password-protect Administrator” feature.
• You used your hosting control panel's directory password protection feature, if one is available.
• You have manually set this up, e.g. using a .htaccess and .htpasswd file with the Apache web server.

If this is the case, please provide the administrator directory password protection's username and password in the “Administrator Directory Username” and “Administrator Directory Password” fields respectively.

Properties

The Enabled field controls whether a site is active or not. Active sites are displayed in the Overview (main page) of Panopticon, their information is automatically refreshed, and it participates in scheduled (automatic) actions such as Joomla!™ and extension updates, backups, etc.

Site Ownership

You only need to concern yourself with this section if you are using Advanced Permissions to control access to your sites.

The Groups fields lets you select one or more user groups the site belongs to. Any user who also belongs to the same group will get the permissions granted by the group, regardless of their global (user-level) permissions.

The Created By field lists the owner of the site. If the user has the Edit Own user-level permission they will be able to edit the site's configuration and take actions on it such as scheduling Joomla!™ and extension updates, backups etc.

The other fields are self-explanatory and there just for informational purposes.

Joomla!™ Update

Controls how Joomla!™ updates will be taking place.

❗️ IMPORTANT Updates are discovered by the core Joomla!™ code running on your site. The availability of updates is NOT determined by Panopticon.

What To Do On CMS Update Found tells Panopticon to do when an update for Joomla!™ is found:

• Do nothing. Panopticon will take no action. When you visit Panopticon you will be shown the information that an update is available.
• Send email. Panopticon will email you about the availability of the update, but it will not install it for you.
• Install patch versions only. Panopticon will install only patch updates, i.e. updates where only the third number of a version changes e.g. 1.2.3 to 1.2.4. This also installs versions where all three version numbers remain the same but the stability indicator has changed, e.g. 1.2.3-Beta1 to 1.2.3-Beta2 and 1.2.3-RC2 to 1.2.3 (unstable to stable). For any other detected version it acts as “Do nothing”.
• Install minor versions only. Panopticon will install only patch updates (as above) and minor updates, i.e. stable updates where the second number of the version changes, but the first remains the same, e.g. 1.2.3 to 1.3.2 but NOT 1.2.3 to 2.0.0.
• Install any version. Panopticon will install any new version, even major releases.

We strongly recommend against using “Install any version”. Major versions of Joomla! always have compatibility issues, despite Joomla chronically lying about that being unlikely.

When Should Updates Be Installed tells Panopticon when to schedule the installation of updates.

• Immediately tries to install the updated version as soon as possible. This may really be immediate, or it may be after several hours, depending on how many sites you have that need to be updated at the same time.
• Time of Day schedules the update to take place sometime after the time of the day described in “Time of the day to install updates on”. Remember that the time is always expressed in the GMT timezone.

CC the Following Email Addresses tells Panopticon to email not only the owner user of the site, but also the email addresses listed here.

ℹ Panopticon will email you after every attempt at installing an update. It will also email you when an update is foind when you use the Send Email option.

Finally, please note that Panopticon — unlike the Joomla Update component shipped with Joomla — will try to download the update package on your site using chunked downloads. That is to say, it will try to download anywhere from 56KiB to 10MiB at a time, trying to ensure that the download will not time out. This lets you update sites which would otherwise fail to update with Joomla Update itself. The rest of the update process is handled by your site's Joomla Update code. Therefore, if the update fails it's Joomla!™ which messed up, not Panopticon.

Extensions Update

Controls how extension updates work.

When you are creating a new site this will be empty. Saving the site will retrieve the list of extensions and populate this tab.

Panopticon lists every top level extension reported by Joomla. That is, extensions which do not indicate they belong to another extension of the package type.

The installation options are similar to Joomla!™ Update.

You cannot change the preference for Akeeba Panopticon's connector software. It is set to always install an available update.

Updates are always scheduled to run as soon as possible.

Extension updates is performed by the Joomla!™ core code running on your site. Panopticon simply tells it which extensions to update. If the update fails it's because Joomla!™ messed up, not because Panopticon did something wrong.

Invalid login logs / messages on your site

After clicking on Save or Save & Close when adding a site which is not already connected with Panopticon, or when the endpoint or token changed, you may notice that your site logs an invalid login. If you have Admin Tools Professional installed on your site you will receive an email about it. This is normal and expected.

When adding a site we check if the Joomla! API application is available, and that it responds with the expected error message when we do not provide an authentication token. This is a deliberate check. It allows Panopticon to determine whether the Joomla! API application throws an error regardless of the existence of authentication information which would indicate something is wrong with the server, or the site configuration. If that happens, Panopticon will let you know.

Moreover, by not using an authentication token during this check we make sure that any observed problem is not the result of the server itself (e.g. Apache mod_security2), or any similar protection on or in front of the server, getting triggered by the long gibberish that's the authentication token.

Therefore, you should ignore a log message, or an email, about an invalid login attempt to the API application.